Eutychus and His Kin: August 3, 1962

Pilgrim’S Analysis

Eutychus Associates, meeting in emergency session, have adopted a crash program to save Christianity Today from becoming Christianity Yesterday. (According to Time magazine, a tart Barth retort threatened the change of name. A little attention to the vocabulary of Ecclesian could have avoided this critical situation. According to Time, for example, you took “a rough swipe” at clerical complacency in a recent editorial. Small wonder that you are “often irritating.” Have you forgotten that where there’s smoke there must be filters? If you would only “fill a charismatic role by challenging irenic ministerial koinonia to a more dynamic confrontal,” instead of taking “rough swipes,” you wouldn’t irritate anyone. The first phase of our program is a summer course in Ecclesian for your staff.

A second problem is your theology. Time doesn’t mind your being alert, literate, and highbrow, but it doesn’t see any future in your fundamentalism. Here you could take a cue from a profile of a wealthy Anglican priest that appears on the same page with Time’s report on CT. The Reverend Timothy Wentworth Beaumont says, “We need to purge the Gospels of out-of-date accretions and produce an act of worship in modern idiom.” Perhaps you could employ Mr. Beaumont to edit CT, or if he is too busy with his other publishing activities, at least to edit the Gospels. The older critical editions are quite out of date now. A Unitarian minister recently suggested a loose-leaf Bible. That might be best, though it could be difficult to keep the Gospels up-to-date on a fortnightly basis.

The third phase of our program is the most important. If you are to reflect Christianity today, you need a foundation grant for behavioral research. What scientific studies have you made to discover what kind of Christianity exists today, or what kind your readers want? Our panel of associated sociologists, social psychologists, and psycho-socialists can provide you with leading questions for such a survey: Does the church of your choice really fit your personality?

EUTYCHUS (TODAY)

Karl Barth

Concerning the editorial on “The Enigma in Barth” (June 8 issue) … how does one in this case determine which verse or passage is a theological error and which is theological truth? There is no way on the basis of human intellectuality to do so. In the first place because there is no such thing as theological truth. In the second place the discernment is to be between theological error or half-truth or part-truth, and the whole revealed truth of God; such truth is not theological but is God’s revealed truth. And no one may know which is which except with full commitment of his understanding to the Spirit of God.… He can witness to what he knows by experience and that is as far as he can go. That was ar far as the prophets and the apostles could go. They were called to be witnesses, not teachers, other than to match as closely as possible the experience of others with their own experience of God.…

I regard it as an unfair presumption to posit an enigma in Barth, simply because he has failed as all theologians have failed and will fail, to find an adequate method of knowing the Word of God on the basis of human understanding and experience, separated from the Spirit of God. Has he “made it the aim of his life to defend the independence of theology?” Then he has not come any closer to God with his positive technique than he was in liberalism with the negative technique; for no matter how carefully one tries to formulate a theology “entirely from the Word of God,” there is that problem of separating the Word of God from the ancient theologies that it sought to answer and to correct. By human endeavor and with all sincerity and honesty, the best of man’s thinking is incapable and inadequate for doing what only the Holy Spirit is to do.…

THOMAS D. HERSEY

The Methodist Church

Norway, Iowa

The issue of the Bible’s specific authority is not settled. It may be that neither camp has hitherto developed the insight and language to express properly what at this place has to be confessed.…

My father has never said either in his Dogmatics or in the panel discussions in Chicago that the Bible docs err. CHRISTIANITY TODAY always gave the impression as if in so many words he had said precisely this.… As I remember, he spoke of “tension, contradictions and—perhaps—even errors that might be found in the Bible.” It seems to me that, since we are not seated in judgment above both God and the Bible, we are not qualified to adjudicate either way: the Bible contains, or contains not, any errors. God only can know this. Whether by error in all quarters the same thing is understood, is a problem at any rate. The hare a ruminant? One or two angels sitting or standing at the tomb? Virgin Birth and Bodily Resurrection? A lot depends on whether or not he who speaks in a negative or positive way of errors has made it very clear to all concerned what he meant by that word.…

MARKUS BARTH

The Divinity School

The University of Chicago

Chicago, Ill.

• Not only Karl Barth’s references to contradictions in the Bible, but his refusal to identify, any part of the Bible with divine revelation are part of the controversy. He writes: “We do the Bible a poor honour … when we directly identify it … with revelation itself” (Church Dogmatics, I/1, p. 126). “We distinguish the Bible as such from revelation” (I/2, p. 463). “The Bible “witnesses to God’s revelation.… The Bible is not a book of oracles” (p. 507). Contrast the Apostle Paul: “The Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2, NEB). Barth again: “The vulnerability of the Bible, i.e., its capacity for error, also extends to its religious or theological content” (p. 509). “Paul did not speak of verbal inspiredness” (p. 518). But contrast 1 Thessalonians 2:13: “We thank God continually, because when we handed on God’s message, you received it, not as the word of men, but as what it truly is, the very word of God …” (cf. 2 Tim. 3:16NEB)—ED.

I, for one, would be careful not to dismiss a man of Barth’s caliber (and any other for that matter) because his “system” has, from my perspective, a fundamental contradiction in it. It would seem that Barth might be speaking out of two very real and sincere convictions, both motivated by God’s Holy Spirit. One, that the Bible is, indeed, the sole source of Christian theology. Two, that he, as a Christian, must be intellectually honest with God in order to be truly in fellowship.…, even if it involves seeing errors and contradictions in Scripture. I I am sure this is why Barth will not let himself say, as you would seem to like to have him say, that the Bible alone is the Word of God. I am pleased that he will not sacrifice honesty for the sake of a “system”.…

CHARLES O. DUNDAS

The Methodist Church

Houston, Minn.

Although I find myself radically opposed to Barth, on philosophical grounds, I wonder if you have been fair to him.… If revelation is the setting forth of certain propositional statements about the nature of God, man and nature, then the Bible or the Koran either is or is not a completely trustworthy account of those statements. If it is not, you are quite right in stating that one then must bring to bear some extra-canonical criterion of Truth to determine which are and which are not trustworthy.

However, it seems to me that you are trapped by your insistence that revelation is propositional in character and that the propositions have the eternal character of the Aristotelian categories or the Platonic Forms. If the God of Israel is the Living God which is surely the testimony of Scripture, then revelation has the character which it has between persons—a progressive unveiling of character.

ROY E. LE MOINE

Columbus, Ga.

• Our Lord said: “So long as heaven and earth endure, not a letter, not a stroke, will disappear from the Law until all that must happen has happened” (Matt. 5:18, NEB); “I am not myself the source of the words I speak to you: it is the Father who dwells in me doing His own work” (John 14:10, NEB). The absolute contrast between personal and propositional-verbal revelation is not found in the Bible, but is rooted in contemporary religious philosophy.—ED.

Barth’s doctrine of Scripture makes for a magnanimity, but the doctrine of biblical infallibility makes for pusillanimity. Barth has a word for all Christians, but the inerrantists are in monologue. Barth is devoutly humble, but biblicist rationalism erodes both humility and true devotion.…

Are we to depend on nothing that contains errors? If the Bible has errors, is it therefore undependable—is the child not to depend upon the father because the father is imperfect?…

Barth’s doctrine of Scripture … I have often used: “The Bible is a pointer, a fitting instrument to point men to God, who alone is infallible.” Whole sectors of modern life are open for the Christian witness by this approach, whereas the dogmatic approach produces an isolationist pride that cannot hold dialogue with the world because, like communism, it is not really listening.

WILLIS E. ELLIOTT

Office of Evangelism Literature Secy.

The United Church of Christ

Cleveland, Ohio

• Even taken pragmatically, an authoritative “the Bible says” still seems a more potent evangelistic weapon (in the Graham crusades) than the plea that a “fallible Bible” witnesses to an infallible God.—ED.

The thing which makes the Bible unique, trustworthy and transcendent above other literature is not its freedom from “inherent fallibilities,” but the gripping realization that this book is a first-hand record of the One who is ultimately and universally “Truth”.…

We are dealing with the magnificence of a Being who is greater than human concept or definition.…

E. C. CREECH

Portland, Ore.

Your criticism of Karl Barth … is sort of like the moon calling the sun inadequate. If we shoot down Professor Barth on the grounds of scriptural authority, we must also shoot down Martin Luther and hence the whole Reformation.

Barth stands clearly in the light of the Reformers, including Luther, who defined the Word of God as, “That living, time-transcending approach of God to man, climaxed in Jesus Christ, and continuing through the Holy Spirit.” Here we find no reference to the Word of God being identified with an “infallible” Bible.… The infallibility of the Bible is not a Reformation doctrine.…

God’s Holy Truth is self-authenticating to the human mind and spirit. Such majesty and omniscience has no need of an infallible medium through which to pass and in which to work.…

GILES E. STAGNER

First Methodist Church

Peabody, Kan.

• Luther writes: “Not only the words, but also the diction used by the Holy Ghost and the Scripture is divine …”; “You should so deal with Scripture that you believe that God Himself is speaking …”; “… We refer all of Scripture to the Holy Ghost …”; “God’s will is completely contained therein, so that we must constantly go back to them. Nothing should be presented which is not confirmed by the authority of both Testaments and agrees with them. It cannot be otherwise, for the Scriptures are divine; in them God speaks and they are His Word …”; “The saints were subject to error in their writings and to sin in their lives; Scripture cannot err” (quoted by M. Reu, Luther and the Scriptures [Wartburg Press, 1944], pp. 58, 92, 63, 17, 35).—ED.

No Abdication Here

I was happy to read Dr. Carnell’s statement of clarification … as quoted by Dr. Harold Lindsell (Eutychus, June 8 issue), for I too had misunderstood his stand.

I came from the panel discussions with almost the same opinion as that expressed by Dr. Clark (May 11 issue). When Dr. Carnell failed to raise what he called the many “corollary questions” that Dr. Barth’s answer brought to mind, I was discouraged. If only he had raised even the one crucial question as to criteria … then my mind would have been set at ease.

Instead, he thanked Dr. Barth earnestly for his honesty and forthrightness, and left the whole issue there just begging for an answer.

I honestly felt that something had happened and that, in failing to defend it, Dr. Carnell had abdicated the orthodox position by default.

But it was not that at all! It was a mechanical thing—a concern over time and arrangements with the University. If only the audience had been told this.

JOHN F. JAMIESON

First United Presbyterian Church

East Chicago, Ind.

Like Real Gone!

Man, that Leitch fellow, in his review of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey and The Catcher in the Rye (Current Religious Thought, June 22 issue) really sent me—way out—looking, looking for the answer to his question, “Just how do we make the Gospel break into all that worldly conditioning?”

May I suggest to bugged Mr. Leitch that he can get some help from reading another book, The Church’s Mission to the Educated American by J. H. Nederhood (Eerdmans). Chapter V … [titled] “The Church as Mission and the Educated: The Approach” might give him some confidence and hope. It did for me.

R. F. REHMER

University Lutheran All-Student Church

Purdue University

West Lafayette, Ind.

Nae On Communism

Your otherwise very fine coverage of the NAE convention (News, Apr. 27 issue) omitted one sentence from our resolution on communism and thereby failed to convey the true position of our organization. The omitted opening sentence stated “Whereas communism and Christianity are both life related movements, the National Association of Evangelicals believes that the church must speak to the subject directly.”

The NAE has an aggressive program in this field known as “Freedom through Faith” and endeavors to help the church meet squarely the issues presented by atheistic communism. As our resolution stated, we feel that this must be done in relationship to the total ministry of the church and that a spiritual awakening “is the most effective way to combat communism.”

GEORGE L. FORD

Executive Director

National Association of Evangelicals

Wheaton, Ill.

Heaven: By Imputation Only

Concerning “The Perseverance of the Saints” (May 25 issue):

The arguments on every side

Rage on and still, I will confide,

Leave me confused, my simple brain

Cannot discern nor ascertain

Who is correct and who is wrong,

Whose side is weak, whose side is strong.

The Calvinist with pride contends

That grace, partaken, never ends,

But my Arminian friend says lost

Is he who sins. The awful cost

Will cancel grace. But who is right?

I cannot say, have not the light.

With seminary exegete

I cannot argue or compete

But care to say right here that I

Have faith in God and may reply

That one thing in my heart is sure:

That God saves him whose heart is pure.

The Bible’s clear to me in this.

If sin is absent, we’ll not miss

The opportunity to be

With Jesus through eternity.

And there the faithful Methodist

Will love the loyal Calvinist.

JAMES H. MUMME

Mexican Evangelistic Mission

Phoenix, Ariz.

Nonconformist Or Anglican?

I was most interested in the column by Eutychus (Apr. 27 issue) concerning the pastor who kept Easter for five Sundays after Easter.

Eutychus says “he is a dogmatic nonconformist.” On the contrary. He could be an Anglican. We observe the five Sundays after Easter as Eastertide.

J. E. M. MASSIE

The Church of St. Edmund the Martyr

Arcadia, Fla.

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