All The Best From Hugh
My personal invitation to join the Playboy Club has arrived earlier this winter. I see too they now have my home address. On the whole I’m glad about that. Hitherto my annual communication was mailed to the office of a certain evangelical society—where, I thought, such signs of my more arcane pursuits were regarded with admirable detachment.
Compiled with love for me to read with care, the assorted Playboy literature is always revealing. Take this seasonal suggestion about an infallible way to ensure that “this Christmas you’ll be three times as happy” (happy as what?), and can “treat yourself and your friends to the best Christmas present of all.”
You want to know how? Seeking soul, seek no longer. Happiness is not, as you might expect, the angelic song, and the eternal love of God become man for us. No, no. The wise of old who gave gold, frankincense, and myrrh are yesterday men, superseded, best forgotten. Autre temps, autre moeurs. In front of what the brochure modestly calls “the discerning man” is dangled a new “Triple Gift” to make Christmas memorable.
By joining the Playboy Club, a D.M. (me, for instance) will fill “days and nights with pleasure for years to come.” But still there’s more to follow. On Christmas Day I can “command the attention of a host of beautiful Bunnies,” sample other chancy diversions, and be showered with free booze to induce the Christmas spirit. Membership—and here the dazzling prose takes on a vaguely pious tone—is the “coveted symbol of the good life.” There you are, Socrates! As the song more or less says, “If anyone knows a thing or two, it’s Hugh, it’s Hugh, it’s Hugh.”
It seems churlish, even downright undiscerning, to dissociate myself from this Triple Gaffe (no, Gift), and to deplore its taste, technique, and timing. At this of all seasons the allusion to “fast rising new stars” is at best wretchedly inept, though doubtless its commercial possibilities will not escape notice when the playboys open a branch in Bethlehem.
Those in quest of the coveted symbol of the good life might be disappointed in the aforementioned triple gifts (Hugh, hedonism, houris?). They could benefit more from a literary gem contained in The Wallet of Kau Lung. A discerning man after his fashion, Ernest Bramah Smith (he’d have hit his century this year), declared that it was “a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one’s time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea-shops.”
Happy Christmas, dear longsuffering readers! May we discern the best Christmas present of all.
EUTYCHUS IV
A Quarter Disturbed
I appreciated your provocative little article on the very timely and practical subject of gluttony (“ ’Tis the Season to Be Gluttonous,” Nov. 21). It greatly disturbed me, especially the 25 per cent of me that shouldn’t be there.
If its purpose was to give a spiritual motivation for dieting, it accomplished its purpose.
KURT REDSCHLAG
Temple Baptist Church
Swan River, Manitoba
Catholic Distinctions
I have just finished reading Professor Degnan’s article “The Nonsense of Liberal Catholics” (Nov. 21). It provides a very interesting report of his observations, but I should like to point out several errors.
First, all Catholics do not belong to the Roman church. A writer should always make plain his reference to Roman Catholics when he is writing concerning that branch of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. We Anglo-Catholics consider ourselves just as Catholic as any communicant of the Roman church.
I believe that in referring to the Eucharist, Professor Degnan should have distinguished between the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence and the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation.
The comments on the subject of “reality” in the article were as vague as the objects of his criticism, paving the way for considerable doubt as to Professor Degnan’s acquaintance with the theological dogma concerning grace and the reality of God.…
Furthermore, the article is definitely in error in intimating that all Episcopalians are Protestants, for it is in this church that the largest number of Anglo-Catholics labor in America.
But I do agree with Professor Degnan that we need a “rigorous respect for the integrity of language and logic,” and beg more of the same in the pages of your magazine.
LARRY CROTHERS
Holy Trinity Church
Jackson, Miss.
Judging Policy
In the November 21 issue I see some contradiction in your statement on “The President’s Viet Nam Policy” and your statements on “Man’s Judgment.” You say that Mr. Nixon alone can make American policy decisions and that he alone will have to bear the blame for failure. And in the editorial on judgment, you state that men make errors and often draw faulty conclusions. You even say that the U. S. Supreme Court has nine judges—I assume because there is some validity in gathered opinion.
I feel that Americans have the responsibility to speak out on the important issues of the day, and to make known their positions to the elected officials of the land. Surely a representative democracy must listen to the people between election years. And I must add that the real question is not who will eventually take the blame—for it is the American people of today and of the future who will have to live or die with the result. In questions of war and death, time is extremely critical; we cannot wait three more years to correct a presidential error.
Americans who disagree must no longer remain silent. As honest Christians are we to pray for peace and then to make no effort to realize that peace on earth?
STEPHEN T. DECKARD
Hopewell, N. J.
Doing Montgomery Justice
With all due respect to the reviewer, I believe that the treatment of Where Is History Going? by John Warwick Montgomery (Nov. 21) failed to do justice to the true significance of this book. One enormous aspect of the human predicament today is “the lack of absolute perspective on the part of finite man.” The sublime beauty of the Gospel lies in its historically structured form, which Montgomery critically defends and philosophically grounds in a brilliant manner. The existential, faith-in-faith solutions of fideistic and neoorthodox positions carry no apologetic weight and misrepresent the objective veracity of divine revelation in history. In my view, Montgomery’s groundbreaking essays here represent the most promising attempt in recent times to place faith and knowledge in a constructive relationship, comparable to Pannenberg’s program in detail of scholarship, but far surpassing it in scriptural faithfulness. No thoughtful evangelical should deny himself the stimulation and sheer excitement of this book.
CLARK H. PINNOCK
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Deerfield, Ill.
Lutheran Bogeymen
I see that in a desperate effort to explain away the vote in favor of fellowship with the American Lutheran Church on the part of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, old John “Warfare” Montgomery has trotted out the standard reactionary line (Current Religious Thought, Nov. 7). Your readers must be grateful, I am sure, to know that the delegates at the convention were lulled into voting for something they really didn’t believe in by a cleverly devised program of brainwashing. Just a paragraph earlier, Montgomery snidely admonishes both right and left in the LCMS for finding bogeymen under their beds. I suggest that Montgomery is operating with one of the biggest from anyone’s dormitory.
At the end, however, readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY (which ought to be ashamed for allowing such trash to be printed in a journal devoted to the Gospel) can see Montgomery for what he is: a would-be Torquemada standing in the wings waiting for the chance to celebrate the new Missouri of his vision with an auto-de-fe. But wouldn’t it be surprising if he just happened to be elected president of Concordia Theological Seminary, Springfield, Illinois? Then we would all learn the bogeymen are for real, to our sorrow.
RICHARD E. KOENIG
Immanuel Lutheran Church
Amherst, Mass.
Dehumanity Of Man
I have been helped by many articles in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. But the issue of November 7 has a lead editorial that saddens me. The theme is the dehumanization of man in our time and the illustrations are reports of events from Russia, Eastern Europe, and China.
I believe there is a third illustration. It is the despoliation of life and property by the United States of America in Viet Nam. There is no assessment of the destruction in North Viet Nam as yet, but it is common knowledge that in addition to the widespread destruction in cities, 80 per cent of the villages in the two northern provinces of South Viet Nam have been systematically destroyed by bombing and napalm. Several months ago it was reported that already more bombs have been dropped on that little country than were dropped on Europe in the Second World War. Articles on the rules of warfare (anyone who runs is a VC) in such respected magazines as the New Yorker must sicken any Christian.
An editorial in a Christian magazine on dehumanization that can avoid mention of Viet Nam and end up in such a smug Agnew-like way, shows an insensitivity and myopia greater than that of Dean Rusk.
HARRY VER STRATE
The Reformed Church
Metuchen, N. J.
Understanding Sin
Praise God for the Layman and His Faith article (Nov. 7). We need more of this type.… Christian and non-Christian alike need to have a biblical understanding of the heinousness of sin. If God put his own Son to death because of his hate of sin, can we be any less set against sin?
Many times I wonder at the lack of concern to understand such words as confession, repentance, judgment, and salvation. They have become foreign even to Christians. Pray God will use articles such as “For Sinners Only” to awaken us to such matters.
DAVID F. GORDON
National City, Calif.
Orchestra’S Sour Note
Unless I am mistaken, I believe Marquita Moss in “Churches of Christ: Orchestrating Unity” (News, Nov. 7) sought to point out that instrumental Christian Churches/Churches of Christ had recently broken off from the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). This is certainly not true. Although many congregations that had been affiliated with the Disciples of Christ movement withdrew over Restructure and became independent congregations, the instrumental group of Christian Churches/Churches of Christ have always been independent of any hierarchy or denominational organization, and have always been autonomous in every respect. I hope this clarifies a misunderstanding that others may have also received from reading this article.
ED BURNS
Arnold Avenue Church of Christ
Prestonsburg, Ky.
Tears And Gushing Smiles
I could hardly express my appreciation for the over-all general quality of the magazine. Besides the pertinence of the leading articles, the editorials are forthright, timely, comprehensively accurate, and to the point.
Among the analytical and appropriate articles is that of John R. W. Stott, “When Should a Christian Weep?” (Nov. 7).
As an introduction to his theme, Mr. Stott rebukes the mistaken notion that Christians should be noted for their gushing smiles. He exposes a more realistic picture of the Christian’s lot as entailing both happiness and sorrow.
Nothing is more cheerful and spontaneous than the spiritual radiance of a glad heart, however, some of the strained smiles and gushing friendliness exhibited by people while in or about the churches renders an earnest Christian suspicious of motives.
DONALD O. CASSIDY
Premium, Ky.
John R. W. Stott writes a most thought-stimulating article—as always.
One statement leaves me cold however. Was Christ’s weeping at the graveside of Lazarus due to bereavement? After all, Christ was the only one who knew that Lazarus was about to “come forth.” I had always thought that his sorrow at the grave related to the unbelief around him, not to the death of Lazarus.
W. WINGER
Brethren in Christ Church
Carlisle, Pa.
