SPENDING VACATION
A life may be lived
And labor endured
In dreamy anticipation
Of days at the shore,
Of seafood galore,
And waves of cool relaxation.
A life may be lived
And labor endured,
But vacations can only be spent!
In concrete car courts
And motels of sorts,
These swarms of tourists unending
Are spending vacation
For their relaxation
Are spending, spending, and spending.
A life may be lived
And labor endured,
But vacations can only be spent!
For planes and for cabs,
For restaurant tabs,
Or cruising smoothly by ship,
Each stop on the way
Has an invoice to pay—
In full, including the tip.
A life may be lived
And labor endured,
But vacations can only be spent!
To help with the thrills
Of running up bills,
The hosts and merchants en route
Have found a device
To soften the price
And flatter tourists to boot;
As life may be lived
And labor is paid,
So vacations may often be charged!
To get in the swing
Of this sort of thing,
Just plan a bigger vacation
And go where you would,
Your credit is good—
Installments shrink through inflation.
Your life may be hard
But get a white card—
Then what a charge from vacation!
The moral is clear
But why add it here?
(That fun—and—sun invitation
Just cannot be spumed.)
Yet he is twice burned
Whose shirt is lost on vacation!
EUTYCHUS
UNMOVED BY THE TURKS
The Church will welcome any constructive ideas the Young Turks or anyone else may have. However, for a suggestion to have value, its advocates must learn to base it on sounder reasoning than most of that outlined in your article of May 23rd as being the reasoning of the Young Turks.
Just one example: It is an absurdity to speak of “the surgically sharp honesty” and “candid revelation of truth” by Camus’ hero (in The Fall), when he claims to have given up deliberately some good values in life to become an alcoholic, as a protest against virtues which he had used for selfish ends. Two strong counter-thoughts immediately occur: 1) he did not have to use the virtues selfishly but could have used them properly; and 2) anyone who has worked with alcoholics, and with other persons caught in the meshes of various evils because of their own self-centeredness and selfishness, has heard similar statements over and over. They are the day-by-day supports, fashioned by such persons, to rationalize their wrong conduct, and to try to shrug the blame off to the Church or to society at large.
HAROLD N. MACMURRAY
Chaplain
The Methodist Church Home
Cornwall, Pa.
BOGUS DEGREES
Would it not be well to add to your “The Scandal of Bogus Degrees” (May 9 issue) the insane and wholesale throwing around of honorary degrees without careful scrutiny as to why such should be given at all.… A doctor’s degree should mean some exceptional attainment in scholarship, authorship or some distinct service given.
G. R. MCKEAN
Wolfville, Nova Scotia
We all realize the dangers of down-grading the ministry by turning to “diploma-mills” for degrees.… However, time and time again there seems to be good reason for calling the earned Bachelor of Divinity degree the “equivalent of a doctor’s degree.” Three years of graduate work, after achieving a Bachelor of Arts or Science degree, does seem to warrant more than a Bachelor degree. Many local church leaders, and certainly many parishioners, … respect a clergyman who has a Doctor of Divinity degree (not knowing how he got it) but consider the Bachelor of Divinity degree as somewhat the equivalent of school-teaching ability and Bachelor of Arts or Science degrees (with even less salary remuneration). Cannot something be done to give the divinity degree its proper recognition?
IRVIN R. LINDEMUTH
Birmingham Congregational Church
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Much of the discrimination that is now practised in the matter of honorary degrees would be eliminated if a minister, having a diploma from a bona fide institution of theology together with an honorable record of service over a period of twenty years would automatically be awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity.
PERRY VAN DYKE
Newark, N. J.
If the United States Office of Education wishes to do some cleaning up, it would be well to begin with the state universities, which are giving doctorates to men for work done by ghost writers, and have been doing so for at least a generation.
JOHN C. ROBERTS
First Evangelical United Brethren
New Castle, Ind.
It seems that Mr. Flemming has listed every organization he could find who grants a degree as a “degree mill” which is defrauding the public whether the organization is guilty or not. Some of those listed have been out of existence more than five years and he states that these have been investigated; then how can they have been investigated if they no longer exist?… From all appearances Mr. Flemming is anxious to have his name before the public in headlines whether they are true or not. His attempt last fall when he released the articles that “eating cranberries causes cancer” is a sample of this. His charge was proven false but Ocean Spray Cranberry almost went bankrupt.
GEORGE J. BARTH
First Methodist
Christoval, Tex.
Perhaps CHRISTIANITY TODAY would like a story of what happened at Chillicothe, Missouri, where Belin University operated until three years ago. Let me recap it quickly: 18 foreign students brought over with the promise of scholarships—cold, hungry, and broke. Several could not speak a sentence in English. Many were excellent students from fine families. These students had to be placed in other colleges and universities; some could not because of lack of secondary education. Imagine 18 foreign students in the dead of winter … no money, school broke, food gone, many could not speak English, no [way] … to get home.
HAROLD F. REISCH
New Cambria, Mo.
Would it not be a powerful testimony to the cause of evangelical Christianity if these “degree mills” would refund the fees of tuition and registration and if the recipients of “counterfeit degrees” would return their sheepskins to be burned in the bonfire of spiritual integrity and Christian ethics?
R. M. BAERG
Dean
Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary
Fresno, Calif.
I for one have deeply resented this blot on the ministerial office.… I only hope that the publication of the list of the “degree mills” will not put ideas into the heads of more men who may have been wondering how these degrees might be gotten!
HARRY J. KREIDER
St. James Lutheran Church
New York, N. Y.
THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD
Your editorial on the need of a Christian university (May 9 issue) pointed to a very great deficiency in contemporary Christian education in an area of life which evangelicals have all but surrendered to the liberals and in their surrender have virtually confessed that there are areas of life over which Christ does not have dominion and to which the whole counsel of God does not apply. May evangelicals rally to the cause and bring forth a great center of Christian learning and scholarship to speak to the confusion of our day.
C. GREGG SINGER
Catawba College
Salisbury, N. C.
If your analysis is correct, what is needed is not so much a Christian university in an American sense, but rather a concentration upon some type of a graduate centre for evangelical study-research and above all, co-ordination. This might be patterned something after several of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge which deal only with graduate work and coordination or perhaps the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. If the resources on the Christian level of all the colleges, seminaries and individual evangelical scholars could be co-ordinated, encouraged and facilitated, the influence of such a centre would spread far beyond its own confines. In addition, it would also be taking advantage of the intellectual integrity, experience and equipment of the great universities of America, infiltrating them with evangelical men and principles looking forward to the time when the Lord might so prosper evangelicals that they would again take leading positions in our world.
CHARLES TROUTMAN
General Secretary
Inter-Varsity Fellowship of Evangelical Unions (Austral.)
Sydney, N.S.W., Australia
A Christian University on the eastern seaboard is an exciting prospect. Follow the comprehensive evangelical dedication of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and it will be on the road to success. Keep us informed as anything develops.
ARTHUR MAYBELL
Philadelphia, Pa.
RIGHTFUL UPGRADING
Thank you for the excellent description of the recent General Conference of The Methodist Church (May 23 issue).… While Dr. Farrell described with accuracy and understanding the dilemmas that faced our Methodist legislators …, he [left] the impression that per capita giving in 1959 was “58.8 cents.”
Methodists have little reason for pride in comparative statistics of denominational giving. It can therefore be understood why any downgrading beyond the true facts, even a possible misplaced decimal point, is painful. The General Minutes for 1959 (pp. 656–7) show that 9,815,460 members of The Methodist Church in the U. S. gave that year for all purposes $512,164,658. Dividing the total giving by the number of members the 1959 per capita gift would seem to have been … $52.18.
RALPH STOODY
General Secretary and Director
Commission on Public Relations and Methodist Information
New York, N. Y.
GOSPEL AND POSITIVISM
I think we cannot lightly dismiss logical positivism as merely a passing fad or fancy. It is certainly a fad for some, as indeed also even the gospel of our Lord is with others. We must concede with Dr. Gordon Clark (May 9 issue) that “the technical nature of logical positivist publications makes brief discussion difficult and misleading.” However there is a definite need for a Christian apologia in logical positivist terms, using their methodologies. Weird as it may seem, I have discovered in a semi-rural parish more than one man—graduates of our state institutions of higher learning—who have had sufficient contact with logical positivism to resist the Gospel in its terms, and even more who, while ignorant of the names Mach, Korzybski, Carnap or Feigl, have somewhere assimilated a naive version of their views.
Logical positivism tends to conflict, I believe, more with our interpretation of the Scripture than with the Scripture itself.… ‘Operationalism’ and the insistence on ‘sensory observation’ are the great stumbling blocks to any liaison between thoroughly committed logical positivists and thoroughly committed Christians. Perhaps they are chimeras set up by men who are—before logic—committed to irreligion. If one is willing to peer behind the forbidding façade one finds a refined, if imperfect, instrument, of epistemological validation, which—if conscientiously applied to theology—might prove a vehicle of definition and communication superior to Aristotelian modes. For example, the symbolic treatment of ‘classes,’ which is one expression of ‘operationalism,’ certainly surpasses the Greek manipulation of ‘predicates.’ The God of the Bible, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not treated in his book as ‘being,’ as a ‘predicate,’ but as a God who is known by his acts. The Scripture is the record of his acts of creation and redemption. Furthermore, the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, which have remained paradoxical in their traditional creedal forms, fit—without loss of mystery—into categories of symbolic logic, once the domain of theology is opened, once the prejudiced proscription is dropped. Are we not dealing with an outstanding example of ‘mutual inclusion’ when we confess “one Lord Jesus Christ … being of one substance with the Father?” Are we not dealing with a striking example of a ‘unit class’ and with distinctions of extension and intension when we speak of Jesus Christ as “truly God and truly man?” It has been more than three centuries since we have attempted to restate the Gospel unequivocally, with scientific precision, in terms of the philosophy of the day, beginning squarely upon the Scriptures themselves.
The greater hurdle is, of course, the demand for verification of data by sensory observation. Yet here again we begin with a nonessential prejudgment. ‘Sensory’ connotes to most of us ‘visual’ and to a lesser degree ‘auditory’ but neglecting the other avenues between the mind and the outside world. ‘Sensory’ seems to exclude ‘revelation’ and ‘the witness of the Spirit.’ Are these not, however, broadly also ‘sensory?’ Is not our devotional reading and searching of the Scriptures an exercise whereby we develop our immediate perception of their Author? Logical positivists say No, positively, categorically, without the reserve in which they otherwise pride themselves. But the fellowship of the church is a collective witness that such knowledge is attainable; and if bold in the faith we should assert with Paul its potential universality (Romans 2:12–16; Acts 17:23).
Logical positivism, especially in the forms of General Semantics and Dyanetics, is a fad. But because it does insulate men’s minds from a vast—and we believe the most vital—area of human experience and knowledge we owe it to Him who gave us the great commission, if not to them, to treat their views with the same seriousness with which they treat them. As Paul approached the Jews as Jews and the Greeks as Greeks, let some of us approach the logical positivists as at least logically positive Christians.
ROBERT N. YETTER
First Presbyterian Churches
Susquehanna and New Milford, Pa.
INTRODUCING MRS. LEWIS
In the April 25 issue, I was startled by what Clyde S. Kilby … had to say in his review of The World’s Last Night by C. S. Lewis. He says, “After a good man laid his hands on her and prayed, she was completely healed. I have no proof but I feel quite confident this was Mrs. Lewis herself.”
Just who is meant by “Mrs. Lewis”? Bachelor Lewis, as I understand it, had a mother who died when he was young.… Is Mr. Kilby giving us an unsophisticated book review?
GEORGE E. CONDIT
Central Falls, R. I.
Letters about C. S. Lewis as persistent bachelor are interesting.… He was married to Joy Davidman three or four years ago. (Somebody has remarked that he finally found the “Joy” he had so long sought!) She was an American and partly Jewish. Her Christian testimony is the first one in a book by David Wesley Soper called These Found the Way, published by Westminster Press, 1951.… The reason I knew of Mrs. Lewis’ illness is owing to a personal letter from C. S. Lewis three years ago when I was going to Europe and asked him if he intended to be lecturing in the neighborhood of London, for if so, I wanted my group to go and hear him. He wrote me that he did not plan a lecture at the time of our visit to London but that he and Mrs. Lewis would be glad to have us visit them provided they were well. Both were having some physical difficulties at the time. In another letter he told me that it appeared Mrs. Lewis had been miraculously healed, and that letter was the basis of my remark in the book review.
… I have carefully read all of the Lewis books as they have appeared.… I have reviewed them, usually, for some periodical during the last six or eight years.… [As to Surprised by Joy,] I read the British edition before one appeared in this country, and reviewed the book over four years ago for the New York Herald Tribune.… Part of The World’s Last Night has been copyrighted in the name of Helen Joy Lewis.
CLYDE S. KILBY
Wheaton College
Wheaton, Ill.
JEFFERSON ON FREEDOM
You report that the Methodist social action board is against “right to work” (Editorials, Apr. 25 issue). They must be deeply confused to countenance the forced payment of dues to a private organization whose leaders are, at best, well intentioned but fallible humans.
In the statute for religious freedom, Thomas Jefferson said: “That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
Compulsory church support differs not one iota from compulsory union support. Both employ government power (the “union shop” is recognized by law and enforced by government) to compel support of ideological objectives of a private organization.
Does the Methodist Board of Social and Economic Relations advocate a “church tax” on all those who benefit from the work of the church?
MARION R. MOBLEY
Delegate to 1960 Methodist General Conference
South Carolina Conference
Florence, S. C.
SUNDAY FOOTBALL
There are several reasons why I play ball on the Lord’s day (Editorials, Apr. 11 issue). The last two reasons I give will be my main ones.
1. Of the Ten Commandments only nine of these are stressed in the New Testament. Keeping the Sabbath Day holy is not one of these. As you know Sunday is the Lord’s day, and as a Christian I am serving the Lord, not the Sabbath. 2. In Colossians 3:1 as Christians we are on risen ground or resurrected ground.… 3. In Galations 5:1 Christ set us free from the bondage. 4. Romans 7:1–4 says that the Law of Moses has no more claim on a Christian. Christ took care of that. 5. Colossians 2:16, 17 can be claimed by all Christians. 6. In Hebrews 8:8 we find the Eighth Covenant. I stand on this one. 7. I feel that playing football is God’s will for me. 8. As you know we are lead by the Holy Spirit.
I cannot answer why the colleges and universities and professional people do or do not do certain things about which you wrote. I do know this, that if they are not Christians it doesn’t matter what they do on the subject, because they can do no worse than not accepting Christ.
To conclude, I do not play ball on the Lord’s day to glorify myself, my team, college, to take any credit or to become a millionaire. I do play ball to glorify the Lord and to get opportunities to tell people about Christ and His claims. Also, I am not taking advantage of my name in the world or in any layman’s job. I am now working in two churches and am planning to go to seminary this coming January.…
DONALD DEE SHINNICK
Baltimore Colts,
Baltimore, Md.
• Comments a former professional baseball player: “Does the keeping of the Sabbath have its roots in the Jewish law or rather in God’s economy as revealed in Gen. 2:2, 3? Are not Sunday commercial sports a part of the revolt against Christianity and the Church? Those enmeshed in it seem to me to have compromised their testimony. But each Christian stands before his own Lord. In my contract it was specified that I did not have to travel or play on Sunday.”
—ED.
TOOL FOR EUTYCHUS
Herewith I present Eutychus with a common pin which he may use as a spare in case of need. In “Key to Ecclesian” (May 23 issue) he acquitted himself so nobly that I made up my mind he should never lack a tool wherewith to pierce windbaggishness. Oh, how the fundamental concepts are overlaid these days by innumerable strata of stultifying verbosity!
J. PAUL SAUDER
Elkridge, Md.
ADENAUER DEFENDED
My attention was called, as both a Lutheran minister and a Member of Congress, to a letter to the editor which was printed in your issue of January 18, 1960. The letter, headed “Adenauer’s Religion,” dealt with Chancellor Adenauer’s handling of church-state matters in West Germany and purported to show that his government showed favoritism to the Roman Catholic Church as compared to the Lutheran Church on the ground that “Adenauer’s intention is to make Germany a Catholic State.” … I asked our Department of State to comment on the contents of the letter. Enclosed is a copy of the Department’s reply to me.…
You will note that within the restraints imposed by diplomatic necessity, as indicated in the letter from Assistant Secretary of State Macomber, it is apparent that our government officials who are in a position to be familiar with these matters do not agree with either the arguments advanced or the conclusions reached by the writer of the letter you printed.
WALTER H. MOELLER
10th District, Ohio
Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Washington, D. C.
Dear Mr. Moeller:
I am sure you appreciate … that the Department is most reluctant to make comments which might be construed as official statements of United States Government policy on matters so clearly domestic in nature as are questions of church-state relations. This is particularly true when, as in this case, the foreign country concerned is a trusted ally of the United States. With this cautionary thought in mind, I address myself to the … points raised in your letter.
It is difficult to imagine how the positions of the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States on the subject of German reunification could be closer together than they are. There have been repeated statements in recent years that clearly show the identity of the aims of the two Governments in this regard.… In the view of the United States Government, also stated repeatedly, the real reason for delay in progress toward German reunification has been and remains Soviet reluctance to permit the establishment of a German state based on a free expression of the desires of all the German people.
With regard to your question about the representation of West Berlin in the German Bundestag, your understanding that there are some legal limitations is correct. You will recall that following the Nazi defeat in 1945, Germany was occupied by the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and France. Under the Four Power Agreements reached at Potsdam the four Commanders-in-Chief exercised supreme authority in their occupation zones, and sitting as the Allied Control Council, acted jointly by unanimous decision on questions affecting Germany as a whole. However, Soviet intransigence precluded effective operation of the quadripartite Allied control mechanism and development of a unified German administration. Therefore, the Western Allies participated jointly in a series of moves from 1948 to 1955 which have led to the unification of West German areas under their control, the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany (1949) and the return to the Federal Republic of sovereignty on May 5, 1955, under the terms of the Paris Treaties. Now only matters dealing with Berlin and Germany as a whole still remain under Western Allied control. These reservations in the Paris Treaties were made with the consent of the Germans to maintain the Western position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union even though, in practice, these reserved matters are handled in close consultation with the German Federal Government.
Moderating the effects of isolation on Berlin has been a major Allied and German responsibility, presenting problems as difficult as safeguarding the city from the Communists. There are two aspects: a) reducing the effects of the technical legal separation of Berlin from the Federal Republic and b) overcoming the psychological and economic problems of Berlin’s physical separation from West Germany and the loss of normal contact with the surrounding area.
To reduce the psychological and practical effects of the necessary legal separation, close relations and responsibilities have been developed between the Governments of West Berlin and the Federal Republic. For example, representatives of the city are full participants in the West German parliament, though as non-voting members; appropriate West German laws are adopted and administered by the Berlin city government; some West German agencies, such as the Supreme Administrative Court, have their permanent seats in West Berlin; and the Mayor of West Berlin has had a term as President of the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament. In addition, the Allies carefully consult with the Governments of the Federal Republic and Berlin on foreign policy questions involving reunification and Berlin’s status.
With reference to the financial support accorded churches, church schools, and other church establishments in the Federal Republic, it should be borne in mind that under the German Constitution or Basic Law, competence in these areas is distributed among the several German states or Laender, as opposed to being under direct responsibility of the Government of the Federal Republic. If there is any discrimination between the various parts of the country, it must result from the exercise of differing options at state or local level and not from actions taken by the Federal Government. Certainly, the Department knows of no special privileges that have been granted with respect to the sending of funds abroad by any religious organizations. Since 1958, the German currency has been freely exchangeable and convertible and the restrictions that existed prior to 1958 reflected the financial problems of the period of German economic recovery rather than any effort to inhibit the activity of religious groups.
Lastly with respect to the question in the final paragraph of your letter regarding charges and implications suggesting that Chancellor Adenauer has used his official position to advance the interests of the Roman Catholic Church, it should be noted that both the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union, which constitute the principal governing parties under the Chancellor’s leadership, include a great many prominent Protestant as well as Roman Catholic leaders. It might also be of interest to you to know that the present Adenauer cabinet is evenly divided between Protestants and Catholics and that the President of the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, Dr. Eugen Gerstenmaier, is a prominent Protestant churchman.
In three national elections since the establishment of the Federal Republic, those of 1949, 1953 and 1957, Chancellor Adenauer has received an ever larger share of the total national vote. It seems beyond the bounds of probability that this would have occurred had there existed in the public mind any belief that the Chancellor was misusing his official position to give a preferred position to any one religious group in the German community.…
WILLIAM B. MACOMBER, JR.
Assistant Secretary
Department of State
Washington, D. C.
