Less Spigot
For every top-level preacher who speaks Ecclesian in the pulpit there are three score and ten parishioners whose speech problem is at the other end of the scale. Great swelling words are not their difficulty. They can’t manage any words at all. They are the manly mumblers.
Manly mumbling is a male malady. There are two varieties. The first is the muscular mumble, in which words are extruded under pressure between teeth clamped together by clenched masseter muscles. The tense belligerence which this conveys is accentuated by rippling these muscles occasionally, as though one were chewing on horsehide, or had his dentures fast in a caramel. The second mumble achieves a similar effect through opposite means. It is the drool mumble. The jaw is relaxed, and the lips have barely enough tension to contain saliva. Extreme ennui is indicated; this mumbler could care less, and does.
Both varieties are conscientiously developed in the middle or late teens to prove the mumbler’s masculinity in conformity to the tribal mores. Both add striking new confusions to our language.
I was fascinated to hear a student song leader ask a group, “The zany won half a fable-lit sung?” Someone did, and they sang what sounded like, “Freeze a jelly goof hello.” I met the young man later. When I was introduced he mumbled “Police tomato,” and moved away.
That sort of thing could lead to misunderstanding. Before tackling semantics and psychology in the communication of the Gospel we need to begin with peppermints and consonants. In the great assembly of Israel described in Nehemiah, Ezra the scribe and his colleagues “read in the book, in the law of God distinctly; and they gave the sense, so that they understood the reading.” Clear thinking and speaking should go together.
Tongues were a problem in the early church. Paul warned the Corinthians that a stranger who heard their ecstatic utterances would think them mad. He insisted that those who used the gift in public must have an interpreter.
Perhaps your young people’s group needs an interpreter, too, for the mumblers. I suggest you test the candidate of your choice on this closing sentence:
A slang us in gushes sour linkage less spigot.
EUTYCHUS
In Free Europe
We are missionary appointees to France … now speaking in deputation services in California. We read your issue of July 20 on “Christianity in Free Europe” with great interest, as perhaps it is the finest combined writing on this subject in print today.
CHARLES M. WRIGHT
Greater Europe Mission
Long Beach, Calif.
With reference to the Rev. G. A. Had-jiantoniu’s article, “Greece and Eastern Orthodoxy,” … may I point out the most significant part that American Mission to Greeks has been having in recent years, bringing the Gospel to the entire nation.
It has pioneered in a unique method of evangelism, that of publishing as paid advertisement full-length Gospel messages every week in nearly all secular newspapers and magazines of Greece. This has aroused the official opposition of the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church, who proposed that the government officially forbid me to write these messages. When this was turned down, they offered the newspapers a sum equal to what we are paying, if they would only keep our messages out. And when this also failed, they issued an encyclical in 640,000 copies, forbidding the people to read our Gospel messages. Needless to say that this had the exact opposite result.
In the town of Chalkis, I was sentenced to 49 days’ imprisonment, because a local newspaper published my Gospel messages, prefixing my name with the word Reverend. Local Archimandrite Christopher Kalyvas, along with the Greek Orthodox Church, took the attitude that Protestant ministers did not have the right to be called “Reverend” in Greece. This sentence was appealed and reversed by an Appellate Court in September, 1961.
Furthermore, American Mission to Greeks maintains a large printing establishment in the heart of Athens, employing twenty-six full-time printers, and publishes more new religious titles than any other religious publishing house in Greece. It maintains four evangelical bookstores throughout Greece.… In cooperation with the Million Testaments Campaigns, it has distributed many thousands of copies of the Word of God, and is now printing 100,000 at its own print shop in Athens.
American Mission to Greeks, furthermore, publishes the largest Greek evangelical magazine, the 60-page Voice of the Gospel, which now finds its place in the newsstands all over … Greece for the first time.
For the past three years, American Mission to Greeks has operated a booth at the International Fair at Thessalonica, distributing a million copies of literature and Scriptures to its visitors.
Furthermore, American Mission to Greeks is pioneering in film evangelism, producing the Moody Science Films in the Greek language, which are being shown even by Bishops of the Greek Orthodox Church.
SPIROS ZODHIATES
General Secretary
American Mission to Greeks, Inc.
New York, N. Y.
Re the issue on Europe, [the article discussing] radio omits probably the most widespread radio of all—The Lutheran Hour.…
W. H. LEHMANN
Fremont, Ohio
These eighteen pages of current information on the status of the church in Western Europe … are well worth the price alone of the year’s subscription.…
EVERETT H. VIVIAN
Anderson College
Anderson, S. C.
Some errors in the statistics (p. 14) were pointed out by the Northern Ireland Government Office in London. Under Northern Ireland the correct figures should read: Roman Catholics—498,031, Protestants—829, 502 (this comprises only Presbyterians, Church of Ireland and Methodists, and the 1961 census gives under a separate heading 97, 929 whose affiliation is either with other Protestant churches or else is unknown).
The Government Office further wishes to point out for our information that the nation listed as “Ireland” is really “Eire” or what is known as the “Irish Republic.” Further, there is a serious mistake under “Protestants” in this category. For some reason the figure is given as 975, 543. While the precise figure is not known, the generally accepted estimate is 160,000.… London, England
J. D. DOUGLAS
I fail to grasp the logic of your editorial.… You state that General Weygand saw in the collapse of France in World War II “the chastisement of God for its abandonment of the Christian faith.” In the next sentence you say that Germany, before which France fell, “stood by consenting to the greatest atrocities against humanity in world history.”
But if Germany was, as I agree, guilty of “the worst atrocities in world history,” why use it to chasten a nation which, by this admission, was less guilty?…
GEORGE GORDON
Durham, N. C.
• This sort of thing is common in biblical history. Punishment should not be viewed simply negatively—it can also serve as a discipline.—ED.
Reading your issue on Europe, one perceives a certain abstraction. The front article bears the caption “The Church in Western Europe,” to be followed by more detailed reports. Then the issue leads on to an appropriate editorial, “Free Europe: A Spiritual Decline?”, concluding with extracts of commentaries under the headline “Tempest Over School Prayer Ban.” As to the various reports on the situation of the Protestant Church in Europe, spiritually and otherwise, they represent a good summary of prevailing general conditions. The reporting as well as its deeper meaning of the two contrasting situations—Europe as against America—in one and the same issue imply the abstraction.
Everyone is aware of the fact that the Christian Church in Europe almost since its very beginning is state-supported and the state therefore has influenced the affairs of the Church to some degree all this time; pastors, or priests, are requested to give religious instruction in public schools up to this day. On the other hand, in U.S.A. where church and state are separated, a simple form of prayer before school begins has recently been ruled out by a Supreme Court decision.
The abstraction of this differing situation comes to the fore in the article “The Missionary Situation in Europe” by Robert E. Evans, when he writes: “Since 1945 more than 400 Missionaries have gone to Europe (from North America). At least a score of missionary societies have been created especially for service in Europe.” Conclusion: Where religion is being taught systematically and on a high theoretical level, the Church as a whole has failed in its given task to impute into the lives of its adherents the spiritual life that emanates from Christ—while on the other hand missionaries are being sent from America, where there is not even as much as a formal prayer to be uttered in public schools!
Not all European nations could be considered to have come, for one reason or another, under God’s judgment, but uniformly prove to be in a “spiritual decline”; the implications, both spiritually and psychologically, are no doubt varied and complex and would require comments from places and persons more competent than the writer of these lines. Such showing of the deeper reasons and causes plus their interrelations might … teach a lesson badly wanted and needed in our time.
CHARLES GRESSINGER
Niederaichbach, Bavaria, Germany
The Home Department publishes monthly and distributes … a religious news magazine in braille—The Church Herald for the Blind.
The issue contains material which we would very much like to include in our September issue.
ANNE L. WHITING
Administrative Assistant
The National Council, Protestant Episcopal Church
New York, N. Y.
Baptism: Durable Debate
Tenney on “Baptism and the Lord’s Supper” (July 6 issue) touches on vital differences between Lutherans and other Protestants.
As a Lutheran myself, on one point I must fault both. This is on the meaning of the word baptizo. The Greek word baptizo never means “dip.” In “dip” an immediate withdrawal is implied, as might be in “plunge”; but those “baptized into Jesus Christ” or “into His death” are to stay there.
The word baptizo means the effecting of an immersion, fully or compendiously, whether by sinking, pouring, overflowing, or any other mode or method.
JAMES P. MAIER
Bethel Lutheran (Missouri Synod)
Sweet Home, Ore.
Although listing Oscar Cullmann’s Baptism in the New Testament in his bibliography, Tenney has not come to grips with the basic teaching of that excellent treatise.… He states: “Faith must precede commitment; the external act of water baptism will not transform an unbeliever into a Christian.” Cullmann demonstrates beyond a question of doubt that the “faith of the candidate is thus not a condition of the possibility of the divine action; nor is it a guarantee of the future perseverance of the person baptized” (p. 50). For the heathen adult faith acted as “a sign for the Church” (p. 50) that the person is worthy to receive the sacrament of baptism. The main activity of faith must follow, not precede, the reception of Christian baptism.… Instead of dismissing the possibility of infant baptism by stating that “The mention of the Philippian jailer’s household does not necessarily imply that infants were included,” [Tenney should] … have acknowledged with Cullmann that “natural membership (in) a Christian family conferred on him by his birth … is a sign for the Church that the divine baptismal event will in his case be completed, and that he Will really be incorporated in the Church of Christ” (p. 51)
MARVIN D. HOFF
Rea Avenue Reformed Church
Hawthorne, N. J.
Tobacco And The Ministry
In your July 6 issue under “Critic’s Notebook” (Eutychus), Dr. John Henry Jowett is included under prominent preachers and teachers who use tobacco. From the time of his first visit to this country in 1906 until he resigned his Fifth Avenue pulpit at the close of the First World War, I met with Dr. Jowett on a number of social occasions. I never saw him use tobacco and I greatly doubt if he qualifies among the list of smokers.
FRANK FITT
Ann Arbor, Mich.
May I direct the writer to an article quoted by Dr. Dale Oldham over The Christian Brotherhood Hour on October 15, 1961, and reprinted in The Gospel Trumpet (now Vital Christianity) the same date.
Here is the quote: “One Saturday morning Mr. Spurgeon went for a walk, and when he came back, he said to me, ‘I saw in a show window down the street a can of tobacco, and on it a printed card reading Spurgeon’s Tobacco.’ Then he asked, ‘When the Lord calls me home, shall I be remembered by the tobacco I smoked or by the Lord I preached? I can never smoke again to the glory of God.’ Immediately the preacher picked up all his smoking paraphernalia and threw it upon the fire. He never smoked again to the day of his death.”
May the tobacco-using ministers of our day accept Spurgeon as an example and, along with him, realize their “moment of truth.”
ESTON W. HUNTER
Church of God
Fillmore, Mo.
The letter reads: “I have never heard [a fellow minister] … who was a smoker advise young people to avoid beginning”.…
I have smoked a lifetime (now 68) and I still smoke but I do advise our youth against it. I am not bragging about my smoking. Why don’t I stop? That’s another subject.
DOWIE G. DE BOER
First Congregational Church
Brimfield, Mass.
We all know that in the grace doctrine set forth by Paul, the Christian’s salvation is by grace free of legalism and “works.” By the same token, Paul sets forth the qualifications required for men seeking the offices of the ministry (1 Timothy 3). Under these qualifications, the elders and deacons must be blameless, not for their salvation, but rather for the effect their lives and examples will have on others. While I am a pharmacist by profession, I am also a licensed local preacher in the Methodist Church, and I learned the hard way that you can’t witness for Christ with a cigarette or a glass of beer in your hand if you want to be effective.… The truth of the matter is that in the eyes of the unsaved they place a sinful emphasis on these things, and while they do these things themselves they don’t believe they should be done by anyone connected with the preaching of the Word.…
It never fails, or at least it never seems to fail, that the more modern, the more liberal, the further the minister gets from the fundamental Word, the less effective his message becomes.
Yes, we have complete freedom in Christ, but with the freedom we have an increased responsibility to get the Word to others. It … isn’t a question of self-indulgence or gratification of the flesh or harmful effects on the body, but more importantly, does it interfere with the leading of souls to Christ.…
WILLIAM C. FRUEHAN
Scranton, Pa.
I feel that ministers should do some soul-searching on this matter. My Lutheran friends brush off my query with, “It’s a medical matter!” When it becomes a matter of stewardship, and common courtesy of annoyance, then it has gone beyond the stage of medicine.…
J. RUSSELL MEAD
Evangelical United Brethren Church
Winslow, Neb.
Crete, Jerusalem, Athens
The discovery that the Eteocretan inscriptions in the island of Crete (News, May 11 issue) are in a Semitic dialect, although written in ancient Greek letters, shows the ancient connection between all ancient alphabets of the Mediterranean and the Hebrew alphabet. The very sounds of the names given the letters also indicate this. All we have to do is compare the Greek and Hebrew names: A—Alpha-Aleph; B—Beta-Beth; G—Gamma-Gimel; [etc.] …
The connection between the use of the pointings and the loss of the silenced Waw and Yodh letters is also an indication that the Waw and Yodh were not originally silent, but were silenced after the points replaced them. What were they before being silenced?
A comparison with the Greek alphabet might give a clue: Yodh comes before Kaph; Iota comes before Kappa. This indicates that Yodh corresponds to Iota or I. Unfortunately, Waw has no mate in the Greek alphabet, so it gives us no clue by position. But the fact that the Yodh may be the Hebrew Iota or I, nudges us to look at Aleph and Alpha, both firsts. Can Aleph be the Hebrew Alpha or A? If so, then He is the Greek Epsilon or E. That would give us I, A, E, of the vowels. In the Greek alphabet Omicron or O comes before Pi or P; while in Hebrew the letter before Pe is Ayin (another silenced letter). Can Ayin correspond to Omicron? If so, then we have mates to Alpha, Epsilon, Iota, and Omicron. Only Upsilon is missing. And only the letter corresponding to Waw is missing. Can Waw be it? If so, we have all the vowel letters in the Hebrew alphabet!
Long before the use of pointings in writing Hebrew, the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek—the Greek Septuagint. Hebrew proper names had to be written with Greek letters. If we study how they replaced the Hebrew letters, we can get a clue about Hebrew vowels. We find that all these Hebrew letters, Aleph, He, Waw, Yodh, and Ayin, are replaced by Greek vowels.
The pointings came into use to protect the sounding of the Hebrew, and to keep it to the norm sounds of the times in which those pointings originated.…
So we can expect that, by the time the Septuagint transliterated the Hebrew proper names, different sounds had come to be used with the vowel letters. And this is just what we find. They are represented by different Greek vowel letters in different places. But, despite this shift, it is always a Greek vowel letter that represents the Hebrew Aleph, He, Yodh, Ayin, and Waw—never a Greek consonant letter. So there can be little doubt that they are the ancient Hebrew vowel letters, that were silenced by the use of the pointings, because the sounds given to them were different in different places and they had lost their utility for public readings.…
In 194 times out of 208 occurrences, the Septuagint renders Yodh as Iota, I.
Some of the ancient Hebrew consonant letters have also changed sounds during the sojourn of the Jews in Europe. Heth is Kh, but at the beginning of words seems to be like the vowel Aleph.
The use of the ancient vowel letters in their Roman counterparts will stop the deceptive misspelling that the pointings brought about, and reveal new light. Thus the alleged difference between the Hebrew words in Isaiah 14:12 (Helel) as compared to Zechariah 11:2 and Ezekiel 21:12 (17) (Yalal) is exposed as a myth, when we use the English letters corresponding to those in the older plene mss. All three occurrences will be written Eilil, the hiphil imperative, howl, wail, lament. Of course, this will upset many a poem, story, and sermon.…
J. F. HARTMAN
Springfield, Ill.
On Excommunication
The impact of Edward John Carnell’s article, “The Government of the Church” (June 22 issue) … was vague when he spoke of how the early church dealt with false teaching: “The apostles denounced the error, but they did not excommunicate the Judaizers.” This would seem to hint at a policy of tacit coexistence.
The word “excommunicate” is too weak to describe the apostolic reaction to the Judaizers. The formula went beyond “Let him be excommunicated” to “Let him be anathema”! False brethren, creeping in unawares, were an ever present peril in the minds of the apostles. And the arsenal of Christian defense included the power to deliver such to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme. Our Lord would require of his church certain procedures to be followed in the case of trespass (and would not false teaching be a trespass?). The end procedure is excommunication: “… let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican” (Matt. 18:17). Even then, the church is not empowered to declare the person unsaved. It simply says that it is no longer possible to regard this person as a Christian, or his teaching as Christian.…
EDWARDS E. ELLIOTT
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Garden Grove, Calif.
