Eutychus and His Kin: November 7, 1960

PROGRESS IN PROCESS

Now I saw in my dream a great globe in the heavens, and within it were many chambers and courts, and I saw Christian knocking at a door on which there was written, Navigation. Keep Out. Suddenly the door opened.

Professor Neinstein: You again! Oh, come in.

Christian: Forgive my importunity, but I am seeking the city of the King, and I must know if that be your destination. They say you alone chart the course.

They entered the room together, and sat near a wall in which strange lights glowed, and from which there came sounds as of the purring and growling of beasts.

Professor: Destination! What a nostalgic term! In the early days of space flight interplanetary ships had destinations, but even then men had learned to stress process rather than goals. Since technology has made cosmic ships completely self-sustaining, a destination is quite needless.

Christian: Can you mean that we are bound nowhere, like a wandering star in darkness forever?

Professor: What earthy language you use! You really must become an informant for one of our research groups. But surely you find this a happy ship. Our last complete renovation eliminated all shadow and improved the tranquilizer distribution in the air conditioning.

Christian: I know not what power grips these smiling folk who never laugh or weep, but they have not read this Book.

Professor: Your antique book can be stored by our electronic pluvaric file if it is not already recorded. You must excuse me. I must give our guidance system directional instruction.

Christian: Direction, sir? But said you not that we have no destination?

Professor: Surely you don’t confuse the two? At present we are establishing direction in relation to a solar orbit. Here, take this memo to the Delta group office. I believe you’ll adjust well to their structure. They have been the leading group in our recent directional elections. Your persistent concern could find a desirable outlet in their group dynamics. They have been discussing the inauguration of a chaplain role, and you project a superb father image.

Now I saw Christian hasten away, singing as he went:

The wanderers in goalless flight,

Descend the pit of soulless night;

The wonder of their fall is this:

With instruments they find abyss,

And by atomic automation

Achieve the orbit of damnation.

EUTYCHUS

PLUNGE INTO THE VOID

Many, many thanks for the excellent Sept. 26 issue! What a joy it is—to men struggling to put their Christian faith to paper—to see a national magazine plunging into the void—and making such wonderful arguments for the rise of a truly Christian literature in our land.…

We really need magazines and publishing houses who will at least consider the Christian novel, the Christian play, the Christian poem—and if it is literarily and intellectually trustworthy—publish it. Many thanks for your efforts in behalf of all the unknown “triers” in the Church.

… I could go on endlessly with the efforts I have made in the last eight years. Many of my manuscripts have received favorable comments from editors, but always, the fact that they were based on a Christian world view, caused them to be called “limited in appeal.”

JOHN C. COOPER

Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church

Tampa, Fla.

Ten thousand orchids to Mr. Ingles for his excursion into the question which embarrasses the teachers of literature in every Christian college, annoys their students, and dogs the thinking of any sensitive evangelical.

May I add a little fuel to his fire which will, I hope, bring some latent Christian artist to a productive simmer. After a good deal of rumination on the whole wretched question concerning the breakdown between Christianity and aesthetics (e.g., why is evangelical taste so vulgar? why is the poetry, fiction, and art of this sector of Christendom so incorrigibly platitudinous?) I wonder if, for one thing, the evangelical has had rather too confined a view of the compass of art. Art has, as Mr. Ingles has said, the whole world as its province. The artist is not writing a tract when he sets about writing a novel. He is not illustrating a church bulletin when he takes up his brush. He is not writing a DVBS closing-exercises pageant when he tackles a drama. Perhaps we have had too immediate and easy a view of what we were about in our so-called art. One doesn’t write a novel to get people saved. One is commenting on life—all of life. And there is a great deal of horror, chaos, and bitterness in life. All is not sweetness and light.

I wonder, further, if the one thing which artists of all sorts and conditions must share is lacking in evangelicals. I refer to the agonizing search for meaning and form. It is not, I think, purely fortuitous that when the artistic temperament is mentioned, one immediately conjures images of turbulence, passion, revolt, and tempest. The man who is not plagued by the ache to discover form, who is satisfied with the banalities of the status quo, is not likely to create anything of significance. Perhaps the fact that we have been taught that we have the answer to all the problems and unknown quantities of life (which is, in a sense, true) has muffled the voice of unrest in us which would call forth the creative process. We are inclined to silence any disturbing question about the suffering of innocents, or the ascendency of injustice, or man’s inhumanity to man, with a reference to God’s wisdom and inscrutable goodness, or an airy, “Oh, we’ll find out when we get to glory.” Perhaps so. And admittedly there is the place where doubt turns to unbelief. But let us also remember that faith is large enough to encompass doubt. It does not preclude doubt. A faith which has no questions is something less than faith. It does not take faith to see that two apples placed beside two other apples on the table makes four apples. It does take faith to be able to say, in the face of Budapest or Dienbienphu or Auschwitz, “I know that God is the loving Father.” It seems to me that the kind of faith necessary in the soul of a Christian artist must be this kind, which holds firmly to its trust in God as revealed in Jesus, but allows itself to take its place alongside suffering humanity and to ask unsettling questions. It cannot be a faith (or sub-faith) which looks with horror on the honest questions which ravage every sensitive mind, and feels that the very entertaining of such questions is immoral and blasphemous.

One other thing: there are not many noble savages, Chattertons, or tinkers of Bedford about who will produce great works of art from a position of ignorance or rusticity. Most of the great works of literature have come from a broad background of the humanities. And our (evangelical) emphasis on the study of the humanities has not been altogether overwhelming. We may produce great preachers, great scholars, and great missionaries in our Bible schools and Christian colleges. We will not produce any novelists, poets, or dramatists. I submit that there is something not quite honest in the approach to literature in these institutions. We have confounded Christianity with Victorianism. The Old Testament, with its earthy, robust, and lusty method of story telling, would never pass muster in our evangelical English Departments. The names of D. H. Lawrence, Proust, Gide, Zola, and Mailer are dirty words. One may take vigorous issue with the view of life which some of these gentlemen evidence (I, for one, do), but they are the writers who have influenced the literary scene, and if we set about to study literature, let us do it with a vengeance. If we cannot, let us be candid and admit that we are conducting a course more suited to some 19th century finishing school for young misses.

THOMAS T. HOWARD

The Sunday School Times

Philadelphia, Pa.

Bravo, Dr. Ingles!… You took the words right from my pen! An ardent reader, including best-sellers in the field of fiction, I am bored by the average “Cinderella Fairy Tale” in our Christian novels.

Have threatened to write a novel portraying 20th century Christianity but never dared. Who would publish it?

You have given me an incentive!

TINA MASELLI

Woodlynne, N. J.

Mr. Ingles has voiced the plight of many evangelicals who must needs read secular writing alone. We have no real choice.

… Where does a Christian go with his finished work? Neither secular nor so-called Christian presses will touch his works.… The easy way out is to stick to the secular field. But I found I could not write and disregard Jesus Christ, for it was empty and lifeless without Him.… It’s easy to write for slicks, but it does not satisfy the writer, the reader, or God.

JUNE STEPHENSON

Chicago, Ill.

Some of us young Christian writers would even dare to rub the sanctified keys of our typewriters together against the highly fissionable problems of Atomic Age Christianity if conservative, evangelical publishers would ignite us with a brighter spark than the standard yellow rejection slip.

PATRICIA E. CULVER

Buffalo, N. Y.

CRUCIAL CALL

While praying for the United Nations at Asbury Theological Seminary, during a prayer convocation under the leadership of Dr. Frank Laubach … we feel led to request you … to call this entire nation to pray … that God’s will may be done. This is the supreme crisis of history. People are desperate.… Other things can wait; this cannot. Now is the time. We need … a mighty prayer movement.

OFFICERS OF ADMINISTRATION

Asbury Theological Seminary

Wilmore, Ky.

MISSOURI AND ROME

If Reader Kofahl finds it amazing that the Lutherans of Fort Wayne see no violation of the separation of Church and State involved in the public transportation of parochial school children (Sept. 12 issue), one can imagine the surprise of several of us Missouri Synod Lutheran pastors when we found that Synod has repeatedly adopted convention resolutions favoring such transportation.…

The feeling among us is that the resolutions are the opinion of a majority of convention delegates but not the consensus of the vast rank and file of Missourians. At one time an entire district of the Missouri Synod fought against state aid to parochial schools. This was a Texas proposal to supply free text books to all school children.

In many a locality Lutheran school children ride the public school bus. However, it is distinctly understood that this is purely a courtesy; that the driver may not go out of his way to pick up or deliver a child of the parochial school; that parochial school pupils may ride the public school bus only as there is surplus seating; and that the practice may be discontinued at any moment and without any explanation from the public school officials. It is my understanding that Lutherans generally have this understanding: by virtue of payment of taxes we are entitled to the common facilities offered in the public school system, but that if we desire something different or something beyond these common facilities, that is a special privilege for which we are willing and obliged to pay special. In other words, if something is offered to us, we may accept it, but we do not demand it as a right. In this we differ antipodally from the Romanists.

KARL F. BREEHNE

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church

Greenville, Ill.

I was talking to a Lutheran minister the other day who said that his Reformation Day radio sermon would be edited two weeks in advance. Have we already lost freedom of radio and press?… In Walter Montaño’s book Behind the Purple Curtain he says that the Catholic Church has Catholic editors and coeditors on all important U. S. newspapers. I now believe that he is right.

MRS. IRIS LARSEN

Hales Corner, Wisc.

Had you thought of discussing the secularistic materialism, with its subtle insinuation of humanistic agnosticism, of Kennedy’s presentation of “American brotherhood” as his political religion to the Houston, Texas, ministerial group?

It ought to be said, by someone with the facilities to do so, that positively no good Roman Catholic could possibly set aside the Roman hierarchy’s definition of what, to them, constitutes issues of “faith and morals,” as did Senator Kennedy in that address—for the sake of political expediency. If he will do that in the realm of his religion, for the sake of getting elected, what will he do in the realm of constitutional principles after being elected?

ELBERT D. RIDDICK

Portland, Ore.

DARWIN DEBATED

Professor Leith’s review of Darwin, Evolution and Creation (Aug. 29 issue) characterizes the book as being “not quite fair.” We believe that he has not understood the thrust of our book. The authors feel that the non-scientific public is too often exposed to the idea that the theory of evolution deserves the status of a scientific law. They deserve to know that the theory of the evolution of man from a one-celled creature has not been proved and indeed faces tremendous obstacles.

The reviewer asserts that theories are never proven. This is an incorrect statement. The progression from theory to scientific law is well established, particularly in the physical sciences. Furthermore evolutionary theory, since it deals with the past, cannot he put to the acid test of experiment in the same way we examine other theories.

Professor Leith asserts that evolutionary theories have secured the adherence of the majority of the scientific community for a century. This statement neglects to mention the numerous and radical revisions in evolutionary theory. More important, it neglects to mention that evolutionists refuse to consider the supernatural (i.e. the miraculous) when dealing with the question of origins. This rules out creation, leaving only one alternative—evolution.

The chapter on the age of the earth points out that the methods used are based upon certain unprovable assumptions, that they often give discordant results, and that they may suffer the fate of earlier methods, now discarded as unreliable. These propositions have been presented in seminar to other chemists who regarded them as worthy of consideration. The literature itself has carried these same criticisms. Again the purpose is to inform those whom Leith terms the “uninitiated” that the age of the earth and the universe have not been definitively determined.

We make no apology for taking God’s Word concerning creation seriously and for applying accepted rules of hermeneutics to it. Certainly many who depart from this practice also abandon the very fundamentals of the Christian faith. Nor do we regret exposing the fact that the evolutionary theory has an attendant philosophy which contradicts the Christian doctrine of man and which has led many to deny the very existence of God.

The reader will judge for himself. Certainly we agree that there has been much variation within the limit of the created “kind.” Moreover, the term “kind” is much broader than “species.” But we do not believe that science has shown anything beyond this.

Interested parties will do well to read the Darwin Centennial volume Evolution After Darwin, Volume I, University of Chicago Press, 1960, the chapter on “Morphology, Paleontology, and Evolution.” Dr. E. C. Olson, geologist, is the author. We think the statement on page 523 applies to the present discussion: “There are, of course, degrees of difference in the evaluation of successes, from healthy skepticism to confidence that the final word has been said, and there are still some among the biologists who feel that much of the fabric and theory accepted by the majority today is actually false and who say so.”

PAUL A. ZIMMERMAN

Concordia Teachers College

Seward, Nebr.

Perhaps Leith knows more about the matter than Dr. Louis Agassiz, who called evolution “a scientific mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its methods, mischievous in its tendencies.” Or it may be that he is wiser than Dr. Robert A. Millikan, who said, “The pathetic thing is that we have scientists who are trying to prove evolution, which no scientists can ever prove.”

E. P. SCHULZE

The Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer Peekskill, N. Y.

DOOYEWEERD DEFENDED

I am disturbed by the inadequate and frivolous review of In the Twilight of Western Thought by Herman Dooyeweerd. It would be unreasonable for me to protest, since I have not seen this volume, but from the review this book appears to be an abbreviation of the author’s A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (almost 2000 pages, plus an extensive index) with which work I am endeavoring to acquaint myself. This is not an easy task, as Paul Tillich is a model of clarity compared to Dooyeweerd.

To quote briefly from Dooyeweerd is most unfair, as it only displays his very personal technical language and turgidity of expression, without giving any indication of the close reasoning which is the vital element in his writing. Contrary to the reviewer’s final quip, Dooyeweerd knows of no other revelation than that accepted by all Christians, creation, the written Scriptures, and the Word made flesh. Is it heretical to believe that any and all parts of the revelation are made available and administered to the believer by the Holy Spirit as the administrator of the Church? The reviewer seems to think so.…

May I point out one other bit of criticism where it seems to me the reviewer was not too careful. He objects to the author saying “God’s creative deeds surpass the temporal order.…” I cite 1 Cor. 2:7: “… which God ordained before the world unto our glory.” Certainly ordaining is creative and it antedates and surpasses the temporal order.

Why is it that so many fundamentalists (or conservatives) are so quick to knock down and jump on any writer who doesn’t express himself in the accepted set of clichés? It looks to me as if that is a good three-quarters of objections to Barth, Tillich, and Niebuhr.

Dooyeweerd is attempting to construct a philosophy based on Christ as revealed in the Scriptures. As part of this work he feels it is necessary to destroy the foundational errors of the worldly philosophers, using their own language and techniques to point out their shortcomings.… We all actually hold some sort of philosophy, usually irrational and incomplete, and very little Christian. Dooyeweerd is trying to remedy this unnecessary weakness. Let us do him and ourselves the justice of giving a fair hearing to his study.

DON MARTY

Sacramento, Calif.

Dooyeweerd is being given an awful brush-off. It’s grossly unfair. He’s probably the greatest Christian thinker alive. I can’t find words to deplore the cheap sarcasm with which Clark dismisses him. About four years ago Dr. Buswell had a similar obscure, bad-tempered review of Dooyeweerd in the Christian Record and I think that’s the poorest thing Dr. Buswell ever wrote.… Seldom has godly reverence been combined with philosophical acumen as in the case of Dooyeweerd.… In your circle there should by all means be a sphere of fruitful dialogue about Dooyeweerd, but now there just “ain’t.”

SAMUEL WOLFE

Santa Barbara, Calif.

THE THIRD FORCE

I have been greatly intrigued by Thomas F. Zimmerman’s article on the “Third Force” (Aug. 1 issue). Certainly the marks of this force sound like a description of New Testament Christianity.

He leaves me with one or two great questions in my mind. For example, after giving Dr. Sweet’s definition of a church as “an organized body which accepts ‘(1) creed or confession of faith, (2) infant baptism and automatic membership, and (3) an elaborate church polity,’ ” he goes on to state that “many Baptist groups have moved or are moving into the church category.” Being currently a Baptist, I have yet to meet or hear of one who accepts point (2) above, let alone a group of them.

ELLSWORTH C. BEATTY

Kansas City, Mo.

Do not these groups have much in common with the early Methodists, Quakers, Huguenots and Moravians?

LIDA CHAPPELL

Takoma Park, Md.

Thank you and your fine publication for your courtesy toward our beloved Pentecostal faith. Your inclusion of Mr. Zimmerman’s article … substantiated a definite place in the Christian publication for Pentecostalism—a faith always admirable but scorned because of peculiar truths. Talk about “space frontiers”—you, in effect, have acomplished an equal feat!

G. J. SIMMONS

Ottumwa, Iowa

[The] argument that the “third force” must be right and modernism wrong because of its great evangelistic fervor could be used with equal logic to prove that communism is right and Christianity and democracy wrong.… Mr. Zimmerman overlooks the possibility that the New Testament position may be the one that is inadequate and one-sided.

THEODORE B. DUFUR

Los Angeles, Calif.

The issue of August 1, containing the “census figures” on the peoples and religions of the world, was a “high point” in the history of a rather dull and one-sided magazine.

PAUL E. WALTHOUR

Phoenix, Ariz.

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