Eutychus and His Kin: January 16, 1961

CHANGE OF MIND

We are pleased to announce a symposium of significance. Three noteworthy correspondents reply to the query, “How has your mind changed in the last ten years?” This sampling is unique, since inquiries of this sort are usually made at the end of a calendar decade. Our correspondents, however, go on changing their minds year in and year out, and they had no objection to surveying an odd decade.

Several women were included in our query, but they did not find the question significant. The exercise of the feminine prerogative in mind-changing makes a decade an inappropriate measure.

PROFESSOR GRUNDGELEHRT:

The past decade marks the fifth Copernican revolution in my thought. The tenth book of volume three of my Summa Contra Theologiam introduces a new moment which is my last word and therefore also my first word. Without describing the potentiation of the dialectic which unfolds this position, I can only say that I have broken decisively with the last traces of Neogrundgelehrtianism. My total work must now be understood as my Nein! to Grundgelehrtian speculation. (cf. footnote 423, pp. 7–206).

DR. EUGENE IVY:

Your intriguing question suggests a glacial intellect, whose movement must be measured in decades. To be frank, I have no idea now what ideas I had ten years ago. Indeed, that may have been my depth-analysis period when I was immersed in a stream of unconsciousness and had no ideas whatever. In any case change is the one constant for an open, liberal mind. During the last ten days, for example, I have come to see the limitations of any rigid or doctrinaire approach to intrapersonal relations. Never again will I attempt small group dynamics with the Ladies’ Aid. Fresh from that experience, I have also reappraised the place of permissiveness in child training. Just last night I spanked Gene for the first time. Of course my basic commitment has not changed. In relation to the shifting ecclesiastical scene I have found it helpful to describe myself as either a conservative liberal or a liberal conservative, but my conviction as to the ultimacy of the absolute has been unwavering.

SENATOR B. B. FUDDLE:

In ten years my platform has grown with America. My campaign promises have kept pace with the inflationary spiral, and they are as good today as the day they were first made. My mind has not changed on a single issue affecting my constituents and their votes. The only change on my record was made this month. My name is now Brian Bannon McFuddle, my tribute to America’s Irish heritage.

EUTYCHUS

BULTMANN IN THE WINTER

I have recommended your “Wintertime” series as the best analysis of neo-orthodoxy … I have read in recent times and as the best demonstration why it cannot preserve conservative theology.

J. T. MUELLER

Concordia Seminary

St. Louis, Mo.

Your stimulating editorial “Has Winter Come Again” reminded me that in an address to the Baptist clergy of Washington three or four years back I suggested that a basic simplification of trends had occurred in American theology in the past decade or so. Two trends, I went on, were now manifest and were in process of attracting to them and assimilating various schools and views. One was neo-fundamentalism and the other a post-Barthian species of existentialism.

To a considerable degree biblical problems are reflected in both of these main currents, though philosophical factors, especially the issue of how we encounter the Divine, are not without influence in the latter case. The two leading theologians of our generation in this country, Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, were never Barthians and there is considerable question as to how accurately the term neo-orthodox applies to them. In many respects they seem to have been rather exponents of neo-liberalism. Yet they have raised for theology in the liberal orbit the relevance of ancient and classic doctrines from the standpoint of meaning and experience.

This is the drive of theological existentialism as it is popularized increasingly in American pulpits and in the dialogues of discussion and conversation. It becomes a new version of religious experientialism. The defect and peril of this approach to Christian truth, as you recognize, lie in what it does to the central reality of the Bible and the Christian Gospel which is the living God active both in history and in personal address to individual men and women.…

CHARLES WESLEY LOWRY

Treasurer

American Theological Society

Washington, D. C.

Bultmann’s effort to get rid of biblical supernaturalism is due to a corrupting of his mind by European naturalistic philosophy.

HAROLD PAUL SLOAN

Browns Mills, N. J.

With “Bultmann as King” we are nearing the final bankruptcy of the liberal, the neo-orthodox and the neo-liberal scholarship of theology. One thing is sure, only a genuine revived supernatural Protestantism will be able to stem the tide of world-sweeping “hard-fisted naturalism of Communism ideology.”

PETER F. WALL

Faith Community Church

Palmdale, Calif.

Bultmann appeared already in 1953 to be attracting more attention than Brunner and even than Barth in Germany. I personally suspect, with von Balthazar, that this is temporary, and that Bultmann’s radical de-supernaturalizing of Christianity will not, over the long haul, be the theology of this era.

LEWIS B. SMEDES

Calvin College

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Your remarks on Bultmann remind me of the quatrain, originally from some British source, quoted several years ago in Time:

“Hark!” the herald angels sing;

“Bultmann is the coming thing!”

At least they would if he had not

Demythologized the lot.

EDWARD A. JOHNSON

Dongola Lutheran Parish, U.L.C.A.

Dongola, Ill.

“Evangelical” does not mean conservative, orthodox, Bible-centered, fundamental, or any of the other meanings you persist in giving it. It is not synonymous to peculiar strains of Reformed churches or is it descriptive of your magazine’s brand of true faith.

J. GORDON SWANSON

Grace Lutheran

Aurora, Ill.

I know of at least one brilliant neo-orthodox pastor that has been brought around to a conservative approach in his ministry because of the fine apologetical articles found consistently in your magazine.

HAROLD BURDICK

Sawyer Evangelical United Brethren

Bradford, Pa.

CONTEMPORARY ART

CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR CONCISE AND PENETRATING CRITICISM OF CONTEMPORARY ART. YOUR EDITORIAL (DEC. 5 ISSUE) SAYS SYMPATHETICALLY AND SUCCINCTLY WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID IN LENGTHY TREATISES BUT WITH NO GREATER EFFECTIVENESS.

OLIVER C. RUPPRECHT

CONCORDIA COLLEGE

MILWAUKEE, WISC.

IN THE PAST TENSE

I have read with pleasure Mr. Hollington Tong’s article (Nov. 7 issue). However … he mentions … “Elizabeth Hospital in Shanghai—a Baptist institution.” The only Christian institution in Shanghai with a similar name was (I wish I could say “is”) St. Elizabeth’s Hospital on Avenue Road and that was an Episcopal hospital.…

MONTGOMERY H. THROOP

South Orange, N. J.

THE FIRST ADAM

The news report “The Adam Question” (Dec. 5 issue) calls for some comment.… The pamphleteers do not, and cannot, prove that the report of the commission in any way revised our creedal statements.… Indiscriminate circularizing presents only one side of a matter, and makes for difficult circumstances and emotional atmosphere for dispassionate study and rebuttal.…

VICTOR BUCCI

First Reformed Church of Astoria

Astoria, New York

CANTERBURY AND EDINBURGH

I was interested to read Mr. Farrell’s article “Scotland Celebrates its Reformation.” Perhaps your readers might care to know of recent developments in connection with the Scottish celebrations.

The Scots most courteously invited the Church of England to join with them on this great occasion. Unfortunately the atitude of the Scottish Episcopalians (representing only a little over one per cent of all Scotland) prevented the Archbishop of Canterbury accepting this, and he felt able to do no more than send a Dean as his personal representative.…

It needs to be made clear that not all Anglicans are tied to an unreformed and Tractarian view of episcopacy. A small but vociferous group in the Church of England holds this unAnglican view, and some of its members are senior dignitaries, but I venture to think most Anglicans would not favour it. Certainly the Church of England has never been officially committed to it.

GERVASE E. DUFFIELD

Cambridge, England

OBERAMMERGAU MEMORIES

Dr. Kuhn’s article on Oberammergau (Nov. 7 issue) brought back memories of thirty years ago. My wife and I, newly married, were leaving by train after having seen “the play.” To both of us it had been a most moving experience, never to be forgotten.

In the compartment with us were three adults from New York who immediately started talking and were most anxious to know if we thought it would stir up anti-Semitic feeling. It was not for some time that I realized they were Jews. So my replies were accordingly not biased—I told them that honestly we had not thought of the characters as Jews at all—we had only too clearly seen “ourselves” in the portrayal.

It seems strange that now 30 years later the same question should be asked. Where do these questioners put themselves (and their consciences!) when they witness this great drama and tragedy … so continuously repeated in every human life?

WALLACE E. CONKLING

Bishop of Chicago, Ret.

Vero Beach, Fla.

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