THOMAS AQUINAS NEVER WASHED SOCKS
I was helping my wife fold the clothes still warm from the dryer. I had piled the socks to one side to sort and match them after the larger stuff was taken care of.
With some diligence I managed to get together seven pairs but was left with five unmatched socks.
“Where’s the rest of the wash?” I asked my wife.
“That’s it,” she replied.
“It can’t be,” I protested. “I’ve got five unmatched socks.”
“Happens all the time,” she responded.
“What’ll I do with them?”
“This,” she said, opening a drawer filled with mateless socks and tossing them in.
“What do you mean it happens all the time?”
“I mean I can put twelve pairs of socks in the washer and get out nine pairs and seven unmatched socks. Happens all the time.”
“That’s physically impossible!” I said. “If that were true it would bring into question the dependability and regularity of the universe.”
“I believe in the regularity of the universe,” she countered. “I regularly put in matched socks and regularly get out unmatched socks.”
“That’s not the kind of regularity I’m talking about. Let me explain it simply.”
“Don’t be patronizing,” she riposted. “If you’re going to become a male chauvinist you can just forget the whole thing. And by the way, what law says that I am charged with the responsibility for the family wash anyhow?”
Refusing to be sidetracked by peripheral matters, I continued, “What I’m trying to say is that the regularity of the universe is one point of the theistic apologetic. If you put in matched socks and get out unmatched socks that means the universe is not dependable, and where does that leave Thomas Aquinas?”
“Thomas Aquinas had his experience and I have mine,” she responded with unassailable accuracy.
“You don’t test theology by experience,” I pointed out. “It’s the other way around.”
“Correct theology doesn’t make matched socks out of unmatched ones,” she said, eyeing me coldly.
Experience, I have concluded, looms large in the formulation of personal belief. And that’s not altogether bad. One fellow, when told that his experience did not conform to orthodox theology, said simply, “One thing I do know: I was blind and now I see.”
THE CHILDREN UNDER COVERAGE
Your coverage of the Children of God (“Where Have All the Children Gone?,” Nov. 5) is the finest piece of reporting I have ever read in a Christian publication. Congratulations.
Editor
Decision
Minneapolis, Minn.
ON COUNTING THE HOURS
I regret that an editorial change in my review “Old Wine in New Bottles” (Books, Oct. 8) makes it appear that I (rather than the translator) believe that the Gospel of John used a different system of counting the hours of the day from the Synoptic Gospels. This is not my position, since all the available evidence shows that there was only one system of counting the hours of the day at that time, and that was to number them from sunrise. The conjecture that the Gospel of John used a system like the modern one arose in order to explain the difference between John 19:14 and Mark 15:25 concerning the hour of the Lord’s crucifixion.
Setauket, N. Y.
MISPLACED HEADQUARTERS
For a number of years I have … appreciated the unbiased attitude of the editors and contributors.
However, I would like to correct a statement made by James S. Tinney (“Black Origins of the Pentecostal Movement,” Oct. 8). He states that “The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel which has headquarters in Azusa.” This is incorrect, as the headquarters are, and always have been, in Los Angeles.
Also concerning the statement that “Pentecostalism” is a “black faith,” I wish to state that my parents received this experience in 1906 in Kilsythe, Scotland, under the ministry of a rector of the Church of England named Pastor Boddy—who had never been to Azusa Street nor any other place in the United States to my knowledge.
Assoc. Pastor
First Foursquare Church
Santa Maria, Calif.
LOVE, FAITH, ENERGY
If there is one man whose work has been of the greatest encouragement as well as apologetic value to me during my years at UC Berkeley and now as part of what the mass media has dubbed the “Jesus Movement” it has to be John Warwick Montgomery. As a history major whose M.A. thesis was titled “Contemporary Christian Philosophy of History” with a full chapter devoted to [him], I have devoured his many volumes as fast as he has released them.
I must confess, then, my sadness at reading his “Neither Marx Nor Jesus” (Current Religious Thought, Oct. 8). For the precise, learned theologian to stoop to the same level of overgeneralization and unkind insinuation as Revel himself was at the least disappointing. Revel’s remarks about “Jesus freaks” were centered on his shallow and insufficient knowledge of the Christian World Liberation Front in Berkeley and our underground paper, Right On. Anyone who has read Right On in recent months and been aware at all of CWLF activities—the latest being a new Liberation University in Berkeley, a youth hostel, and work for the Prince of Peace at the November 6 Peace March—will see that for us Jesus is hardly to be limited to “a substitute for alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity” (is that bad anyway?), that we hardly advocate a “vague Jesus-mysticism,” that we do strive to make those “practical applications,” and that we are in no sense antithetical to Mark Hatfield and his fine testimony.
I remind [Montgomery] that he has argued that the answer to the problem of defective or deficient Christianity is not to throw out Christianity but to judge it and reform it by the biblical norms. Similarly, I ask him not to throw out the thousands of “Jesus freaks” and “street Christians” but to praise the Father for all the returning prodigals, run down the road to embrace them, and then lovingly, faithfully, and energetically work for reformation and growth among us, his fellow-workers for Jesus the Lord and Liberator.
Co-editor
Right On
Berkeley, Calif.
REPUTATION AND RHETORIC
Your editorial “The Amish in Court” (Oct. 22) is a surprising statement coming from a journal which has a reputation for so zealously defending religious liberty. The startling assertion that “religious convictions are not per se inviolable” appears more like the liberal rhetoric of accommodation than the strict constructionism we have come to expect from CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
The case is indeed important. Not primarily for the Amish, because they will follow their conscience whatever the court says (they are not even fighting the case—other interested parties are doing that), but because if the Amish are not free to practice their own faith, none of us are! It is worth recalling that the tradition of elementary education began in the religious community. Later it was taken over by the government.… Various studies have shown the superiority of Amish education with regard to both basic skills and vocational training. No one needs to add to the literature of the failures of American public education. In such a setting, perhaps we should be asking what we can learn from the Amish approach to education rather than to destroy one of the few authentic educational experiences which continue to challenge us.
Executive Secretary
Peace Section
Mennonite Central Committee
Akron, Pa.
Your stand against freedom of religion in the Amish case is disturbing to say the least. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that education is a parental responsibility and the state has no right to usurp this perogative. You would release Amish teen-agers from God’s command to obey their parents but not in favor of freedom. They would in a very real sense become children of the state and be forced against their will to attend a purely secularistic public school shot through with anti-Christian influences.… Scores of … objectionable situations prevail in the public schools, where everything religious is outlawed, including voluntary corporate prayer or Bible reading. Many Christian parents who reluctantly elect to send their children to public schools do so with serious apprehensions. Your editorial recognizes that this “brainwashing” (my word) process of public education will probably undermine the religious heritage of the Amish child and cause him to leave it. Do you really endorse this as a proper function of the government?
It appears to us that you have elevated constitutional interpretation above biblical authority and subordinated religious values to educational achievements. Notwithstanding any serious reservations a parent may have, you argue that no religious consideration could ever justify the excusing of a child from education in a public school. Is the difference of one or two more years of formal training under the most aggravated circumstances all that important?
General Secretary
Christian Servicemen’s Fellowship
Washington, D. C.
JEAN PAUL—FRENCH OR GERMAN?
Calvin Miller in his article “Christianity and the Existential Imagination” (Oct. 22) has made a serious mistake in one of his examples of so-called existentialist fiction. The heart-rending story of a Christ who cannot find his heavenly father in the celestial realms above and therefore is an orphan like the rest of us comes from the German writer Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (1763–1825), not Jean Paul Sartre. Richter, whose name was often shortened to Jean Paul, was a powerfully imaginative romanticist, who contributed to a stream of eighteenth-century literature that might justly be called proto-existentialist. “Bleak” seems much too mild a term, and Thielicke’s lengthy exposition of the work in his book Nihilism explores many of its features of cosmic horror and dread.
It would be a shame if Sartre were to be credited with such superdramatic imagery of atheism and nihilism since his crass depiction of God as a hindrance to selfhood (see his The Devil and the Good Lord [1960]) is very pitiful and minor-league by comparison.
Professor of Religion and Philosophy
Eastern Baptist College
St. Davids, Pa.
• Professor Shinn is right—and so was the author’s manuscript, until we edited in the mistake. We’re sorry.—ED.
THE VIBES IN PLAY
I was sorry that your valued contributor J. D. Douglas in his short newspiece (“Lighting Moral Darkness,” Oct. 22) failed to bring out the tremendous spiritual enthusiasm of the crowd of (mainly young) people who packed central London on 25th September. The Trafalgar Square rally was intended as a political demonstration—and so it was. But the fervour of the young people wanting to say that “Christ is the answer” spilled over into the political event, was perpetuated in the march of witness that gummed up traffic in the centre of the city for two hours, and came to a climax at the Hyde Park rally.
I believe that evangelism as well as Christian social concern in this country has had a tremendous fillip from this gathering of Christians of so many different kinds, not only in London on 25th September but also at the beacon-lighting ceremonies earlier in the week.… Your lead editorial, “England Awaits the Word,” had a depressing analysis of the present state of play in church unity discussions in England. While these negotiations grind on, please let your readers know that other balls are in much more active play. As the young people at the Festival of Light might say, “The vibes are coming through well here.” Praise the Lord for it too.
General Secretary
Evangelical Alliance
London, England
