SPACE AND TIME
Ever since I heard about a friend of mine who wrote a whole book either on the Pennsylvania Railroad riding, or in the Pennsylvania Station sitting, I have been hurt deep down with a renewed awareness of my inadequacies. My wife points out that whereas this other man improves each shining moment, I am apt to read a paperback or take in a movie. There is something here that points up the difference between genius and the unwashed multitudes.
One of my best ways of wasting time is watching how other people waste time. You can put it down as one of life’s finalities that any man who finds time to read a bulletin board, for example, just doesn’t know what to do with his time. He stands with his hands behind him and swings back and forth on the balls of his feet. Watch the man who sits in a meeting and reads the material in the front and back of the hymnal. I have been known even to look up the name of the publisher of a hymnbook. Another loafing opportunity is to take the docket of a meeting and read it all the way through. When that man down the row reads it with great intensity, you can be sure that he is bored beyond comprehension. How much time have you spent on your date book recently, especially those lovely tables of troy weights or that list of birthstones for all twelve months! There is a special thesis to be written on the reading of memorial windows and memorial plaques.
Marney has a great sermon entitled “In the Meantime,” and the simple word is that if we do not live in the “meantime, we do not live at all,” because life is made up of “meantimes.” I suppose the only thing worse than killing time is conquering space. Time is such a marvelous gift. Space is such a lovely thing. I hate to see my time run out, and I think it is a terrible ambition to want to conquer space. There may be a better thing in having the immensity of space conquer me. But that is another story.
EUTYCHUS II
TO BANISH THE PULPIT CLICHÉ
Since I am a preacher turned writer I found profitable pleasure in your September 27 issue.… Since Mr. Albus (“Why Don’t More Ministers Write?”) can remember a few impression-forming sermons from a lifetime of listening, one should rejoice that so few sermons get into print. Probably the percentage of printworthy sermons is quite small.
After evaluating sermon manuscripts along with several other types of free-lance writing I’m convinced of one preacher deficiency—most men don’t have the ability to communicate the Gospel to either their local or their printed-page congregations.…
Putting a sermon into an idea-communicating article would do more to improve the preaching of some men than ten years of theological jargon studies. Ridding a manuscript of the fluent pulpit clichés takes talent. But the end result—a fresh approach to an old truth—is most rewarding.
May I also suggest that ministerial self-importance hinders many others from writing. The busy-preacher image can’t be maintained when a man admits he has hours to labor over a manuscript for publication. Rejection slips that say your stuff isn’t so great also challenge this ego factor.
WILLIAM J. KRUTZA
Staff Writer
Harvest Publications
Baptist General Conference
Chicago, Ill.
MARCH AND COUNTERMARCH
The condescending, flippant article “Churchmen on the March” (News, Sept. 13 issue) was certainly no credit to your usually fine publication. Your readers deserved a more thoughtful analysis of this significant demonstration, and you missed an excellent opportunity for meaningful comment on a major moral issue in American life.
If, as you imply, some of the religious overtones betrayed muddled theology, this only reflects the absence of evangelical leadership in the civil rights movement. This absence is truly puzzling, for justice in human affairs is a well-attested biblical theme.
SANFORD V. SMITH
Washington, D. C.
This is certainly the most amateurish reporting that CHRISTIANITY TODAY has ever sponsored. I cannot conceive of treating a significant event as that in such a childish fashion.
JERRY BEAVAN
Vice President
DeMoss Associates
Valley Forge, Pa.
A masterpiece of neutrality.…
SHIRLEY S. ACKLEY
Warwick, R. I.
“Churchmen on the March” leaves the impression that my activity in opposition to the march, August 28, in Washington, was a personal affair and that I was disappointed “that he had been refused an interview with President Kennedy.”
The opposition headquarters which was established in the Hotel Washington on March 26 was an activity of the American Council of Christian Churches. This council believes that the whole approach now being made to civil rights is wrong and that you cannot legislate love nor can the golden rule be made a statute of the federal government, and your own report of “some civil wrongs” and “the earmarks of a garrison state to enable a freedom rally to be held” is most appropriate.
In regard to the White House, the President declined to receive a delegation of some 200 churchmen affiliated with the American Council of Christian Churches. Previously he had sent invitations to 243 churchmen in the country to meet him in the White House on June 17, and most of those invited came, and he sought to enlist them in behalf of his political proposals on civil rights. We felt that a contrary opinion needed to be presented to the President and sought to exercise our right as petitioned.
We object strenuously to the President’s use of religious organizations to promote his political programs. He sent the Hon. Averell Harriman, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, as his personal representative, to Rochester, to the meeting of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, where Harriman used the platform of the WCC to denounce the cut made by the House in the foreign aid bill; and now the National Council’s General Board has announced that the President will be the honored speaker at the Triennial Convention of the NCC in Philadelphia, the first week in December. All religious groups should be treated alike by the White House, and the President, whether he be Kennedy or John Doe, should not use the platforms of religious bodies in this country to serve his political ends.
CARL MCINTIRE
President
International Council of Christian Churches
Collingswood, N. J.
Let me ask you this, sir: what would be your reaction, ignoring the years of slavery, to the assertion “from our tenth-story window view it appeared that the marchers were moving much too fast to accomplish their sociological objectives” (Editorial, Sept. 13 issue), when you view the pace for the last one hundred years? At what pace would you have us go? Is it possible for an oppressing majority to assess, with any objectivity, how fast a suppressed minority should move?
The editorial seems worried about an apparent demand for preferential treatment. This is what the Negro has been receiving for the last 350 years. Have not evangelicals been guilty of offering others who have come to these shores preferential treatment? I saw the evangelicals of Lynchburg, Virginia, making herculean efforts to assist Hungarian refugees get jobs and housing when they would not lift one finger to help Negroes born in America and who had gone to foreign battlefields in America’s cause.
As a Negro who was in the march, I view our pace as much too slow and the evangelical’s response tragically inadequate.
W. J. HODGE
President
Kentucky State Conference of NAACP Branches
Louisville, Ky.
We were appalled at the article … and the writers’ serious acceptance of some of the leaders of the Negro march. A. Philip Randolph has, according to this article, equated himself with Jesus Christ; NAACP leader Roy Wilkins equates the march with a religious crusade; Eugene Carson Blake equates Negro “suffering” with the suffering of Christ! It is impossible to articulate adequately the blasphemy of such utterances. If this article was merely meant to expose rather than condone, the irony escapes us, because of what was left unsaid.
M. MCCORMACK
Louisville, Ky.
The National Council of Churches’ call for support of the march on Washington was of considerable interest.
It is particularly noteworthy to us because it denotes (1) a doctrinal position purporting to be that of the churches it represents, (2) a political voice and authority that belie its original express purpose of “meeting for discussion and fellowship,” (3) a spiritual dearth resulting in distortion of priorities and ethical means.
It is particularly disturbing to note that by espousing this cause in obedience to the “call,” we give assent to the NCC’s usurping of these realms, yet if we do not, now, we will be accused of bigotry, prejudice, and divisiveness.
Personally, I strongly believe in the Christian, ethical principle of integration, and have enjoyed much good fellowship and compatibility at intellectual, emotional levels, etc., with Negro brethren. But I fear this belief, and the action I may feel I should take as one freed by the grace of God, are far from the present militant cries and demands.
Likewise I believe the true Church must be vocal and active to show here Christ’s love, and strengthen the hands of our missionaries abroad.
TIM STAFFORD
Birmingham, Ala.
GLOSSOLALIA
Mr. Farrell states (“Outburst of Tongues: The New Penetration,” Sept. 13 issue) that exponents of classical Protestantism point out that Paul stated a preference for intelligible words and that there is no record of a specific instance when he used the gift. The fact is that Paul stated a preference for intelligible words when teaching in the church. It seems to me a mechanic prefers a wrench but if he is doing carpentry he would prefer a hammer and saw. To my knowledge there is no record of a specific time when Paul took communion, though obviously we know he did.…
There is a growing minority among Full Gospel people who do not believe that tongues is the “only” or “necessary” evidence of the initial receiving of the Holy Spirit. We do accept that it is an evidence.
J. E. STILES, JR.
Neighborhood Church
Pacoima, Calif.
This is the most complete summary and evaluation I have seen to date.
One subject Mr. Farrell did not touch upon and that I have not seen discussed is the relation of the tongues movement to the inspiration of the Scriptures. My limited and local observation has been a light view of the authority of the Scriptures and the meaning of “inspiration” as applied to Scripture on the part of glossolalics—both the older Pentecostals and the newer converts from more formalistic churches.
Does not the logic of “tongues” indicate that this is revelation from God by and through the Holy Spirit? If so, how does it differ in kind and in authority from the sacred canon? My experience has pointed to a foggy distinction on the part of those who practice speaking in tongues. Does this not account for the readiness with which Pentecostals have entered into and been accepted within the ecumenical movement? In fact, is not one of the psychological appeals of the ecumenical movement the substitution of a “super-church” authority for [that] God’s holy inspired revelation?
WILLIAM L. WOOD
State Line Baptist
Milton-Freewater, Ore.
Felt compelled to say a hearty “Amen.” … As an evangelist I have found much confusion over the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, especially his work after conversion. Huntington, W. Va.
ARNOLD WILLIS
“Outburst” reads like the elder brother’s reaction to the return of the prodigal son. His wordy assault is more like an outburst than an analysis. His references to the Scripture are not fair to the truth contained in Scriptures cited.
JAMES C. KOFAHL
Assembly of God
Prichard, Ala.
Voodo, which elevates the satanic, is particularly attracted to glossolalic experience. In the Middle Ages a group psychotic form known as the “dancing madness” reports glossolalic experience. We cannot ignore anthropology and psychology in understanding the new movement which is sweeping middle-class Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. In the framework of every culture it appears that symbols of the unconscious as well as the conscious are universal.…
Our time is spiritually defunct and sees tremendous need for group identity, and thus a group psychopathology can offer security on a level slightly less than chronic mental illness. We saw this happen in the warped ideology of Nazism which was as satanic and foul as voodoo, happening to supposedly civilized Christians. There is no premium or sanctity to being white, Anglo-Saxon, or Christian for group psychopathology. In the need for present conformity the new cultural schizophrenia has occurred in the pentecostal experience, and in some ways has little actual connection with the [U. S.] Pentecostalist Churches.…
We are not witnessing a valid biblical experience of God encountering man in history as he did on the shores of Pa-hahiroth in Exodus but a group psychopathology. All this reminds me of C. S. Lewis’ reminder that the main task of Satan is to make you think he is not there.
Perhaps the symbol of cloven hoof and horns is medieval, and he is disguised as some middle-class respectable gentleman who gets up on an Anglican pulpit and breaks into open hallucinatory clatter which is finally found to be nonsense syllables.
(THE REV.) HENRI M. YAKER
Consulting Psychologist
Highland Park, N. J.
Thank you for so balanced a coverage of the subject.
RAYMOND H. LIBBY
Seventh-day Adventist Church
Modesto, Calif.
Perhaps a preponderance of those during the past fifty or sixty years who have received the baptism of the Holy Ghost have been of the less educated, but perhaps, too, they have been the ones who were “simple enough”—in faith and acceptance of God’s Word to believe he would do just what he promised: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh …” (Acts 2:17), and finally, “For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off …” (Acts 2:39).
CARL G. CONNER
Springfield, Mo.
Comment can be little more than supplementary, but a little seems appropriate.
The citation of First Corinthians 14:14–19 from the AV without indicating italics is deceptive. Nowhere does the Greek speak of “an unknown tongue”; the word “unknown” is an interpretative addition by the translators. It may or may not be a valid interpretation. Thayer (in his Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament) is very sure that Paul uses glossa here with reference to the physical organ, and that the activity consists of making speech-like noises rather than using a language, known or unknown. Yet Paul’s words in First Corinthians 13:1, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels,” seem to imply that language as a system of communication is involved, and not merely ecstatic babbling. The possibility of interpretation reinforces the idea that something definable as “language” (a secondary meaning of glossa) is indeed intended.
Not all of the references in Acts to being “filled with” or “full of” the Spirit can be taken to describe a special “outpouring” of the Spirit. Certainly Acts 13:52 is one of Luke’s typical summary sentences.… The outpouring of the Holy Spirit is never once described with reference to an individual, but always in connection with the Church of Christ: first the Jews, then the Samaritans, then the Gentiles, and finally the strange group in Ephesus, with one foot in each dispensation. In each of these cases, the gift of speaking in tongues was clearly given to every person; even the number is mentioned in some cases. The “baptism” of |he Holy Spirit belongs to the Church as a body, the body of Christ, with absolutely no individual selectivity, and with the ability to speak in new languages as an initial evidence of the supernatural character of this universal Church. This was communication; in Corinth it must potentially have been, if interpretation was possible. At worst, it was a highly specialized type of ecstatic glossolalia.
Farrell refers to a minister who claims to have witnessed to foreigners in their own languages. Polish is mentioned; fine, I hope he did. Also mentioned is Coptic Egyptian. The latter must have been in a spiritualist seance, because there have been no native speakers of Coptic Egyptian for a good many years. I fear this is typical of the mistaken, though perhaps sincere, claims of modern glossolalics.
I am the more concerned about the statement that “a group of government linguistic experts sought to analyze for CHRISTIANITY TODAY a tape of his glossolalia but found it unrecognizable, though one said it sounded like a language structurally.” The fact that there are some 3,000 languages in the world, many of them unknown (to most of us, that is), is not entirely relevant. We do know something about representative languages of every known language family in the world. I am by no means unique among descriptive linguists in having had direct, personal contact with well over a hundred languages representing a majority of the world’s language families, and in having studied descriptions of languages of virtually every reported type. If a glossolalic were speaking in any of the thousand languages of Africa, there is about a 90 per cent chance that I would know it in a minute. Now, I have also had the opportunity of making a sympathetic study of an alleged instance of speaking in tongues. And I must report without reservation that my sample does not sound like a language structurally. There can be no more than two contrasting vowel sounds, and a most peculiarly restricted set of consonant sounds; these combine into a very few syllable clusters which recur many times in various orders. The consonants and vowels do not all sound like English (the glossolalic’s native language), but the intonation patterns are so completely American English that the total effect is a bit ludicrous. My sample includes an “interpretation.” At the most generous estimate, the glossolalic utterance includes ten or eleven “sentences” or stretches of possibly meaningful speech. But the “interpretation” involves no less than fourteen distinct and independent ideas. There simply can be no match between the “tongue” and the “interpretation.” I am told that Dr. E. A. Nida of the American Bible Society has reported similar impressions of glossolalic recordings. Our evidence is still admittedly limited, but from the viewpoint of a Christian linguist the modern phenomenon of glossolalia would appear to be a linguistic fraud and monstrosity, given even the most generous interpretation of First Corinthians 12–14.
I have spoken as a linguist; let me also speak as a theologian (an ordained minister of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church). In the sample of glossolalia I have, the speaker speaks in the name of God. His “interpretation” begins: “My people, why do you doubt? Why do you fear? In my Word I have said to you, you can do nothing without me.” But God has already spoken in his inspired Word, the Holy Scriptures. Any presumption to add to this Word, even to reinforce it with a new Spirit-breathed message, is falsehood and blasphemy. I do not accuse this alleged speaker in tongues of being deliberately fraudulent; I rather believe (and the recording includes other evidence of this) that he is an emotional and possibly unstable mystic. I am persuaded, however, that he is the victim of a deception that will ultimately be a spiritual detriment rather than an advantage, to himself and others. When he speaks for God, his “tongue” is condemned on the surface.
I dislike being a “debunker.” Frankly, I have my own private spiritual experiences which I cannot entirely explain, and which I (perhaps wrongly) consider precious. But when Christians publicize, propagate, and endeavor to perpetuate an apparent manifestation of psychological instability and an obvious blasphemy as a special “gift of the Holy Spirit,” I cannot refuse to apply my knowledge and training to the problem. So far, I can only conclude, with all the sympathetic Scripture-centered scholarship I know how to apply, that modern glossolalia is a sad deception. Even if I am wrong, we had all best heed Paul’s admonition not to play it up, but to control it most carefully.
WILLIAM E. WELMERS
Prof. of African Languages
University of California at Los Angeles
Los Angeles, Calif.
Deals quite fairly and adequately with a subject which is currently of great interest to biblical Christians throughout this country, and perhaps the world.
There are several of us (graduate students in various fields) in this area who have been meeting for fellowship during the past six months. Your article on tongues answers and clarifies some of the questions which have been raised and discussed.
CHARLES E. HUNT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Mass.
THANKS FOR THE THANKLESS
Your “Books in Review” section is superb. Your reviewers are selected, from what I can judge, for being familiar and concerned with the fields with which the books deal. Furthermore, they represent the finest of influential, evangelical scholarship. This is a service to the whole Christian community, for one can often learn more of a scholar’s views when he is assessing another’s work than when he is speaking in his own right. This is particularly true when key books are discussed.
But besides being good scholars and writers, your reviewers take positions for and against books—an increasing rarity in the reviewing business. Judging the intrinsic value of a book is difficult sometimes, but necessary to an adequate review. Other aspects of reviewing—such as the length of the article and the proximity of the review to the date of publication—together with those mentioned above, make CHRISTIANITY TODAY required reading for the lay Christian or the theological scholar.
Thank you for engaging writers for the thankless task of book reviewing.
DONALD G. DAVIS, JR.
School of Librarianship
University of California
Berkeley, Calif.
TO HEIGHTEN THE TIDE
The burning issue of “The Fourth R” (Aug. 30 issue) should not be permitted to flicker out and turn to ashes through lack of oxygen! In a similar vein, at the Los Angeles Coliseum on the closing night of the recent campaign, Billy Graham evoked a thunderous ovation from 140,000 people with an almost offhand remark that maybe such a crowd might make a march on Washington protesting the outlawing of religion in the public schools.
Can’t something practicable be devised to preserve and express this tide of sentiment?
For example, there are at least a couple of protest bills languishing in the Congressional hopper. Evidence of powerful public concern may be all that is needed to spur the committee to get one of these bills (say Senator Williams’ bill) to the top of the pile. This would be a good place to start.
How about doing something? How about testing the sinews of American Protestantism?… Invite readers to reply personally or through signed petitions circulated in their churches.
HARRY JAEGER
Youth Editor
Gospel Light Publications
Glendale, Calif.
Dr. Billy Graham has called for a march on Washington to demand our legislators pass an amendment to the Constitution and thus give American youth God’s Holy Word in our nation’s schools. It has occurred to me that if your great magazine would publicize and aid this challenge of Dr. Graham, that Christian Americans would march on Washington not 200,000 strong, but 2,000, 000 strong.
S. MCMASTER KERR
First Presbyterian Church
Harlan, Ky.
GO NORTH, YOUNG MAN
Re “The Ministry of All God’s People” (Editorial, Sept. 27 issue): If there are almost 1,000 seminary-trained graduates reportedly “biding their time” in the Dallas-Fort Worth area “waiting for pulpits,” why don’t some of them come to New England where there are numerous pulpits waiting for seminary-trained graduates?
DOUGLAS A. ELLIOTT
Trinity Baptist
Lynnfield, Mass.
THE YOKED AND THE UNYOKED
Dr. Samuel Shoemaker’s article “A Personal Word to the Clergy” (Aug. 2 issue) is a most stimulating personal witness to all who are yoked by the Holy Spirit. This well puts “Why I Left the Ministry” to sleep in its rightful place
FRANCIS E. NELSON
St. Mark Lutheran
Circle Pines, Minn.
AUTHORITY AND TRADITION
For the first time in centuries, a Roman Catholic pope (Pope John) recently confronted the tradition of the church openly with some of its own problems. In the ecumenical council and in the deliberations of the Curia, these challenges were publicly spoken of in the form of dialogue.
Prior to the council, the essence of authority in tradition was that the communicant of the church transferred his religious opinions to an institution, which was in a better position to determine what was truth or error than he was. Justification for such authority was found in the liability to error in the individual mind. An organized church, responsible for the determining of truth, was to be preferred to a single person concerned with any inquiry into it. Tradition was something which has “stood the test of time”—that which has emerged and endured out of the deliberations of the past.
Now the question which Pope John raised in the last council was that if the individual was capable of error, does it have to follow that tradition was incapable of error in every point? Accordingly, the raison d’être for the calling of the council was to determine if any error was perpetuated by tradition—for if such were true, then it would be far more costly than the mistakes of any one individual, past or present. If tradition can preserve truth then it can also preserve error, that is, any tradition not spoken ex cathedra.
It was always postulated in the Catholic Church that tradition is good if it can survive. This was one of the premises of the scholastic mind. But church history has shown, and Scripture is full of it, that the evil as well as the good can survive.
There is no better proof of the fallibility of tradition than in the recounting of historical judgment.
The story of mankind is replete with illustrations. The independence of a man like Socrates against the claims of the state was recounted by certain scholars on the floor of the recent Curia. Again, in the story of the Vatican, it was called to remembrance that the judgments of Galileo against the church were not in error. “Recanto! Recanto!” the pope told him to say. He recanted, but he uttered under his breath, “But the earth does go around the sun anyway.”
Pope John’s council revealed that when authorities are in conflict, it is impossible to happily resolve the dialogue by the method of authority itself.
Here perhaps is the most pleasing prospect of the coming council. Pope Paul himself in the last council took a position that authority and faith may be distinguishable.
WILLIS BERGEN
Hermon Presbyterian
Cabin John, Md.
CONTRASTING ATTITUDES
The concluding paragraphs of your report on the Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles (News, Sept. 27 issue) mention that “Graham is still implicitly snubbed by some denominational and ecumenical leaders” and cite evidences of this.
The one interdenominational group which has consistently and prayerfully supported Mr. Graham from the beginning of his crusades is the National Association of Evangelicals. On the eve of his New York City crusade in 1957, when he was being sniped at from both sides of the theological fence, NAE passed a resolution which declared our “profoundest regard for our beloved brother” and assurance “of our united prayerful support as he prepares to pour forth his very life in the proclamation of the glorious Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”
It seems to me that this support on the part of NAE, contrasted with the attitudes of the ecumenists and neo-fundamentalists, is worth noting.
W. STANLEY MOONEYHAM
Director of Information
National Association of Evangelicals
Wheaton, Ill.
ANOTHER STRATEGY
Re “Strategy” (Eutychus, Aug. 30 issue): There is already a wealth of radio programs in Canada and the States, and if only a tenth of what the churches and other organizations spend on this were allocated for radio work abroad the national churches and missionary societies would be able to expand their present programs on an unprecedented scale.… May I suggest that our Christian radio programs at home need an “agonizing reappraisal” as to their value, and that it would be a mark of real Christian grace for a number to get off the air and get their sponsors to donate for radio and TV work on the mission fields of the world.…
LEONARD A. STREET
Toronto, Ont.
IT BEGAN IN ST. LOUIS
“Give Me Back My Child!” (Aug. 30 issue) is precisely the rallying cry of Citizens for Educational Freedom. As far back as August of 1959, when CEF was founded, there was the realization that the financial structure of education made compulsory by various state laws was saying to the parents of the nation, “You must send your child to this school, where he will be taught this, that, and everything else, but will not be allowed to receive training in morality based on belief in God.”
Five “citizens” in Saint Louis, meeting in like reaction to a single letter-to-the-editor, said as one, “Enough of this nonsense. We are the state, you will do what we say!” And like-minded citizens across the nation have been picking up the cry on a non-partisan, non-sectarian basis ever since.…
As a Roman Catholic, I would be unfair to my personal convictions if I did not take exception to the Stuart journey to “Spain (and) some of the South American nations.” But as an American citizen, I would have been most happy to have had Rev. John M. Stuart to nearby Bernardsville, New Jersey, last Sunday to be present at a dedication program. There, he would have seen for himself a fifteen-room Christian education building constructed before the church which would eventually serve the Presbyterian congregation in the Bernardsville area.…
Implement CEF philosophy by making the total tax fund set aside to foster education made compulsory by state law available to the parents of the nation for education of their children in the school of their choice and those educational facilities will receive full, five-day-week use “teaching right concepts to the children” who would attend them.
J. B. MCCAFFREY
Morris Plains, N. J.
LUXURY OF THE MOAN
The recent Supreme Court decision respecting church-state relationships in the public schools has brought forth considerable debate, some of which has been found in your pages, especially your August 30 issue. None of these articles mentioned the possibility of civil disobedience, however, even though they seemed seriously disturbed over the meaning of these decisions. All assumed that the decisions of the state determine the nature of church-state relationships.
Yet certain pronouncements I’ve read in the papers suggest that civil disobedience is in fact occurring.…
Are there possibly student prayer groups which insist on meeting on state property, for example, or parent groups? Are there evangelical teachers who insist on their rights as priests in the faith of the “priesthood of all believers”—rights to openly spread the Gospel wherever they may be? If so, are these things only happening where they have political support, or the support of tradition? Do they happen only in the South and in the East?
If, in fact, no meaningful civil disobedience is occurring, can this be because the “faithful” do not actually want to suffer anything for their “faith”? Could it be that the movements which determine the structure of our society are secular because the secularists have the courage to raise a meaningful issue in the society they live in? Could it be that the meaning of the present situation to the evangelical world is that their readiness to despise the state has led to their willingness to surrender the power of decision to it in order to have the pleasant luxury of moaning about it afterwards?
ROBERT S. JACKSON
Kent, Ohio
THE RENAISSANCE POPES
Mr. Karl Fr. Hering said that a Lutheran pastor—at his ordination—confesses that the Book of Concord is in agreement with the one scriptural faith (Eutychus, Aug. 30 issue). That is quite right. But merely the dogmatical propositions of the Book of Concord and the Smalcald Articles which are a part of it have binding character. The historical statements are not to be believed unanimously.
Now the quoted statement concerning the pope as the Antichrist is a historical one. Directed against the Renaissance popes, I am quite willing to subscribe to it. But I am not under ecclesiastical discipline bound to do so.
The Book of Concord quotes dicta of other popes as references to their authority. It would never have quoted an Antichrist. Now if the popes before the Renaissance era have not been Antichrists, it is quite possible that popes after that era are something other than Antichrists, even true believers of the justifying grace and destined to enter into eternal life. To classify Benedict XV or John XXIII as Antichrists, destined to enter hell, is a bent of mind from which may God prevent us.
CORNELIUS FRH. V. HEYL
Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church
Bad Toelz, Germany
BIBLICAL INFALLIBILITY
As I read Professor Seerveld’s article “Perspective for Christian Colleges” (Sept. 13 issue), I found myself feeling happily that here is a man who realizes the contemporary needs and imperatives of Christian education. But as the article went on, it began to dawn that underlying the professor’s condemnation of the “compartmentalization of reality,” of “the spirit of accommodation,” of the “spirit of scientific Modern Freedom,” and of “lingualized analytic philosophy,” and behind his commendation of the “reforming spirit,” of “something earth-shaking and important to say ourselves,” and of “a Septuagint approach,” underneath all this lies the assumption that characterizes most of the articles that appear in CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
This assumption appears in various and sundry guises, but it always amounts to the same thing—biblical infallibility. From the tenor of Professor Seerveld’s article, one might feel that he was trying to escape this assumption. But then we read, “… all the theories and products we develop must conform to biblical specifications, no matter the measure of the day” (italics mine). I sympathize with and pray for this man’s vision of the need for the uniqueness, vitality, and transformation of Christian education. But this assumption of biblical infallibility—if he does hold it—will vitiate his whole position in the eyes of those who he is trying very hard to convince the most, namely, highly intelligent, morally sensitive, and technically competent Christian educators.
DUANE WILLARD
Madison, Wis.
A TIMELY TRUMPET
Warmest congratulations on the September 13 issue and in particular its editorial, “The Power of the Truth” … This word is most timely and meaningful. It is a trumpet blast for all who are in Christian higher education.
V. R. EDMAN
President
Wheaton College
Wheaton, Ill.
