Dear Forensic Friends:
A cosmological crisis is looming that has men and angels throughout the universe holding their breath. Flamboyant San Francisco attorney Vincent Hallinan has asked the California Supreme Court to rule officially that—now brace yourself—heaven, hell, and purgatory do not exist! Just when traditional religionists are becoming adjusted to the din of vociferous secularistic theologians’ objecting to the terms “up there” and “down there,” they now face the prospect that the California court may legally certify that the cosmos is strictly a one-story abode.
Hallinan’s request for the ruling comes in a case in which he contends that the Roman Catholic Church fraudulently influenced the late David F. Supple to bequeath $200,000 to the church in order to escape purgatory. Only a devil’s advocate like Vince (long known for his defense of Communists and sit-in rebels) would, in this day of aggiornamento, have the gall to battle mankind’s oldest institution and challenge beliefs about the very structure of the universe. The litigants and a great host of spirits, visible and invisible, anxiously await the word from Sacramento.
Consider the dilemma in which Hallinan has placed us evangelical Protestants. If the court affirms his claims, our cosmological blueprint will have to be junked along with that of the Holy See. The secularistic rascals will be thoroughly vindicated. If the court denies his contentions, we will face a legal decision that purgatory really exists. And we all know there’s no room in evangelical celestial charts for such a half-way house.
No matter how the California court rules, we must encourage the loser to appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Maybe, for heaven’s sake, that demigod Earl Warren can find a legal way to preserve paradise and the inferno.
With much jurisprudence, EUTYCHUS III
Birth Control
It was with considerable interest that we read the report (News, Feb. 17) on the morality of birth control. As you know, this is an issue about which our membership has been keenly interested over the years and which, in this age of oral contraceptives, has mounted increasing discussion, with particular concern for the single woman. This timely topic is commonly discussed along with various other problems on the control of life in many of our student and graduate chapters. Your comments were therefore appreciated, and the inclusion of some material from one of our recent Journals on the issue of birth control was of interest to us.
I am deeply appreciative of the good work you men are doing in providing an intelligent voice for evangelicalism in the contemporary world.
WALTER O. SPITZER
General Director
Christian Medical Society
Oak Park, Ill.
On page 43 is an allusion to the incorrect “fact” that J. S. Bach was a seventeenth child. Philipp Spitta’s biography of J. S. Bach shows that Johann Ambrosius Bach, Sebastian’s father, was wed in 1668. Subsequently eight children were born in 1669 (?), 1671, 1673, 1675, 1677, 1680, 1682, and 1685. This last date is the birthday of J. S. Bach. Sebastian was the eighth and last child. Ambrosius had no former wife, and his second wife, obtained after Sebastian’s birth, bore him no children.
I conclude that these “romanticists of fertility” have produced nine non-existent children.
JIM BOWMAN
San Carlos, Calif.
A Christian University
Your article, “The Need for a Christian University” (Feb. 17), was the very best I have read, suggesting such a school. You are not the first to suggest such a move, of course; the idea has been suggested by many.
Dr. Charles T. Ball, B.A., Th.M., D.D., professor of missions and comparative religions in the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and later the first president of the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, went so far as to establish residence in Arlington, Virginia, and was able to purchase some property in Arlington with the very idea in mind of the establishment of a great Christian university in Arlington—and near Washington, D. C. His great plan and dream did not materialize because of several reasons. Number one, the promise he had of several million dollars did not come through as he thought, and number two, his death. I do believe that if Dr. Ball had lived for several years longer the great dream would have been a reality.
I believe that you and your friends and associates are on the right track.… As for money? Well, it would take a lot of it—millions, in fact. But once the Christian people of this country and the whole wide world were informed about this great idea, I believe that the money would come—from the great and the small, financially.
HENRY J. DAVIS
Clerk-Treasurer
Southside Baptist Association
Blackstone, Va.
Maybe in due time you will generate enough enthusiasm to get the project on the Christian university going. It is this kind of vision which we need.…
ROGER NICOLE
Gordon Divinity School
Wenham, Mass.
THE PUSH FOR A FIRST-RATE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY IS LONG OVERDUE. MUCH OF THE FUTURE OF EVANGELICALS IN AMERICA WILL BE DETERMINED BY OUR EFFORT TO SEEK THE WILL OF GOD IN FACING UP TO THE ENORMOUS TASK OF EVANGELICAL HIGHER EDUCATION. GOD HAS GIVEN TO THE INSTITUTION I SERVE A SPECIAL BURDEN FOR EVANGELICAL UNITY IN THE FIELD OF EDUCATION.…
ORAL ROBERTS
ORAL ROBERTS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT
TULSA, OKLA.
If some ambitious evangelical could assemble the facts about our evangelical colleges, perhaps we would be pleasantly surprised at what we have already in the form of schools engaged in higher education.
ALEX REXION
St. Paul, Minn.
Is the Bob Jones University not a Christian university? Until such time as another university would be established, why could we not promote this school? Do you have any reason for not recommending Bob Jones University as a Christian university in existence at this time?
ED NELSON
South Sheridan Baptist
Denver, Colo.
I found three things which impressed me particularly:
1. Your faithful adherence to the sacred principles of fundamentalism. Faith in biblical supernaturalism is inspired. The blessed truths of the Virgin Birth, the sinlessness, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the priestly ministry, the Second Advent, and the eternal dominion of the “Son of Man” are thus confirmed.
2. You said: “A Christian university … would study history, not simply for a knowledge of events, but in quest of the revelation of God in history.” This, to say the least, is a grand and rare expression in favor of the true purpose to study history.
3. Metaphysics (p. 8), however, by the wrong use of it, could easily become (if it is not already) part of the soil from which the noxious plant of “spiritualism” is growing up. It is not always easy to distinguish between occultism and biblical supernaturalism, yet confusion here may be a fatal mistake.
LAURI ONJUKKA
“Voice of Prophecy”
Finnish Department
White City, Ore.
Thank you for another excellent issue. May I suggest that CHRISTIANITY TODAY produce an issue featuring education below the college level?
In terms of the potential for teaching the Bible properly at the elementary and high school level there is a virtual vacuum. There are signs of hope, however. Here in Indiana, a Biblical Literature Committee has been organized to write a new study guide for our high school Bible course. I teach the course occasionally. A similar committee is at work in Florida. And Penn State University is developing materials as part of a humanities course.… An issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY emphasizing the positive and significant ways that Bible may be included in public education below the college level would be extremely helpful.
JAMES V. PANOCH
Executive Secretary
Religious Instruction Association, Inc.
Fort Wayne, Ind.
Just Friends
The favorable publicity is appreciated, but I wish to call your attention to an erroneous statement. In the news section on ecumenism, page 41, of the February 3 issue, Oklahoma City’s Council of Churches is credited with being one of the first to include Catholics. We have had a good relationship … but there is not yet a Roman Catholic parish in the membership of the Council of Churches here.
The same error has appeared once or twice in materials sent out from the National Council of Churches, which may have been the source of your information.
WILLIAM W. TRAVIS
Executive Director
Greater Oklahoma City Council of Churches
Oklahoma City, Okla.
Obviously Misleading?
I was shocked to discover that you would print so obviously misleading a piece as that from U.S.A. concerning the World Council of Churches’ Church and Society Conference of last summer (“The Gospel of Revolution,” by Alice Widener, Feb. 17). I am well aware, of course, that CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S approach to social issues is quite different from that of the World Council and that of its American denominations which are involved in the National Council of Churches, but I had always assumed that this was an honest disagreement of honorable men. Your use of this article raises some question in my mind about that.
ROBERT D. BULKLEY
Secretary
Office of Church and Society
The United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.
Board of Christian Education
Philadelphia, Pa.
• We are not aware that the World Council and National Council approach to social issues coincides with “that of its American denominations.” Denominational indignation is mounting over the “technical dodge” that states that study papers are not official, yet exploits their propaganda value.
Bishop J. Brooke Mosley, author of the study book designed to follow up the World Conference on Church and Society, writes: “The Geneva Conference on Church and Society of 1966 stands in succession to the Stockholm Conference on Christian Life and Work of 1925 and the Oxford Conference on Church, Community, and State of 1937, and also to the relevant sections of the Assemblies of the World Council of Churches, Amsterdam (1948), Evanston (1954), and New Delhi (1961).… It can help to define the goals and methods of Christian action and witness in a revolutionary world and it can speak to the churches and the World Council of Churches on this subject.” (Christians in the Technical and Social Revolutions of Our Time, Forward Movement Miniature, 1966, p. 9).—ED.
I could hardly believe what I read in the article. If this is the path that the World Council of Churches has chosen to follow, then God help us. Their proposals for social change would lead to anarchy, confusion, and misery.
DAVID R. CHRISTENSON
Ebenezer Lutheran Brethren
Minneapolis, Minn.
While Alice Widener has done a good job, there is one point that she has overlooked. It is impossible for one nation to buy more from other nations than she sells, as otherwise it will destroy her currency. There is only one way to develop the undeveloped nations, and that is to teach them the principles by which undeveloped nations in the past have become developed. It is a long, slow process, and one which requires many sacrifices. Labor-saving machines must be built, but before this can take place it is necessary for somebody to save up the money with which to build such machines.
In the Middle Ages, there was no progress because the canon laws which were imposed on the state by the Church made it impossible for the individual to develop labor-saving machines. Then came the Reformation. Under the Reformation men’s consciences were freed. The Reformers took the position that the Church must not bind men’s consciences. Then they defined conconscience as an attribute of the soul.
If conscience is an attribute of the soul, then neither the Church nor any other institution should interfere with it. And so, after the Reformation, in the Western Protestant world, men were enabled to exercise their initiative, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and inventiveness, and machines gradually came into use. Starvation, which had controlled the population during the Middle Ages, was now itself gradually brought under control. But this was a slow process, because before these machines were built the money had to be saved with which to construct them. It has taken well over 300 years for industry to become developed to produce a standard of living equal to that which obtains today.
In the last fifty years, the oil industry has so improved its efficiency of operations through technology that it is now turning out thirteen times as much gasoline per worker as it did in those earlier days. During this same period, wages have gone up 1,300 per cent. The result has been that the cost of gasoline and the price at which it is sold is substantially the same today as it was fifty years ago. Today the worker in the oil industry can buy with the money in his pay envelope thirteen times as much of the product which he produces as he could have bought fifty years ago. But some people claim that this is automation and that automation throws people out of work. The answer to that is that there are now fourteen times as many people working in the oil industry as there were fifty years ago. Had this technological improvement not been effected by the oil industry, the price of gasoline today would be well over $2 a gallon, and at such price there would be few cars on the road, and there wouldn’t be a great road industry, a great farm industry, or a great automobile industry.
For almost twenty years now I have devoted a considerable portion of my time to a study of and research into the history and tradition of Protestantism, and I have become convinced that all of the developments in business and industry and science are due to the principles and objectives laid down by our Reformation Fathers.
J. HOWARD PEW
Philadelphia, Pa.
I am heartily in accord with her conclusions as to the false, illogical, and terrifying tendencies and viewpoints of many of our Christian leaders today.
JOHN SHADE FRANKLIN
Chaplain (Major),
U.S. Army (Ret.)
Buzzards Bay, Mass.
In contrast to the careful, scholarly, even reverent manner in which most topics are handled—for example, the articles on Christian higher education in the same issue—this article by Alice Widener abounds with errors of fact and logic, distortions, misinterpretations, misquotations, innuendos, and half-truths. Its whole tone is more that of a polemical pamphlet than a much-needed carefully reasoned analysis of the message and formal documents of the 1966 Conference on Church and Society.…
The issue is not whether one approves of Communism or of the theology implicit in these documents. Probably most of us readers share with the author a deep mistrust of the theological underpinnings of these publications as well as a conviction that Communism and Christianity are irreconcilable. Most of us with formal training in the social sciences doubtless share her skepticism concerning the validity of some of the key recommendations of the conference also. The point is that the issues handled by the conference, such as economic development, comparative economic systems, the effects of international capital flows, and the like, are extremely complex.
THOMAS E. VAN DAHM
Chairman, Division of Business and Economics
Carthage College
Kenosha, Wis.
The Presbyterian Confession Of ’67
You are right (Letters, Feb. 17) in response to Charles R. Ehrhardt and Donald C. Irwin that “further C ’67 quotations do not refute the Lay Committee’s contentions.”
Dr. Ehrhardt favored me with a copy of his sermon, and I responded that he had not justified his criticism of the Lay Committee, nor answered their charges. Phoenix, Ariz.
LESTER E. KILPATRICK
It seems that the feeling of those who favor adoption of the Confession of 1967 can be summed up in the words of one of the “Committee of Fifteen” (the committee that revised the original document) in a recent sermon in which he rebutted the advertisement of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, Inc. His words, “I can live with this confession—however, I cannot sing the Doxology over it,” are indicative, I believe, of the general feeling of those who favor adoption.
I suppose I’m old fashioned, but if you cannot praise God for it, why have it?
H. H. HOWARD
Wexford, Pa.
Certainly the Confession of 1967 moves from a position of infallibility. It’s about time! Maybe the confession will free more Presbyterian clergy to proclaim an infallible Lord, rather than an infallible book. If so, there is much to be lost “by proceeding more slowly.”
STEPHEN L. MCKITTRICK
Sugar Valley–Salona Lutheran Parish
Loganton, Pa.
Your editorial, “Why Hurry a New Confession?” (Jan. 20), direly prophesies that adoption of the new confession will produce a schism in the church. A better view in my opinion is that the confession will heal an existing spiritual schism that plagues the United Presbyterian denomination.… It would seem that the new confession will bring the several confessions and the Scriptures into a proper relationship, and will make possible the full realization of the responsibility of individual conscience that is our heritage from the Reformation.… But as long as adherence to a single man-made creed is demanded, the spiritual schism of legalistic controversy and debate will continue.
ARCHIBALD W. MCMILLAN
Kettering, Ohio
I wrote a “letter to the editor” of the News-Sentinel here sustaining the right of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, Inc., to advertise and the right of the newspapers to carry the advertisement. I have long been interested in liberty generally, especially the “modern liberties” which are anathema to the popes, whatever may be the case with many Roman Catholics.
HOWARD C. SMITH
Fort Wayne, Ind.
Lsd Revisited
Your misleading news report, “Religion in a Test Tube” (Feb. 3), has been brought to my attention. I do not know whether your barbs are aimed chiefly at me, Andover Newton, or the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion: presumably all three.…
You state that of late I have been “more interested in LSD trips” than in the SSSR. This is a half-truth. The facts are these. As a psychologist of religion I owe it to my discipline to look into persistent reports that LSD triggers religious experience. Several years ago I took advantage of an opportunity to join certain academic friends to experiment on ourselves under medical supervision. This experience greatly stimulated my interest in knowing more, and since then I have had an opportunity to participate with other scientists in experimenting with human subjects under Public Health grants, my role being that of studying religious aspects of the work. I have known dangerous convicts to be rehabilitated, hopeless alcoholics to become dry, intellectuals to be released from the fear of death, and atheists to experience God! Therapeutic results pretty consistently appear to be better when the individual interprets his experience as religious.…
I suggest that you send your reporter to Spring Grove Hospital in Baltimore to observe LSD therapy being done there under the direction of Dr. Albert Kurland, Dr. Charles Savage, and Dr. Sanford M. Unger. Then he can decide for himself whether devils are cast out by means of God or Satan.
WALTER H. CLARK
Professor of the Psychology of Religion
Andover Newton Theological School
Newton Centre, Mass.
No Atheists
In your news report, “Draft the Clergy” (Feb. 3), you make the statement, “Until the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that an atheist could be draft-exempt as a conscientious objector under certain circumstances, the grounds were solely religious belief.” I assume that this statement refers to the action by the Supreme Court on March 8, 1965, in the cases of Daniel Seeger and two others.
Your statement is inaccurate at important points. First, none of the conscientious objectors involved in this decision were atheists. One, Daniel Seeger, was a professed agnostic. The other two claimed theistic beliefs. All claimed that their beliefs were religious. The Supreme Court stated: “We also pause to take note of what is involved in this litigation. No party claims to be an atheist or attacks the statute on this ground. The quesion is not, therefore, one between theistic and atheistic beliefs. We do not deal with or intimate any decision on that situation in this case.”
So the decision of the Supreme Court in these cases did not affect the requirement in the law for “religious belief,” though it did broaden the definition of what “religious” means.
J. HAROLD SHERK
Executive Secretary
National Service Board for Religious Objectors
Washington, D. C.
On The List?
I note in your February 3 issue (Current Religious Thought) that Addison H. Leitch has a few sophomoric remarks about what he calls the “popular press.”
Concerning the canceling of a filthy play on a college campus he says, “The whole affair was especially newsworthy because at least one group of college administrators reacted violently to what they thought was filth on the stage and were not afraid to say so, and were not afraid to endure the wrath of the drama department, the student body, and all those members of the popular press who enjoy so much anything off-color that happens on a college campus.”
May we ask him to supply us with a list of “all those members of the popular press who enjoy so much anything off-color that happens on a college campus?” I just want to see if my name is on it because I just recently wrote an article about Berkeley and mentioned a few off-color things that occur there. Come to think of it, I wonder if his name is on it, since the whole subject of his column was off-color things that happen on college campuses!
WESLEY HARTZELL
Chicago’s American
Chicago, Ill.
While he deals so deadly a blow at The Chairs and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? some of us would retort in an article entitled, “For the Sake of Christ,” doing much the same thing in regard to the Church.…
CARL L. AVERA
Palestine, Tex.
