Dear Bargain-Hunters:
I hate to be a killjoy, but I have disappointing news for many of you who are ordained ministers. Remember those long years and huge sums you spent preparing for your ordination? Well, you could have avoided such expenditures by joining the ministerial ranks of the Calvary Grace Christian Churches of Faith, Inc. For a mere $35 and a 70 per cent score on a 100-question, fifteen-minute examination, you could have been licensed and received an official certificate of ordination.
I learned of this appealing offer by responding to a want ad in the sexsational National Enquirer, “world’s liveliest newspaper.” The Rev. Dr. Herman Keck, Ir., International General Superintendent of CGCC of FIne, assures applicants that as ordained ministers they will not be tied to any creed, for “in our church you are responsible only to God”; each pastor is “free, independent, absolute.” CGCC of FIne seems ideal for contemporary clerics who chafe under old creeds and want to plot their own confessional contours.
The ordination exam, however, might bamboozle many recent seminary graduates. Included are such questions as: True-False: The two major divisions of the Bible are the Old and New Testaments. Multiple Choice: The name of Cain’s mother was (a. Mary, b. Martha, c. Eve). Completion: A great Jewish leader named came back to talk to Jesus at night. If you fail the test the first time, take heart. You can have a second go at it free of charge.
Along with his ordination materials, the Reverend Doctor from the Florida Gold Coast sent a form telling me how to bequeath my earthly possessions to his corporation. He also requested a “Curse or Blessing: Try Me Now” offering. He wrote, “The Lord just whispered to my heart and told me to tell you to try Him with an offering of $12. One dollar for each month of the New Year … for each of the twelve disciples.”
Since I hardly want to be cursed and am confident I can pass the CGCC of FIne ordination exam at least the second time around, maybe I’d better hustle up $47 to pay the tab. Did I say $47? I meant $50. Keck wants another $3 to pay for his two mailings. But I don’t mind. Where else can you be both blessed and ordained these days for fifty pieces of silver?
Parsimoniously yours, EUTYCHUS III
Dialogue On C.O.C.U.
The essay “ ‘I Believe in COCU’?” is excellent. It articulates the issues much more concretely than “Dangers of a Giant Church” (April 14), because it deals with specific problems posed by the text of the Principles of Church Union in relation to biblical revelation. It is genuine theological reflection, not a mere raising of suspicions about peripheral (even if real) concerns.
ARDEN SNYDER
Director of Christian Education
Calvary Presbyterian Church
South Pasadena, Calif.
[It] raises some basic issues. One of the troubles in current theological discussion is that folks capitalize on the multi-meanings of words either by design or default. For example, it is not clear that Boice and COCU are using the word “symbol”—a notoriously slippery term—the same way at the same time. When it pertains to creeds, “symbol” has a technical meaning which I’m sure Boice knows, but he lets it slip around to his own benefit. The first definition of “symbol” in the Oxford Universal Dictionary on Historical Principles is: “A formal authoritative statement of the religious belief of the Christian Church, or of a particular church or sect; a creed or confession of faith, spec, the Apostles’ Creed.”
In this sense, which is certainly one of the senses in the COCU statement, symbol is just another word for creed or “a formal authoritative statement of the religious belief.…”
M. LAWRENCE SNOW
Editor
Work-Worship
Greenwich, Conn.
I would like to commend James Boice for his fair and penetrating critique of the COCU discussions. As one who seeks a united church that is fully anchored in the biblical revelation, I am disturbed that evangelical principles that were embodied in the first version of the text of the COCU document have been deleted. My hope is that the proponents of COCU will move towards a new confessional statement that will be authentically catholic as well as profoundly evangelical and that will stand in contradiction to the relativistic and hedonistic spirit of our age. Those who are involved in the COCU discussions would do well to ponder the questions Boice has raised.
DONALD G. BLOESCH
Professor of Theology
Dubuque Theological Seminary
Dubuque, Iowa
Many thanks for the fine analysis of COCU. If this monstrosity should succeed in swallowing up the Church in its manifold manifestations—God forbid!—many church people would be unchurched, having no place to go. This would include many Episcopalians, including most of the clergy. I personally could have nothing to do with it.
As an illustration of the silliness of some of its effects, here is a close approximation of the account of a meeting of women of various church persuasions here in Louisville, under the inspiration of COCU. As reported, they said in effect: “We had such a pleasant time and got along so well together, we concluded COCU must be God’s will!”
CHARLES E. CRAIK, JR.
Retired Episcopal Priest
Louisville, Ky.
Abc: De-E?
Let me commend you on your editorial, “Will American Baptists De-escalate or Advance Evangelism?” (April 14). I know personally the three denominational men you mention there, and the article expresses well my own concern. While I am not a fundamentalist, I am concerned about what appears to be the entire evangelistic emphasis in social action.
CLEO Y. BOYD
First Baptist Church
Ann Arbor, Mich.
I am convinced that you are fighting straw men in many places in the editorial.
You are probably aware that a number of pastors (American Baptist) in New Jersey, seventy out of 170 who were invited to do so, have signed a statement of protest similar to that in your editorial. I trust that you will permit me to state very frankly my own position with regard to the American Baptist Convention’s Department of Evangelism and Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa, its leader.
I can do no better than to quote from the editorial which will appear in the May issue of the New Jersey Baptist Bulletin:
“In my personal opinion Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa is God’s man for this hour in his present position. The emphasis of evangelism today must be directed both toward winning men and women to personal commitment to Jesus Christ and toward influencing the tremendous social structures of our time—mass communications, labor, management, education, city hall, wall street, etc., etc., etc.—on behalf of our Christ and His Church. In this latter ministry our own creative, intelligent, prophetic and wonderfully Christian Dr. Morikawa is leading out both for ourselves and other Christian groups.…”
JOSEPH H. HEARTBERG
Executive Secretary
New Jersey Baptist Convention
East Orange, N. J.
Fourth-Degree Offense
Alas, you have awarded me a degree to which I am not entitled (April 28, p. 7). I suppose my friends at CHRISTIANITY TODAY, knowing that I have been a doctoral candidate at Union Seminary and seeing the term “Dr.” now appended to my name, concluded that I finally had earned the degree. Unfortunately this is not the case. I did receive a D.D. from Wheaton College last summer, but I have had to stop completely all doctoral study at Union, New York, because of the pressure of my administrative responsibilities here.
I am told that in Germany it is a prison offense to claim a degree you haven’t earned. I wonder what the American penal code says.
EDMUND P. CLOWNEY
President
Westminster Theological Seminary
Philadelphia, Pa.
Scofield Ii Revisited
Thank you for an excellent review of the revised Scofield Reference Bible (April 14). I have used it with appreciation for many years and now rejoice that it has been improved. I would rejoice more, however, if, retaining its dispensational approach to Scripture, the editorial committee had given it a more scriptural footing.
I have examined some twenty arguments for the pre-tribulation rapture without finding a single Scripture to give it support; nor have I found a jot or tittle remotely suggesting that the tribulation will be the time of God’s wrath.
JESSE TATE
Boyce, Va.
In my opinion you have used certain derogatory verbiage with regard to the King James Version. Perhaps I am in the minority (I know that I am when I talk to other Bible students) when I say that for me there is nothing more beautiful than the King James Version and I do not think that one has to be a great Bible student to understand it.
WESLEY A. STRICKLAND
Stony Brook, N. Y.
Why call the newest revision Scofield II after stating that there was a revision in 1917?
Why take a swipe at using AKJ version (text)? Some feel that this is one of the chief attractions of the Scofield Bible.
PAUL E. SHOOP, SR.
Bloomsburg, Pa.
I read your review with amazement. How in the world can anyone change a word in it unless Dr. Scofield was here to agree?
ROWENA M. HALL
Scarsdale, N. Y.
Books That Smell
Bacon said, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Were he an editor today, making some much needed regulatory discriminations, he would have to contrive a new category for the low end of his continuum. For example, “Most books can be smelled.…”
WAYNE JOOSSE
Department of Psychology
Sterling College
Sterling, Kans.
Best And Worst Films
I have read with eager interest and agreement your editorial, “Religious Films at Best and Worst” (April 28).… Your critique of Hawaii agreed with my opinion of [the] condensed section [I read] of James A. Michener’s prolific novel. I also believe Albertine Loomis’s “four basic historical distortions in the film” are in agreement with this written account. These outweigh the sections where I agreed with Michener, i.e., where American foreign missionaries made their mistakes. I speak as a son of a medical missionary.…
MARSHALL W. SMITH
Clerk of Session
Reformed Presbyterian Church
San Diego, Calif.
It is true that there were some historical distortions in this film; but this film also brought out many of the typical mistakes which the missionaries have committed in the past and even now. As Bible-quoting missionaries, many were not really interested in the native people as individuals, nor did they appreciate the native culture and aspirations in the countries which they were sent to. They were more interested in the “wonderful” missionary letters with pictures and numbers of converts to be sent home. And they preached a system of legalism and highly Westernized Christianity, oftentimes giving the impression of Western imperialism. As for an example, in August, 1868, four gunboats were sent to Yangchow in China in order to give protection to Hudson Taylor. As a Chinese Christian, I appreciate what the missionaries have done in spreading the Gospel into our land. Only by Christian grace can I forgive some of the grave mistakes which the missionaries made in foreign lands.
STEPHEN LIANG
Wheaton, Ill.
The one-sided review of the movie Hawaii disturbs me greatly. For me, I regard it as one of the best sermons I have “heard” in years. I do not wish to defend the picture as an accurate portrayal of history, nor do I wish to maintain that the drama is friendly to the evangelical Christian cause; it is certainly most antagonistic and perhaps even damaging. Yet there is a message in this picture which is painfully true. I refer to the attitude, not uncommon among professing Christians, that the soul and body are almost separate units and that it is possible to minister to the one without taking account of the other. There are too many Christians ready to preach and witness to the soul without any apparent concern for the needs of the body, without any genuine desire to help the whole individual. What this picture has done, if it has done nothing else, is to make this point abundantly and embarrassingly clear.
CALVIN D. FREEMAN
The Cleveland State University
Cleveland, Ohio
