God Rest Ye Merry, Gentle Readers:
The bells of Christmas are ringing as Salvation Army lassies again appear on downtown sidewalks. But for many of them the traditional red noses and frostbitten toes are a thing of Christmas past. Instead of shivering in the cold as they jingle bells beside their kettles, many lassies now sit in heated cubicles and serve as Chrismas disc jockeys, playing the Top Ten carols for weary shoppers.
This affluent holiday scene reminds me that I should inform you of my annual gift list for religious friends. Once again my liberality is boundless.
William Sloane Coffin, Jr.—An “Uncle Sam Wants You” poster and a personal letter of greeting from Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey.
Father James Kavanaugh—The new book, The Celibate Condition and Sex, to burn in the fireplace of his honeymoon bungalow.
King/Bishop Homer Tomlinson—Another world to conquer.
Ethel Waters—A contract to give singing lessons to that self-conscious sparrow in her favorite song.
Carl McIntire—A ham radio set for dispensing the baloney he includes in attacks on non-conciliar (i.e., non-ACCC) Christians.
Joe Pyne—A pinch of salt for the biggest bag of religious nuts ever fed to the public.
Mohammed Ali (Cassius Clay)—A commission as Muslim chaplain to our Black Muslim fighting men wherever they are stationed in the inner city.
Roger Garaudy—The chair of Christian-Marxist theology at a union seminary.
Father James Groppi—A tube of Tanfastic to help make him a more acceptable protest leader of black-power mongers.
Arthur Ford—A spirited trip to the nether regions with Jayne Mansfield rather than “Fletcher” as his guide.
Harvey Cox—A case of napalm for use in securing “violence-justified” goals.
From a heart overflowing with Christmas cheer, may I, in this year of hip, express the wish that your yule will be cool and that your only hangup will be your Christmas stocking.
See you Christmas belles under the mistletoe,
EUTYCHUS III
THE BIBLE ISSUE
Thanks for the article by John Warwick Montgomery on inerrancy (“The Relevance of Scripture for Current Theology,” Nov. 10). I know many evangelicals want to discard this word because of all the controversy which surrounds it and because of many misunderstandings. But I am convinced it would be a mistake. The Roman Catholic Church with all of its new developments still uses the term regularly in order to bring out the absolute truthfulness and reliability of Scripture. The same concern was expressed by our church, the Missouri Synod, just recently when on two occasions in its last convention it reaffirmed its belief in Scripture’s inerrancy. This reaffirmation was made unanimously and resoundingly. We as a church really meant it.
ROBERT PREUS
Professor of Systematic Theology
Concordia Seminary
St. Louis, Mo.
I read the article with abhorrence.…
I do not entertain the anti-super-naturalistic view that either the demonology or eschatology (both being “faith and morals” questions) of Jesus was mistaken. Nor do I insist that his own view of cosmology was mistaken; but I do insist that both the Bible and Jesus make use of a cosmology that is an accommodation to the pre-scientific minds of the people of that time.
All of the fundamentalist attempts (though I once made them myself) to show the Bible as inerrant in matters of science are both unfounded scripturally and contradicted de facto. I personally am sick of the deceit of fundamentalist leaders with regard to this issue. For the shepherds (I exempt the sheep) it is not just a question of scholarship, but of sin.
PAUL H. SEELY
Philadelphia, Pa.
The articles on the fundamentalists defense of the Bible (Nov. 10) posed under the pretense of weighty scholarship. The actual problems of the authenticity and relevance of the Bible are not considered or discussed at all.…
When will any of the evangelical writers … begin to discuss the real problems in the use and acceptance and relevancy of the Bible to the contemporary problems of life? Those problems are ancient enough to have destroyed previous civilizations, although they may seem to be the latest of new problems never faced before. And the revealed truth of God has long been given to mankind, even though it has frequently needed much obscurantism removed from it. The Bible is a good standard by which to discover that truth, but the seeker for truth must submit himself to the Spirit of God if he expects to find the truth and to understand the truth and to apply the truth to his life.
THOMAS D. HERSEY
The Methodist Churches
Fairview, Wesley Chapel, and Moravia, Iowa
The articles of David P. Scaer (“Christ or the Bible?”) and Don Neiswender (“Scripture and Culture in the Early Church”) (Nov. 10) most significantly complemented one another. The emphasis of Neiswender that “the Church … was unwilling to receive truth from outside” the Scriptures even though it recognized the fact that S“Christian dogma … must be proclaimed in a way that is relevant to the existing philosophical climate if it is to get a hearing” needs greater emphasis in the Church today. While many critics of the Bible are busy dividing the Christ of faith from the Jesus of history or the Lord of the Scriptures (as Scaer points out), the unbelievers of this world are busy using Christian “modes of expression and thought” to win many of the world’s theological students for non-Christian beliefs. The praise of the Scriptures by those who proclaim its fallibility is a most deceptive reverse of early Christian theology and methodology. It is true that modern criticism meets unbelief on the latter’s own ground. However, it most frequently goes without its God-given battle array, namely, the Christ of Scripture, the material principle, and the Scriptures of Christ, the formal principle. The oversubjectivity of modern theological thought has only succeeded in convincing many sons of the Church to replace the armor of God with man’s true costume of total depravity. Even though Neiswender’s call “for many an Origen to reply” to today’s world may justifiably make one feel uneasy (since Origen’s theology can hardly be considered Christian in the sense of true Protestantism), the plea for Christians to meet modern man on his own ground, yet with the message of “special revelation,” cannot be stated too often.
PHILLIP B. GIESSLER
Ambler, Pa.
OF DRINK AND DOPE
Thank you for your editorials on alcohol and marijuana (Nov. 10). The title of John Wesley’s pamphlet on antinomianism [is appropriate]: “A Blow at the Root, or Christ Stabb’d in the House of His Friends.”
RICHARD NOBLE
First Methodist Church
Marinette, Wis.
I’m sure those who work in narcotics education would like to see “A Misleading Statement on Marijuana” printed or given equal time in the national news media, as much damage has been done by Mr. Goddard.
JAMES F. LANDRUM
Scottsbluff County Youth Advisory Committee,
Juvenile Court
Scottsbluff, Neb.
I object to your criticism of Alcohol Problems: A Report to the Nation (“A Wet ‘Solution’ to the Alcohol Problem”).
The problem of alcoholism in America is caused by the fact that people drink to get drunk, disregarding any taste of wine, etc.…
My son, born and raised in the United States, drinking wine at home with meals, was shocked in college to find other boys drinking anything just to get drunk. In the service as “Officer of the Day” (Navy), he wrote that he was “getting sick of playing nursemaid to the drunks” (fellow cadets). And he told me that they all had never before had access to alcohol at home.
“Legal restrictions” are of no help. No law ever prevented its transgression. Neither the Ten nor any civil or international one!
HORST RINNE
Hartville, Mo.
I wish to compliment you on the strong stand you took in favor of true temperance.…
It is most heartening to discover present-day spiritual leaders who still call drunkenness “sin,” instead of “sickness,” and believe that “the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only sure cure for alcoholism and every other sin.”
Would to God that more of today’s spiritual leaders pointed slaves of debasing habits to Christ for deliverance, instead of to man-conceived schemes of rehabilitation that are proving so woefully inadequate to heal the sin-sick soul.
NATHANIEL KRUM
Takoma Park, Md.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
The editorial, “The Specter of World Hunger” (Nov. 10), well brings out—in a low pressure way—the shortcomings of the liberals, of the conservatives, and of the rest of us.
HENRY FRANKLIN HILL
San Antonio, Tex.
SWIFT’S KICK
Congratulations to Professor Miller for a thought-provoking article on Swift’s vision of man (“The Comic-Tragic Vision of Jonathan Swift,” Nov. 10). The great satirist of Gulliver’s Travels and Tale of a Tub has long called for analysis from a Christian perspective.
For the sake of completeness, however, it would have been wise to discuss the aspect of Swift’s writing which is most difficult to reconcile with his role as a sincere Christian clergyman. I refer to his obvious desire to shock and disgust the reader with crude allusions to certain biological functions. I find it difficult to reconcile what has been referred to by some as “Swift’s excremental vision” with the noble comic-tragic vision described in Professor Miller’s article.
CALVIN L. MYRBO
Professor of English
Wisconsin State University
Platteville, Wis.
UNRIVALED PREACHING
Re: “A Plea for Expository Preaching” (The Minister’s Workshop, Nov. 10).… It has pleased God through the thing preached to sanctify those that love him, to conform them to the image of his Son.… What a lamentation, then, if, along with possible clerical fluency, the sermon is simply a spread of trashy and starvation stuff, instead of a diet of real nutriment! As to the luckless flocks, Milton struck it when he wrote in “Lycidas,” “The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.”
In general, preaching is not composed of certain pious commonplaces wrapped in a pleasing or catchy form. It is not merely telling an audience what they already know. If it were that, there is perhaps no office or function that would require less strain of intellect, less labor of preparation. But it is sometimes nobler. The sermon is meant to be arrestive, illuminative. It is meant to instruct men, to lead them into ever-enlarging views of truth that evoke richer life, truths that enclose the Gospel in its magnitude and majesty. It is meant to transform by the renewing of the mind.…
Here is where the expository sermon takes its imperial place, a sermon that exacts penetrative study, a sermon that burrows into the Holy Oracles for hidden treasure. For genuine worth it has no rival.
JOHN F. PALM
Port Charlotte, Fla.
For the past forty years I have been puzzled by one characteristic of the usual sermon.… We enter the church building for our religious service. The sanctuary is adorned … to put us in the proper frame of mind for worship. Religious symbols meet our eyes. Music is being played to evoke an emotional response. We sing a hymn. There is prayer, Scripture reading, and often special choir music.
Then, when we have carefully been brought to a peak and are ready to respond to a discourse concerning the Deity—the preacher arises and makes a crack about baseball. Or it might be about football, motoring or television, but it is guaranteed to put us back to where we were on Saturday night.…
The opening sentence follows the pattern of the commercial that comes in the middle of a baseball or football game. But let us be logical. The situation is different. During the break for the commercial, the audience tunes out mentally and heads for the refrigerator. Their minds must be caught and held.… The preacher’s congregation is not in front of the refrigerator with their mouths full of fried chicken. They are seated in pews where they can’t get away without violating the mores of two thousand years. Instead of being let down for the commercial, they have been built up for the sermon.
So please, preacher, spare us the letdown. If you’ve just gotta make that crack about baseball, save it for when the congregation is getting restless. Or, better still, forget it, and when the congregation is getting restless, announce the closing hymn.
JEAN M. JACKSON
Croswell, Mich.
BORDER’S LEGAL LINES
I object to the Israel tourism advertisement (Nov. 10). That an ad of this sort should appear in the New York Times is quite understandable, given their Zionist sympathies. But I am vexed and disappointed that it should appear in CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
There should be hesitation to run such an ad if for no other reason than that the information given is factually incorrect and misleading. Jericho, Bethlehem, and old Jerusalem are not in Israel. They are in the part of Jordan now under military occupation by the Israelis. And that is quite a different thing. The status of these cities has not been legally settled by the parties concerned, to say the least.
RICHARD P. AULIE
New Haven, Conn.
CLEVER, BUT …
Russell Chandler’s handling of “A Medium-Sized Faith” (Oct. 27) shows him to exhibit a very “medium-sized faith” himself. I must say the use of the word “medium” is very clever, but very self-righteous.…
Your magazine thus joins the lukewarm “liberals” in watering down the very best message of the New Testament, which is the fact that the soul lives—you reject some of the best evidence being found and proven. The message of eternal life in the New Testament has more relevance now than ever.…
As for faith healing, your handling of this great truth of the New Testament is equally unchristian. Just because a few bungle the idea or attempt to misuse it does not undercut the great fact and truth of its working. Some of the grandest discoveries made in our time show the power of spiritual healing, not only of souls but also of bodies. When you find persons healed through prayer in your own congregation, you know it works!
If the “conservatives” and “liberals” both throw out all reference to healing and the faith in prayer—for both are psychic—then what do you have left in your New Testament? Just the margins of the pages?
ROBERT VINSON GILDNER
Immanuel Methodist Church
Des Moines, Iowa
The flippant style of the report leaves one with the impression that this is a little disconcerting but rather harmless matter. Anyone who would “ridicule” spiritism and spiritualism and would leave an utterance like “The demonic is always very close” unchallenged, has no idea of the background of spiritism. The tremendous world-wide increase in occultism and superstition is based, in part, on its religious aspect, offering man an ersatz for genuine Christian discipleship. At the same time it is a fog-screen and a maneuver of diversion used by the enemy of God. In any case he is the winner, succeeding in his masterful disappearing act, or, if discovered, displaying himself as a harmless, impotent, and ridiculous Popanz—until credulous man discovers the crushing grip from which there is no escape. Isn’t it the Christian’s duty to tear the mask off his face, instead of laughing merrily at his masquerade?
YOLANDA N. ENTZ
Koblenz, Germany
AVERTING AMBIGUITY
Your very brief news report (“Protestant Panorama,” Oct. 27) about Professor Harold Dekker and the Christian Reformed Church … could be interpreted to suggest: (1) that Dekker denies that only some people are saved and, further, that he denies that those who are saved are the objects of divine election and special effectual grace; (2) that the Christian Reformed Church and its synod, by being “mild,” are about to scuttle the biblical and classical Reformed teaching on those two matters. In both cases, the opposite is true.
No doubt, the synod’s reprimand was “mild” precisely because, adhering to the classical Reformed position in these matters, it was impressed to a considerable extent with Dekker’s judgment that “the doctrine of limited atonement as commonly understood and observed in the Christian Reformed Church impairs the principle of the universal love of God.” (I have underlined a significant part of his position omitted in your quotation.) That is to say, the synod apparently recognized that more needs to be said than what has been “commonly understood” in the church on these matters, and believed also that discussions of the crucial and difficult matters raised by Dekker ought to go on—provided such discussions are not left “abstract and ambiguous.”
N. H. BEVERSLUIS
Ada, Mich.
GUESS AGAIN!
I have greatly enjoyed your column, Eutychus III, and have smiled and winced as he exposed us in a little bit of the truth. If it is not too early to venture a guess, I would suggest that his name is Thomas Howard.
CARL E. ABRAHAMSEN, JR.
Millington Baptist Church
Millington, N. J.
“Eutychus I” was a delight.
“Eutychus II” was so-so.
“Eutychus III” is crude, vulgar, and cruel.
VINCENT REES BROWNE
Rector
Grace Church, Episcopal
Ridgway, Pa.
