WHY PHILADELPHIA?
Would you like to put Philadelphia
Up tight one night?
The ring-around-a-rosy in the middle
of the night.
Yes, we all should do the Ring-
Around-a-Rosy Rag.
—ARLO GUTHRIE
I spent a week in Philadelphia one day.
Have you heard about the contest that offered a week in Philadelphia as first prize? Second prize was two weeks in Philadelphia.
Over the years Philadelphia has suffered a reputation as the uptight capital of joylessness. I’ve done a good fifteen minutes of research into this and have discovered the reason. Philly’s reputation as Dullsville stems directly from its reputation for morality, which probably results from its Quaker origins.
H. L. Mencken once sniffed that Philadelphia was the most Pecksniffian city in America (Pecksniffian: “hypocritically affecting high moral principles”). Its morality, real or pretended, obviously makes the city a dull place.
We’ve all seen the fun and spontaneity of a group stifled by the unexpected intrusion of moralistic precepts. As Robert Burns put it:
Morality, thou deadly bane,
Thy tens o’ thousands thou
hast slain.
We need the follies and foibles of human nature to add spice to life. All you have to do to prove this to yourself is to answer a few questions.
Who is more interesting and appealing, Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck? Donald, of course, because his ill-tempered, irascible, profane manner witnesses to a humanity that we share. The guileless Mickey Mouse has given his name to all that is jejune.
Or to put it another way, would you rather be stranded on a desert isle with Cotton Mather, that austere epitome of moral rectitude who would no doubt be a fountain of edifying instruction, or with Chaucer, whose bawdy sense of humor would fill the days with riotous laughter? Not much of a choice, is it?
A cartoon in some magazine showed Diogenes, lamp in hand, confiding to a friend, “I found an honest man. He was a terrible bore.” Perfection is a terrible burden to bear in another person.
However, just for the record, it should be stated that twelve men mostly good and true testify that they actually met a perfect man and that he was anything but joyless and dull. Where do you suppose Philadelphia went wrong?
ORCHIDS UNDERCUT
Orchids to J. Kenneth Grider for his strong article, “Christmas Method, Christmas Meaning” (Dec. 3).
However, this solid and commanding statement of the Virgin Birth of Christ is undercut by his reference to Karl Barth.
When Barth, along with others, says that all Christians are “virgin born,” the unique birth of Christ loses its uniqueness. When Barth holds that the Virgin Birth merely points to the Incarnation, or that it is connected with the Incarnation as a sign is to the thing signified, then God is no longer the “With Us God.”
Christmas gave us Immanuel, but under Barth’s dialectic he has vanished. There is no room for Incarnation in the inns of neo-orthodoxy.
Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Sonora, Calif.
RING THE (WARNING) BELLS
Anent your December 17 article ‘ “Revival in Canada”: “The generation gap never had a chance”—glory, hallelujah! “Love prevailed”—absolutely wonderful! “Denominational barriers dissolved”—could be equally praiseworthy. “Doctrinal differences were ignored”—here warning bells should be ringing. Repeatedly in the past, revivals that promised rich blessing eventuated in robbing the churches of their faithfulness and hence of their strength just by this Satanic device of ignoring doctrine.
Doctrinal differences exist only because there is both true doctrine and false doctrine. To ignore such differences, attractive though it is and commendable as it may seem, is to ignore truth. The church is called upon to be the pillar and ground of the truth. Salvation is of the truth (John 8:32; 14:6); sanctification is by truth (John 17:17).
Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Westfield, N. J.
CONVERSANT, CONVICTED, CORRECTED
Thanks for doing an excellent job in putting together the news item, “High School Scene: What Prayer Amendment?” (Dec. 3). It is evident that you are conversant with the contemporary scene and getting out where the action is. I commend you for it.
You’ve put me under conviction. I wish with all my heart that we did have 17,000 Campus Life clubs in as many high schools. That and more is our goal in the days ahead, but the goal has not been achieved to date. The more accurate figure would be clubs in approximately 2,000 schools.
President
Youth for Christ International
Wheaton, Ill.
• And Young Life has 450 staffers reaching 75,000 youths through 900 clubs, rather than the figures stated.—ED.
SOUTHERN BAPTIST SPEARHEAD
The news story, “Turning On to Jeshua” (Dec. 17), includes the statement, “Most mainline denominations have now quietly closed their Jewish evangelism offices.”
This statement is not true about Southern Baptists.… The Reverend William B. Mitchell has spearheaded efforts for Jewish evangelism among Southern Baptists for more than fifteen years. These efforts have been intensified recently.
Secretary
Department of Interfaith Witness
Southern Baptist Convention
Atlanta, Ga.
FROM COVER TO COVER
Hurrah for your December 17 issue! “C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Christmas” by Ken Futch was wonderful. I wish I could send that out in Christmas-card form.… It would make an ideal Christmas message to read at Christmas gatherings. Eutychus was unusually good also. Many thanks for your magazine. I’m a layman, but read every issue from cover to cover.
MRS. WILLIAM ALFORD
Elkhorn, Nebr.
A NOT SO CURIOUS REPLY?
Not so curious, perhaps, is Mr. Harrelson’s reply to my article on the Thirty-Nine Articles (Eutychus and His Kin, Dec. 17); it is easier to impugn a writer than to enter into serious discussion of what he writes.
Professor of Church History and Historical Theology
Fuller Theological Seminary
Pasadena, Calif.
TIMELY TREATISE
The article on Herbert W. Armstrong by Joseph Martin Hopkins (Dec. 17) was timely and needed.
Salt Lake City, Utah
The article caused me some serious concern. I do not wish to question the integrity of Mr. Hopkins, but I do wish to challenge his scholarship and sense of propriety. As a Seventh-day Adventist Christian I hold firmly to all the cardinal doctrines of Christianity as presented in the Bible. Most emphatically I believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus and believe in the eternal pre-existence, virgin birth, sinless life, atoning death, bodily resurrection on the first day of the week, ascension, and return of Christ.
Two doctrines listed by brother Hopkins as “deviant” may be “deviant” from his theology but not from the Scriptures or the historical Christian position; the seventh-day Sabbath and non-immortality. However, this did not disturb me so much as the subtle way in which he classed Seventh-day Adventists as a cult. His references to them in connection with Armstrong, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses is guilt by association. I feel this was totally unfair and not worthy of the best ability of this man. Perhaps his knowledge of Seventh-day Adventists could be broadened by getting his information first hand from church leaders in good standing.
Associate Chaplain
New England Memorial Hospital
Stoneham, Mass.
In his criticism of Herbert Armstrong and the Radio Church of God Hopkins includes the immortality of the soul as one of “Christianity’s classic doctrines.” Apparently Hopkins has never squarely faced Oscar Cullmann and the “radical difference between the Christian expectation of the resurrection of the dead and the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul.”
Cullmann further states:
The fact that later Christianity effected a link between the two beliefs and that today the ordinary Christian simply confuses them has not persuaded me to be silent about what I, in common with most exegetes, regard as true; and all the more so, since the link established between the expectation of the “resurrection of the dead” and the belief in the “immortality of the soul” is not in fact a link at all but renunciation of one in favor of the other [Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?].
To put the record straight, immortality of the soul is one of Plato’s classic doctrines. The opposite view—the resurrection—is Paul’s view. The two are irreconcilable.
Book Editor
Pacific Press Publishing Association
Mountain View, Calif.
Jesus I know, Paul I know, Herbert Armstrong I know—but who are you?
First Church of the Two Testaments
Dallas, Tex.
MISPLACED PROFESSOR
I appreciate your reference (“Conscience: Good or Bad Guide?,” Jan. 7) to my editorial on authority and conscience in the fall issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies.
Your editorial correctly states that I am an associate editor of the Journal, but incorrectly describes me as a Catholic. I am actually a Baptist minister presently serving on the faculty of a Catholic school, namely Villanova University, where I offer courses in ecumenism and Protestant theology. From 1957 to 1968 I was a member of the faculty of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, where Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, well known to readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, now teaches.
Villanova University
Villanova, Pa.
LACKING TRANSFORMATION
I was pleased to see that you are beginning to cover the ground of the myriad of books coming out about the Jesus-people movement (Books in Review, “Getting It All Together,” Jan. 7).… I think that he misses the point completely on The House of Acts. Those of us who live in the locale have an advantage over the reviewer. To me The House of Acts is a story of a conventional minister with conventional Baptist attitudes who finds the need of changing his own life and his own ministry to meet the need of these converted hippies. I think the transformation in his attitudes is apparent in the reading of this book. One thing which is often overlooked is that the Jesus-people movement began with the conversion of Ted Wise, Danny Sands, and the hundreds of other young people that they were able to point toward Christ.
Beth Sar Shalom Hebrew Christian Fellowship
Corte Madera, Calif.
MERELY THE MODERATOR
Carl F. H. Henry’s reflections on “The Christian Work Ethic” (Footnotes, Jan. 7) arising from his attendance and participation at the recent annual meeting of the Conference on Faith and History stands in need of correction on one matter. Ralph A. Carey of Spring Arbor College, Michigan, not I, delivered the very lucid analysis of the Horatio Alger myth, to which Dr. Henry refers. I merely moderated the session at which Carey read his paper, a session which Dr. Henry attended.
Professor of General Education
San Jose Bible College
San Jose, Calif.
