Breakthroughs
For Rally Day in our Sunday school we have varnished the chairs in the primary department, and the Ladies’ Aid has sewed new drapes for the basement windows. This renovation falls somewhat short of the rebuilding program of the local school district. Two new elementary schools have been added to the system. I hear rumors of new teaching methods, too. Ungraded primary classes are scheduled so that individual children can learn at their own rate, and Russian is at the present time included in the high school curriculum.
Of course our church primary department has been upgraded from the beginning, but I’m not sure that this accelerated individual learning. Perhaps that was because no one knew how progressive it was. Our equipment has never seemed very dramatic, either. Breakthroughs in education are always made with teaching machines, or visual aids, or tactile alphabets made of sandpaper, or perhaps by three-year-olds on electric typewriters.
Our biggest innovation came ten years ago when Miss Brownstone discovered the flannel board. Even that didn’t seem as exciting as it did when I read about it last month in an audio-visual magazine. Perhaps it was because Miss Brownstone didn’t have enough figures, and the children remembered Jonah and insisted that he wasn’t Peter and hadn’t walked on the sea but had sunk down to the big fish. In any event, after most of the sets were scrambled and lost we stopped having a flannel story every Sunday.
Group dramatics has lasted a little longer. We always bring down the walls of Jericho with a shout. But it takes three or four years to get back to Jericho and action lags in the interval.
With new equipment and teaching materials we could accomplish much more—at least for a while. And there is always George Parker’s class of Juniors. I don’t know what he has discovered, unless it’s the Bible. Teaching takes more than faith, hope, and love, but not much more. George’s breakthrough seems to be in matching love of Christ, love of the Bible, and love of boys.
EUTYCHUS
Resurrection Of The Body
I have just completed the reading of the article “Death and Immortality” by J. G. S. S. Thomson (Aug. 3 issue). It is, I believe, a good brief treatment of the subject from the traditional viewpoint. You are to be commended for your continuing interest in the presentation of theological materials—this is, I note, #40 in the series, many of which I have read.…
The sentence “Christ taught the possibility of the loss of the soul in hell” is not supported by any cited references or evidence. I suppose the passage that would be used [is] … Matthew 10:28. Yet in this passage we do not find “the soul in hell” but rather “both soul and body in hell,” thus maintaining the O.T. and N.T. picture of the nature of man as a psychosomatic unity. It is man who is affected, as body-soul togetherness, for good or ill in the NT portraits of death, judgment, eternal life and resurrection. This is recognized by Dr. Thomson when he writes: “The body is essential to the self.” One could have avoided a watering down of the belief in the resurrection of the body potentially present in his last section. If full bliss is granted the Christian at death, then no resurrection is needed and the doctrine is made an unpleasant hangover of a bygone era and the belief in the immortality of the soul (in some form or other; not necessarily a natural or inherent immortality, but as a gift of God) becomes the proper view. I do not think such is the case nor that it is the intention of Dr. Thomson to indicate such a belief in either his or the teaching of the N.T.
ROBERT E. BAILEY
Prof. of Bible
College of Liberal Arts
University of Dubuque
Dubuque, Iowa
Prayer And The Court
This letter is being written to commend the editorials “Supreme Court Prayer Ban” and “The Church’s True Head” (July 20 issue).… I wish that every professing Christian in the world, and especially in the United States, would read them.…
A. A. PAGE
President
Pikeville College
Pikeville, Ky.
The Bible says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” It also says, “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.”
What saith the law? Quote: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Even this does not in the least debar individual states from doing it.
So it is clearly shown that this is a matter for the states to decide for themselves. The law does not forbid any from honoring God in prayer, be it official or otherwise.…
In all fairness, is not the action of the Supreme Court … showing favoritism to the non-Christian [by] allowing … lewdness, lasciviousness and pornography and … depriving all others from exercising their God-given rights and privileges?…
N. P. GATES
Free Will Baptist Temple
Detroit, Mich.
Let me express my appreciation to you for actually including … the statement of the majority opinion and Justice Stewart’s dissent.… So much of the public discussion has neglected to consider the precise wording of the Supreme Court opinion.…
IRWIN W. JOHNSON
Bettendorf, Iowa
Congratulations on your editorial.… Also for printing texts.…
JAMES A. ADAMS
First Baptist Church
Salisbury, Mo.
In all of the tempest over the Supreme Court’s school prayer decision, one of the chief points has been missed: The whole of the affair would have been non-existent if America had not committed the major error around a century ago of succumbing to the idea of what theretofore had been largely an alien institution on our soil of freedom—a Prussian-style governmentally-operated educational system.…
Inevitably, in any government-run school system the time will come when there will be no recognition that God is supreme in the process. That being so, and with school life being of the vastest importance in the formative years, then most youths will have this belief deeply implanted in their hearts: God does not really matter in life.
ROBERT M. METCALF, JR.
Memphis, Tenn.
It would be presumptuous for a Canadian to criticize the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on the New York school prayer issue, except to say that it is perplexing to find that a custom practiced for more than a century and a half suddenly becomes illegal. We have no state church in Canada either, but the acknowledgment of God, as he may be understood by the various religions, as the source of man’s blessings, finds expression in devotional exercises in the schools—this is not considered to be in the same category as preferential treatment of one particular religious group.
ROBERT K. EARLS
Cobden, Ont.
Those citizens who have accepted without protest the recent … decision banning prayer from the public schools would do well to take note of the fact that in the case, “The Church of the Holy Trinity vs. the United States,” (143 U.S. 457) this same Supreme Court, of course with different personnel, decreed that “this is a Christian nation.”
VERNE P. KAUB
President
American Council of Christian Laymen
Madison, Wise.
In the mountain fastness of the old Presbyterian and Reformed Review, which was then antecedent of the Princeton Theological Review, and in the issue of July, 1891, I came upon this excerpt from that sage and prophetic figure, Dr. Benjamin B. Warfield of Princeton Seminary. His statement has marked applicability to the current controversy of Bible reading and prayer in the public schools.
In a review of a book, Must the Bible Go? A Review of the Decision of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, in the Edgerton Bible Case by W. A. McAtee of Madison, Wisconsin, Dr. Warfield wrote as follows:
“An admirably clear and satisfactory discussion of the issues raised by the novel and intolerable decision of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, excluding the reading of the Bible from the public schools. There seems to be abroad a very unnecessary confusion of mind on this great subject, even among Christian men. It would not be Christian to compel others to violate their consciences; but it certainly is not Christian to permit others to forbid our recognition of God in all our functions. As Christian men, acting in our organized relation as a Christian state, we must retain the Bible and Christian worship in our public schools, lest we should sin against our children and the nation’s welfare” (Vol. II, p. 534).
Characteristically, Dr. Warfield speaks with as much significance to our generation as to his readers of seventy years ago.
G. HALL TODD
Arch Street Presbyterian Church
Philadelphia, Pa.
Doctrine Of The Trinity
Re the letter from Mr. Flanigen of Pinopolis, S. C. (July 20 issue) in which he questions your statement that the doctrine of the Trinity is a New Testament doctrine (Editorials, May 25 issue).
To my mind this raises the question of what is meant by “New Testament doctrine” or “biblical doctrine.” As I see it, God’s revelation was given in divine acts to which the biblical writers bore witness. Whether or not a doctrine is a biblical doctrine depends on whether it is a true understanding of that to which they gave their witness. Whether or not they themselves grasped the significance of the evidence they provide is comparatively unimportant.
I myself maintain that the doctrine of the Trinity is definitely a New Testament doctrine, meaning by that that it expresses what God has revealed himself to be in the activity to which the New Testament bears witness. I think it was and is a doctrine implied by the passages to which you refer (Matt. 16:16; 28:9; 2 Cor. 13:14; Rom. 1:4), but I do not think it was consciously held as a theological doctrine by St. Paul, by whoever wrote the first gospel, or by any of their contemporaries. We have to distinguish between the immediacy of the revelation of the doctrine in the activity of which from the first the New Testament has been the enduring record, and the successiveness in the process of its realization by the Church. LEONARD HODGSON Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England
Church Property Grab
CHRISTIANITY TODAY (News, July 20 issue) reports that Dr. Glen W. Harris, fraternal delegate from the UPUSA to the Cumberland Presbyterian Assembly, apologized for his denomination’s suing and closing Cumberland churches 55 years ago. “We are conscious that 55 years ago and in the years immediately following, our church appeared to be more interested in church property and legal rights than in Christian love and witness. For this too we ask your forgiveness.”
Fine words these! Maybe 55 years from now the UPUSA will ask our forgiveness for its continued interest in church property and its lack of Christian love.
Before the merger of the UP and USA churches in 1958 our congregation asked for and received a quit claim deed to our property from the old UP church. The congregation voted unanimously not to enter the merger, and then requested admission to the Reformed Presbyterian Church. But after the merger, the big church instituted suit against us. The matter is still in court. Maybe they are waiting to win the suit before apologizing.
GORDON H. CLARK
Indianapolis, Ind.
Chicago Crusade
I have read with interest … “Like a Mighty Army” (News, July 6 issue). [Re] your statement: “Ministers of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches were the most aggressive in their opposition, sowing virulent attacks against the evangelist”: … do you have any documentation for this?… I live in Chicago, and I have not heard of any such incidents.
We are not against Mr. Graham, and it is our definite policy not to attack him. I am sure that he is frequently the object of the prayers of our brethren.… I have been in contact with Dr. Graham in an effort to arrange a conference with him, whereby we could sit down face to face and discuss the differences of methods that divide us.…
We are strongly opposed to the inclusivist policies which Dr. Graham follows as they relate to his sponsoring committees and the assignment of decision cards.…
PAUL R. JACKSON
National Representative
General Association of Regular Baptist Churches
Chicago, Illinois
• Our news source has been unable to put into our hands the material on which he based his verdict. If he misread the material, then an apology is certainly in order. Since we have been unable to confirm the facts, we hereby gladly make it.—ED.
A Pentecostal’S Reaction
Being a minister of the Pentecostal faith, I am deeply thrilled over the article by Philip Hughes in Current Religious Thought (May 11 issue).…
W. R. COLE
St. Petersburg, Fla.
