I want to express my appreciation for the several articles concerning the theory and practice of communism, and their relation to the Christian faith (April 13 issue). My elderly grandparents, who are leaders of their local church in China, stated in their letters that life has become progressively more unbearable than before. Grandmother is now forced to cook for a community dining hall, while grandfather has to attend scheduled indoctrination classes. Your articles should dispel many misconceptions in this country concerning the real nature of Marx-Leninism.
[Identity withheld]
Washington, D. C.
Your issue of April 13 reached a new all-time low in Christian reporting and commentary. I deliberately accuse you of being an utter traitor to Jesus Christ.… You do not bring justice to any man by spitting on him! Yet this is the course you would propose we continue in regard to many millions of Orientals. I find no compassion or sense in your stand.
Western Knoll Congregational Church
Los Angeles, Calif.
Your choice of men “who have earned the right to speak” on the subjects of peace and the capitalist-communist issue is revolting to anyone who calls himself an evangelical Christian.
How you could ever hope to write a significant issue dealing with the question of “peace” by mustering a retired army general, a State Department representative, and others committed as a primary aim, to the destruction of Communism, is beyond me. To think there was not even included one representative of modern pacifism.
San Anseimo, Calif.
Having heard my old friend, Walter Judd, again yesterday speak to the clergy in Pittsburgh and say that he thinks the world is going to be free or Communist within our life time, and having just got a group of young laymen started on the basis of concern for the direction in which this nation is going (we call them Men For Freedom Through Faith), I am very deeply troubled by the kind of blind sentimentalism to which you refer.… Your position is vastly sounder than that of The Christian Century, and I am so thankful to you for taking it.
Calvary Episcopal Church
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Having been born, reared, and educated in Russia, and as public school teacher, having personally observed the rise and development of Bolshevism, I ought to know something about the nature, purpose, and aim of present day communism. I must attest that every word and warning of Fred C. Schwarz in “Can We Meet the Red Challenge?” is certainly true, and should be heeded and responded to by every sincerely believing Christian throughout the world. Perhaps the most appalling truth mentioned in the article is the fact of the amazing widespread ignorance and unforgivable blindness of the majority of American Christians, including some of the highest influential leaders, who almost deliberately close their minds and senses in refusing to recognize the existing threat and peril of this most pernicious of anti-Christian movements since the beginning of times. Why can’t we see what is going on before our very eyes and how can any of us be so blind and indifferent?
Christ Lutheran Church
(U.L.C.A.) Wisner, Neb.
Dr. Schwarz’s article is grand. Yet he talks about “communism” when he and you must know that there isn’t any Communist nation, but there is a mighty socialist empire, with the central committee in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ capital of Moscow.
Westminster Hill Ch. (Congregational)
Canterbury, Conn.
Dr. Schwarz’ article … would be valuable to give to many ignorant and wavering Christians and ministers.
Central Baptist
Dayton, Ohio
THE EMPTY TOMB
I think Dr. Smith misses something important in his argument (Mar. 30 issue).… The empty tomb from which [Christ] rose is only accessory evidence after the fact of the Resurrection. The prime evidence is the resurrected Jesus himself. Surely primitive Christianity did not have as its igniting spark such belabored reasoning as this article presents, but rather the encounter of the disciples with their risen Lord after his death and burial.
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Saint James Memorial Church
Pittsburgh, Pa.
PROPHETIC INSIGHT
Just after having read your article “The Resurgence of Evangelical Christianity” (Mar. 30 issue), I had occasion to turn to the preface of J. Gresham Machen’s The Virgin Birth of Christ. With true prophetic insight he tells of the very resurgence of biblical Christianity which we may be on the threshold of today: “The author is not, indeed, inclined to accept the dictum of John Herman Randall and John Herman Randall, Jr., when from the point of view of those opposed to all traditional Christianity, they say (Religion and the Modern World, 1929, p. 136): ‘Evangelical orthodoxy thrives on ignorance and is undermined by education.…’ He makes bold to think that the scholarly tradition of the Protestant Church is not altogether dead even in our day, and he looks for a glorious revival of it when the narrowness of our metallic age gives place to a new Renaissance.” Machen wrote these words in 1932!
Calgary, Alta.
I have been amazed and delighted with CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I am an Anglican Catholic, and I have always looked out on pale, liberal, humanistic, unbelieving Protestantism with real distaste. Frankly, I did not believe, before I began to see your magazine, that there were enough Protestants in the country who really believed the classical doctrines of Christianity sturdily enough to support a national periodical. Your articles and editorials and the letters responsive to them have quite opened my eyes. One sees evidence in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, of course, of the great gulf fixed, as always, between Catholicism and Protestantism on the doctrines of the Church, the Ministry, and the Sacraments. This has always been very serious, and still is. But when you deal with the Incarnation, the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection—oh, it is so fine to know that there are Protestants who really believe the Christian religion!
The Church of Our Saviour
Milton, Mass.
The resurgence of the Christian faith is everywhere evident today. CHRISTIANITY TODAY is one of the best things which has happened in 40 years. I am an old-timer and I watched with sorrow the decline of the faith. So far had the church fallen that one who believed the Bible was called a “bibliolater!” What blasphemy!…
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Those who have their spiritual eyes open today will stand by and uphold your Bible-honoring publication. I have enjoyed every issue of it.
Yoder Presbyterian Church
Yoder, Wyo.
I have an observation to make with regard to your preference for the word evangelicalism over fundamentalism. In your issue of September 16, 1957, (and in subsequent issues as well) you clearly point out the unfortunate associations which have accrued to the term fundamentalism. Most reasonable people will agree that your observations were in large part correct. However, I feel that you lay yourself wide open to a charge of special pleading by your failure to note the disadvantages accompanying a general usage of the term evangelical. Certainly, you must be aware of the fact that to millions of nominal Christians here in Europe, the term evangelical is simply a synonym for the word Protestant. In fact, inquiry as to a man’s religious affiliation elicits either Katholisch or Evangelisch as a reply.
Further, you deplore the fact that the word fundamentalism does not possess biblical background. However, I believe that here again something is being overlooked. It seems to this observer that it is purely an accident of language that the Greek euaggelion was transliterated—and is used in this form not only in English, but in German, French, and other modern languages—while themelios was translated. The Vulgate uses fundamentum in 1 Corinthians 3:10–12 and elsewhere in referring to foundations.… Certainly, nothing could be more detrimental to your work as outlined in various editorials than a senseless quibble as to why one should try to place evangelicalism on a more respected level and why fundamentalism is not worth upgrading!
Kinder-Evangelisations-Bewegung Supt. in Deutschland
Frankfurt Am Main, West Germany
MARTYRDOM DISOWNED
Mrs. John Osborne’s “Ten Commandments” for ministers’ wives (News, Apr. 13 issue) is another of those offerings which point out the supposed martyrdom of women who chose to marry clergymen.… For the whole list of ten … I would like to substitute one. “Thou shalt strive to live in a spirit of fellowship with your Lord and Master, seeking a close communion and sense of consecration to Him.” Only as we find … joy in fellowship and love, can the problems that beset us … [be] overshadowed by the satisfaction of serving Christ.
Central City, Neb.
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MUTENESS IN THE CRISIS
Can you tell me where a Christian can go to hear the prophetic word interpreted? Most of our ministers today are as mute as the Statue of Liberty when it comes to interpreting Daniel, Ezekiel or Revelation in terms of the world-stirring events of the past half-century. Has God no definite message to us from these great books? Has He left us in the dark concerning the mobilization of the largest anti-Christian forces in all history, that threatens Christendom?
Mendota, Ill.
WHENCE THIS OCULIST?
Will reader Alfred H. Fowlie (March 30 issue) who is “convinced that man is not depraved, fallen, or sinful,” please give us the name of the oculist who prescribed his rose-tinted glasses?
He speaks of being a “truth sharer” and in the next line says “we have not found the truth.” How can one share what he has not found? O consistency, thou art a jewel!
His concept of Christ—“absurd.… a man no more, no less” and his own job based upon a “resolve to become a minister” make me ever the more grateful for Christ Jesus, my Saviour, Lord, and Master, and my own sense of mission and high calling.
Middletown, Pa.
What I can’t understand about Unitarianism is: How do Unitarians determine what parts of the Bible to accept or reject? I find nothing in the Bible that insults intelligence. With God all things are possible. If one believes in God why can’t one just as easily believe in supernatural occurences such as the virgin birth of Jesus? After all, God is supernatural.
Religion Ed.
Birmingham Post-Herald
Birmingham, Ala.
Universalist Myles D. Blanchard’s observation … that “it is no more humane for God to demand the smell and sight of Jesus’ blood in order that he might be appeased than it is for God to use some bears to devour pesky children,” brought to mind a few verses of 1 Corinthians (1:21–25): “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
Edmonton, Alta.
MODERN PREACHING
I have just finished a course in preaching at one of our oldest New England seminaries. It was a great disappointment. Not having been for many years a student in theological schools, I was all ears to take in what was being said and suggested.
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I was naive enough, I confess, to expect that today students would be taught how to preach the Bible. As I entered the room for final examinations, about 15 students were discussing and criticizing one of the textbooks used in the course. With the exception of one man, all were heaping wholehearted disgust and disappointment upon this text. I recalled a line in the last chapter: “As in the preceding chapter, there will be no attempt made here to set forth the content of the preacher’s message.” The last chapter deals with social and economic issues. Yet the whole book, written by a great preacher, did nothing to tell a young theological student how to preach the Word of God. The course itself, given by one of the masters in the field of preaching, did not discuss how to set forth the Word of God. Indeed the Bible was always secondary to the preacher’s own insight.
A few days later I was asked to address a meeting of the Worcester Congregational Ministers’ Association on “biblical preaching.” In the discussion that followed nearly all echoed the words of the first speaker, President Dr. Harold Bentley of Worcester Junior College: “Brethren we might as well admit it, we had almost no training in seminary on preaching the Bible; at least, I did not have it.”
Pascal kept a document sewed up in his jacket, not found until after his death, which was an account of his vision or mystical experience. In the vision, which brought about his conversion, he saw that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ was Deum meum et Deum vestrum. Whatever religious renaissance there is in our world today, it is an awakening to this truth, that my God and our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath spoken to us in his Holy Word.
Both Karl Barth and Bultmann have turned to the Scriptures, and their followers are primarily concerned for the Word of God. Cullmann and those who might be called part of the present biblical realism movement see biblical history and Christian theology as identical. In my humble opinion as students listen to Richard Niehbur …, Paul Minear, Dr. Piper …, Stauffer, Hoskyns and others thinking along these lines they will be concerned to know how to preach the Word of God.
Preaching the Word of God is certainly a different thing from what countless students are being taught in preaching classes. First of all it is not taking a text that suggests something to you and going off on a skyrocket sermon of your own ideas. It is presenting to your people exactly what the passage means, which you, with the aid of dictionary and commentary and led by the Holy Spirit, believe it to be saying. It is asking not what does this suggest, but what is the Word of God for us in this passage itself. Second, biblical preaching is presenting the subject from the point of view of the Bible. It is not bringing our philosophy to the Bible but listening to the Bible itself. Third, correct Bible preaching is to take a text and see how this text reflects the world of the Bible. To preach the Bible therefore, one must have a biblical theology. Fourth, biblical preaching is the preaching of Christ. The Bible tells us of God’s great historic purpose which centers in Christ and focuses upon Christ. If the Gospel is preached by workmen that needeth not to be ashamed, the hungry sheep will look up and be fed the bread of life.
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There is hardly a seminary in New England today that does not have on the faculty strong spokesmen for the Gospel. The Good News of God in some measure is being presented. But hardly any of these seminaries are equipping students to preach the Word of God. The Bible is not being given its place. There will be no revival in Protestantism so long as students stand around in seminaries disappointed because they do not know how to proclaim that message, “Today is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.”
First Church
Sterling, Mass.
STATEMENT OF A DILEMMA
In spite of all I have read and shared and experienced in the healing ministry, I have a basic dilemma which remains unresolved. More important than physical healing is spiritual healing; that is, the bringing of a person into a right relationship with God through repentance for sins and faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.
An important principle, of course, is that of entire relinquishment of the sick one to God. Here, however, is the dilemma. Prayers for and by the sick should be positive and expectant. Scripture teaches this. Yet, some expect physical healing and do not receive it. There must be subsequent disappointment. On the other hand, where sickness is of a very critical nature and the doctor can offer no medical remedy, I usually face frankly the implications of the situation with the sick one and his family. We come to the attitude where we so accept the principle of relinquishment that we are prepared either for restoration to life here or final healing in the life hereafter. Here, however, the dilemma is again sharp. How can a person pray positively for physical healing with the mental reservation that the sick one may not be physically healed but alternatively taken home to be ‘with the Lord’?
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I am seeking an approach to the sick and to God which will be comprehensive. Thus I come to my main question. [Is there] … an outlook that combines all that is best in approach to God and in prayers for the sick, and at the same time avoids the dangers of disappointment and even disillusionment?
First Baptist
Kenora, Ont.
GLADSOME SERVICE
You have done and are doing an unparalleled service.
Monmouth, Ill.
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C.S. Lewis recommended discernment over diatribes in exactly the moments we’re most eager to indulge in critique.
