BEDTIME STORY
The last bedtime story I read to my youngest daughter has been keeping me awake. There are no giants, witches, or dragons in it. Nancy and I are both old-fashioned, and neither loses sleep over fee, fie, fo, fum.
This story is most contemporary. It is about a dog named Crispin’s Crispian, who belonged to himself, and therefore kept house with bachelor methodicalness. After a few curious adventures, he met a boy who also belonged to himself. On the dog’s invitation, the boy came to share his house.
Share is not exactly the word, since each of these rugged individuals emphatically preserved his own independent way of life. On opposite pages each chewed up his own dinner and swallowed it into his stomach. Then, also on opposite pages, each went to bed and dreamed his own dreams.
The disturbing thing is that I don’t know what to make of this philosophical novel for the kindergarten. It is just as evident that I should understand it. There could hardly be more clues. The dog, for example, takes himself for a walk. He can go wherever he wants, but he doesn’t know where he wants to go.
This would seem to be the dilemma of the freedom of modern man. The emancipated individualist, without restriction, is also without goals or norms. The man who belongs to nobody has nowhere to go.
Crispian’s solution, in advice that he gives himself, is just to walk; sooner or later he will set somewhere. I take it that he is no existentialist. The advice smacks more of Dewey than Sartre. Or perhaps it is just the spirit of the frontier.
From this point on I become more confused. The walk takes Crispian to a dog country and a cat and rabbit country with implications that are either political or Freudian, and then the dog-meets-boy theme develops.
There is an outright declaration that the dog is a conservative, who likes everything in place, whether saucers or stars. Yet I am not reassured. The domiciled coexistence of this dog without a master and boy without a father seems to be a dreadful parable of society without God, where there can be fraternization but not fellowship, cooperation but not love.
I do wish the author were at least less profound, for the sake of the parents, who also need their sleep. How about a little lost puppy who comes home to his master? At bedtime.
EUTYCHUS
CHURCH TAX
I have enjoyed the discussion of “Taxation and the Churches” in the article by Eugene Carson Blake (Aug. 3 issue) and in the recent editorial (Jan. 4 issue).… This is not an issue of Federal power, because it is the state and local governments which levy property taxes for services rendered to churches as well as individuals and other institutions.
FOSTER SHANNON
East Side Presbyterian Church
Omaha, Nebraska
To allow the State to tax the churches would be a most dangerous precedent and would be a violation of the Church-State principle. It would be just as wrong for the State to impose taxes upon churches as it would for the churches to exact funds from the State in return for the services which the churches provide for the State. In teaching the young, in promoting morality and civil obedience and tranquility, in providing youth recreational facilities, in charitable enterprises, in free counseling to distraught people, in the promotion of emotional health through spiritual development, and in countless other ways, not the least being seeking the divine benediction upon our nation and its rulers in prayer and worship, the Church serves the State without reimbursement. To allow the State the power of taxation over the Church would be equally wrong as to allow the Church authorities dominion over the civil government. There is little question that the power to tax is the power to destroy, for if a church were not willing or unable to pay its tax, the government would have no alternative but to take court action and ultimately confiscate the Church property.
However, there is a just complaint that churches have abused the tax exemption by going into competition with commercial enterprise in everything from bake sales to bingo games to massive rental of large and expensive property holdings. In doing this I believe the church has ceased to be the church and should be subject to the same sales taxes, or corporation profits taxes as any other commercial concern.
MAURICE M. BENITEZ
St. James Episcopal Church
Lake City, Fla.
I should like to call your attention … to a further item concerning the report on Florida Presbyterian College.… When it was pointed out to the president and trustees of this institution that the acceptance of a site from the city of St. Petersburg might well be in violation of the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution and the Florida Constitution as well, they took action in the matter. Appraisers determined that $500,000 was a fair price for the land. College officials promptly agreed to pay this amount to the city and have already paid the first installment.
C. STANLEY LOWELL
Washington, D. C.
CAST CORRECTION
Your news report (Jan. 4 issue) on our latest production identified one of the cast incorrectly. Dick Jones, not Dick Clark, is the male lead in the film, now titled “Shadow of the Boomerang” and scheduled for fall release.
BRUNSON MOTLEY
World Wide Pictures
Hollywood, Calif.
TROUBLES IN THE KINGDOM
I wish to comment on Dr. George E. Ladd’s review (Oct. 12 issue) of my book The Greatness of the Kingdom. Since there has been so much disagreement about the subject of the Kingdom, I suppose that anyone venturing to write a book in this field should expect to meet some dissent, and also be willing to accept fair criticism with some measure of good humor. However, the review of a book should be a review; not merely a polemic, as several competent judges have already characterized Ladd’s discussion. At very least, the reviewer should seek to find and state fairly the author’s purpose and plan; give some serious attention to his definitions, not passing judgments on the basis of meanings which he rejects; and, above all, avoid carelessness in handling the facts. In these obligations, I feel, the review by Ladd gravely fails; but especially in the last mentioned. Out of the many, I cite but three examples.
First, my book does not teach that God has “two programs—a theocratic program for Israel and a redemptive program for Church”; which, Ladd declares, is “the pattern of McClain’s theology.” On the contrary (in a passage quoted by Ladd himself in another connection!) I have clearly stated that, with reference to our Lord’s redemptive work as a personal Saviour of men, “there is no difference between Jew and Gentile … and there are no national priorities” (my p. 424). Also, I have said that the New Testament Church is “the one body of Christ in which there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile” (my pp. 428–9). Elsewhere, over and over, I have asserted a divine redemptive program for Israel (my pp. 197–8, 218–220, 352); and also a theocratic program for the Church (my pp. 329, 469–472).
Second, Ladd declares without any qualification that “the pattern of McClain’s theology” is that “the Mediatorial Kingdom of Christ is a blessing for Israel, not for the Church.” This makes no sense at all when compared with my statement “that the Church of the present age is enjoying many of the spiritual blessings which in the Old Testament were predicted in connection with the Messianic Kingdom (my p. 440). Curiously, in connection with another point, Ladd later refers to this very passage; but shrugs it off as a failure of “logic” on my part. Still, I did write the passage; to say nothing of other passages similar in nature (my pp. 329–330, 429, 433, 436, 439, 464, 469–472). An author can hardly agree amiably to the re-writing of his material in order to validate the criticism of a reviewer.
Third, in his review Ladd refers to a matter which he correctly calls “serious.” It concerns the relation of the death of Christ to the Kingdom. In the following words he misrepresents my position: “Christ did not speak of his death until his offer of the Kingdom to Israel had been firmly rejected.… McClain places great stress on the fact that Jesus at first proclaimed the gospel of the Kingdom with no word about his death and resurrection.” And he cites my page 332 to document his charge. (I italicize certain of Ladd’s words to show the unqualified nature of his assertion.) Now as a matter of fact neither on my page 332 nor anywhere else in the book have I written anything like Ladd has alleged. Not only so, but on the two preceding pages (330–331) I have specifically cited certain recorded references to his death and resurrection made by our Lord during His earliest ministry—in John 2:18–22; 3:14–16; Mark 2:19–20, and in the accounts of his baptism—all prior to the rejection of the King and his Kingdom as described in Matthew 11 and 12. Yet Ladd represents me as having written that there was “no word” from Christ about His death in this area of time. Surely there is a difference between some word and no word.
Furthermore, using the above misrepresentation as his solitary premise, Ladd moves with no hesitation to his ill-conceived conclusion in these words: “The conclusion is unavoidable: in McClain’s system, the Cross is relevant to the Church but not to the Kingdom.” This in spite of my affirmation at the opening of the book: “We are not forgetting the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. For He is the King eternal, and there could be no final Kingdom apart from Him and His work as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (my p. 5). And again on my page 426: “For the preaching [about the Kingdom] in Acts proceeded on the basis of the death and resurrection of Messiah which had now become historic facts, thus providing the soteriological foundation without which there could have been no enduring Messianic Kingdom established on earth.” For other passages, the reader may consult pages 167–168, 352–353, 399–401, 403–406.
ALVA J. MCCLAIN
Winona Lake, Ind.
Edmund Opitz should have written two pieces for publication in CHRISTIANITY TODAY: 1. a review of my Basic Christian Ethics (“The Elastic Yardstick,” Jan. 4 issue), and, 2. an article on “Some Contextualists, Pragmatists and Relativists I Have Known.” Opitz did not confine himself to my writing or to a criticism of tendencies demonstrated to come from my writing, but followed instead the method of making objection by mere association. Statements or tendencies he sees in some other books must have been uppermost in his mind. I regard contextualism and relativism as wrong, and tyranny and Big Brotherism as evil; and cannot rejoice in being placed in such company without proof. The review not only did not succeed, it did not even attempt to show valid socio-political objections that could be made against my book, but against “neighbor love” ethics somewhere else. I would not call this responsible reviewing.
I have composed a longer analysis of that review and rejoinder to the issues it raises, which for reasons of space CHRISTIANITY TODAY finds it impossible to publish. Any reader may receive a copy by sending me a stamped self-addressed envelope. This is the only way open to me to correct fully a grave misinterpretation, now widely circulated, in a review that only seems to engage in genuine controversy.
PAUL RAMSEY
Chairman
Dept. of Religion
Princeton University
Princeton, N. J.
The position of traditional ethics is, as I understand it, that there is an independent, non-human order of reality; the objective ground for the ends we deem valuable, the ultimate sanction for the moral life. God is, and His will is binding on all men. There is that in man which responds to God, which seeks to know and do His will. There is also that in man which seeks to deny any will above his own.
The self-regarding element in man will tend to domesticate great spiritual insights within set rules and codes. We need as a corrective, therefore, criticism of “code morality,” “rule morality,” “coalition ethics,” and “legalism.” But several schools of thought would jettison codes, rules and laws, holding that these do not guide but fetter the moral life. Mr. Ramsey, as I read him, belongs to one of these. Chapter II of his book, for instance, is entitled “Christian Liberty and Ethic without Rules.” Section III of the same chapter is headed “What the Christian Does without a Code: St. Paul’s Answer.” The author admits that this position is beset with pitfalls. “The Ethics of Paul,” he writes, “indeed Christian ethics generally, seems always in peril of opening the floodgates of anarchy and license in the name of freedom from law.” The author feels he has avoided the pitfalls; the reviewer thinks otherwise. The reviewer erred in assuming that the author would place himself in the company which the reviewer supposed would be congenial to him.
EDMUND A. OPITZ
Irvington, N. Y.
‘GREAT MINISTRY’
May God’s richest blessings be upon the great ministry of your magazine and may it continue to bring to the Christian public those matters of highest concern in this twentieth century.
JARED F. GERIG
President
Fort Wayne Bible College
Fort Wayne, Ind.
