Eutychus and His Kin: November 26, 1956

HYPERTENSION

The fall Angst Lectures by the Professor of Dialectical Theology from Zwischen den Zeiten were fabulous. Einstein didn’t touch this chap for extrapolating in another dimension. His polysyllabic prose inspired me to try a cadenced reply:

Do you find it essential to be existential
Since you’ve been up-ended in time?
Dialectical tension describes your suspension
For you dare not ignore Kierkegaard’s either/or nor
Expect to find reason or rhyme
In a life where the moment foments that sheer torment,
The crisis of being in time.
But before such deep pathos descends into bathos
And poetry drowns in a shriek,
I would venture to ask if this temporal casket,
Inner lined with red woes, is the cause of neurosis
Which we existentially seek?
As we trace all our crime to this framework of time, since
We’re for the time-being too weak.

We are told that the blame must be ours just the same though
The fall did not happen in time.
By the sheerest invention we hold fast our tension.
Sharing Adam’s declension outside this dimension
In new super-temporal time.
But in all this two-timing our ego is climbing …
Existence! So tragic-sublime!

Blaming time and existence, we keep at a distance
The guilt of primordial crime.
We are evil and covet, we sin and we love it
As did Adam before us; but Christ to restore us
Lived sinless in calendar time.
Both our fall and salvation took place in duration
In that frame of creation, that time of decision,
That daily and commonplace time …
Momentous significant time!

EUTYCHUS

HODGE PODGE

How you are going to bundle together the World Christianity of today, and unscramble it, I don’t yet see. It certainly needs doing. I only wish some Power might be given, a la Omar Khayyam, to “Shatter it to bits and then remould it nearer to our heart’s desire.” It certainly is a hodge podge today. Enclosed is my subscription.…

C. TELFORD ERICKSON

Claremont, Calif.

Your magazine seethes with intellectual dishonesty. It should have been stillborn. Maybe it will die an infant.

Why do you fundamentalists-literalists feel that you and everyone else must swallow a rotten egg every morning before breakfast in order to prove religious faith?…

DAVID C. PAUL

Kyle Methodist Church

Kyle, Texas

Read with delight your first issue and gladly become one of the pioneer supporters.… We need a good religious journal that will command respect, have weight, and be quoted. Who knows whether thou art come to the churches for such a time as this.

GEORGE MCPHERSON HUNTER

First Presbyterian Church

Mannington, W. Va.

I feel that the theological point of view which you represent is barren.…

CHARLES M. KNAPP

Almira Community Church

Almira, Wash.

A welcome corrective to the idea that true conservatism is obscurantism.… Hand in hand with the upsurge in Biblical evangelism, your periodical will contribute to a renewed and scholarly orthodoxy.

ELVIN L. CLARK

Baptist Temple Church

Louisville, Ky.

It was with exuberance that I have read the publication.… Such an impact has been in-the-need for too many years.

MISS ARDIS JOHNSON

Bryan University

Dayton, Tenn.

I readily agree to differences of opinion, but … I cannot see that Almighty God has so endowed some few—or a few thousand—people with the infallible truth … May God bless your paper that it might be a mark of true unity, and not of diversity, among the Christians of the world.

FRANK D. MEDSKER

Colstrip Community Church

Colstrip, Montana

FORMULA FOR SUCCESS

Congratulations! The 3 year subscription shows my confidence in this venture, which has been badly needed. Publish something soon that will really help us with respect to: (1) healing, (2) the cults, (3) Pealeism, (4) soulwinning. Avoid denominational controversies and promotional schemes. Stay on a scholarly level.…

JOHN KENNETH OSBORN

Rosebush, Mich.

Praise the Lord for such a publication.

WILLIAM G. NYMAN JR.

Washington, D.C.

Perhaps a paper with as wide a contributing staff as CHRISTIANITY TODAY may arrive at a solution, from the Scriptures, which would bring together the diverse and often warring elements of Fundamentalism.

ROBERT A. WILDERMAN

Woden, Iowa

Why not a column entitled “Christianity on Stamps” for the stamp collectors among us?

Philadelphia, Pa.

LOUIS A. J. MEYER

Could you run a children’s page, so that my twelve-year-old could form the habit of reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY early?

Portland, Ore.

A. C.

ANNUAL INDEX

I saw so very much of permanent value that I plan to save every copy and put it into a note book.… An index published yearly would be a big help.

LANE ADAMS

Decatur, Ga.

• For the convenience of libraries and of subscribers saving their copies, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will print an annual index of articles, editorials, reviews and special features. The first such index will appear in Volume 1, Number 26.—ED.

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