Eutychus and His Kin: February 15, 1963

Ruleg

Education, that serious world of retention and detention, of stimuli and alumni, now offers Ruleg. Ruleg is a system of programmed learning. It presents the learner with a concept, or rule, followed by a number of examples, or egs. (If your Latin is up to Vatican standards, you will surmise that an eg is an e.g., which is short for exempli gratia.) Programmers are now counting responses to see which should come first, the concept or the eg.

If statistics show that we should begin by adding egs, a new recipe will be necessary. What this inductive approach should be called, I’m not sure. Since examples may lead a learner to formulate an abstraction, something like Extraction or Egnition might serve. Gelur is a possibility—Ruleg in reverse.

Pastor Peterson has long been practicing both Ruleg and Gelur in his sermons. Either way the egs abound. He insists that E.G. would be a better degree than D.D. to keep the practicing preacher down to earth. For every egghead who follows abstractions there are a dozen eg-heads who need an example.

But the Pastor regards the Ruleg-Gelur controversy as a case of Big and Little Endianism. Swift was satirizing theological disputes when he described the Lilliputian controversy as to which end of the egg ought to be broken. Today more people seem dead serious about education than about religion. Big and Little Endian movements rise where they are taken seriously.

“The Bible,” says the pastor, “is concrete and abstract at once. What statement could be more concrete or more abstract than ‘God is love’? Or, for example, take the parables.… By the way, do you know the Negro spiritual, ‘Set Down Servant’?”

“Certainly—‘my soul’s so happy dat I cain’ set down!’ ”

“What Scripture does it refer to?”

Since I wasn’t sure, the pastor read Luke 12:37: “Blessed are those servants whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.”

“There’s abstract concreteness for you; spend half an hour thinking about it. Read Luke 17:7–10, too.”

I did. I don’t know what to call the process, but those parables brought together project a rainbow of grace.

Pentecost

The article, “Plea For the Pentecostalists” by T. F. Zimmerman (Jan. 4 issue), left a great many questions in my mind about the biblical foundation of key Pentecostalist beliefs.…

Out of the list of passages quoted in support of the author’s position, not one will do. Surely it is unfair to quote statements from the Gospels about the future reception of the Holy Spirit as evidence for the author’s position, for these statements were made before there had been any outpouring of the Spirit (John 7:39), and any statement about the Spirit’s permanent work must be spoken of as yet in the future. Perhaps the most ironic point in the article is that the verse the author quotes as his climactic point proves exactly the opposite of what he intends. The verse (Eph. 1:13) is quoted from the KJV, which says, “in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit.” The Greek has no suggestion of a time interval between the “believing” and the “sealing,” but would be literally translated, “in whom also believing you were sealed.” The construction clearly indicates that the sealing was at the time of believing or as Abbott (I.C.C.) renders the phrase, “in whom when ye also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit.”

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was a permanent fulfillment of God’s promises. It is only through the present work of this same Holy Spirit that any response can be made to the Gospel, as Paul so clearly indicates when he says, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” We may respect the Pentecostalists for their enthusiastic evangelism and their concern for the reality of the Spirit’s work, but surely we cannot accept any notion about the Spirit’s person or work which lacks scriptural support.

First Reformed Church

Rocky Hill, N. J.

Acts 2:4 certainly tells us that all were filled with the Spirit, but can we be so certain that all spoke with tongues? They spoke as they “were given utterance”—but does this necessarily mean that all were given utterance?…

Further, the article states “that the initial physical evidence of speaking in tongues signals the infilling of the Holy Ghost.” Today then … speaking in tongues is considered to be an end in itself. On the day of Pentecost, however, it was a means to an end! Why has the pattern changed? Why do not people today, when enpowered to speak in tongues, go forth and preach the Gospel in that language …? If this is not done, do people really have the right to call themselves “Pentecostal”?

Vice Pres.

Nyack Missionary College

Nyack, N. Y.

I have found Pentecostalists choosing to disassociate themselves from the major orthodox denominations, not so much because they have “faced opposition from the community and established churches” as because they claim to offer the Holy Ghost (pronounced HO-lyghost) as a bonus to people already “saved.” A Christian aristocracy?…

Also, we question the accuracy of the author who reports Martin Luther’s having “spoken in tongues.” Next we will hear that Augustine, Calvin, the Wesleys, Jonathan Edwards, and Moody “spoke in tongues”.…

The Methodist Church

Walker, La.

I read with keen interest the Rev. Mr. Zimmerman’s excellent article.…

I have been a Pentecostal for a number of years and can say no experience on earth is comparable to it.… This Pentecostal experience can certainly be had for the asking—regardless of your denomination.…

New Haven, Conn.

The article by James Daane ought to be given wide circulation. It is excellent. In these days when there are reports of people within various evangelical churches who meet together with the express purpose to “conjure” up the Holy Spirit, an article such as “The Christ-centered Spirit” needs to be considered.…

Dept. of Sociology and Economics

Salem College

Winston-Salem, N. C.

It was somewhat paradoxical to find … Zimmerman’s [article] in an edition of CHRISTIANITY TODAY being so wholly devoted to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. For the Spirit, like the wind which bloweth where it listeth, manifests himself in spite of, even contrary to man’s will.

Former Pentecostalists everywhere rejoice at being released from prerequisite sanctimoniousnesses, which derive from carnal and soulish self-appeasement, into that objective spiritual peace which none can describe. And there are many spirits with which we may be filled; yet only one Holy Spirit of the Living God, which not only comforts, instructs, and edifies, but also reproves, rebukes, and convicts Christians.

Paul’s testimony, that he “spake with tongues more than ye all” (1 Cor. 14:18), immediately qualifies itself in verse 19: “… in the congregation I would rather speak five intelligible words, for the benefit of others as well as myself, than thousands of words in the language of ecstasy” (NEB).

Vancouver, B. C.

Surplus

As a reporter for a daily newspaper who covered a few Roman Catholic parochial school Christmas programs this past Yuletide season, I think the following subtitle would have been appropriate for such productions: Mary christmas.

One of them had two “Marys” on the stage at once.

Austin, Tex.

While the Bible quiz may have caught the attention of the people, Israel’s favorite game has been incorrectly identified (Nov. 23 issue). Israel’s favorite game is justifying her existence. For this she and her friends spend millions of dollars every year, while America subsidizes her. The names of the holy places said to be everyday places to the Israelis have been evervday places for most of them for only the last 14 to 20 years at the most. The people for whom they were everyday places for many years before that were forced out of their homes to make room for the new immigrants.… Many of these who had to leave their homes and all they owed are among our finest Christian and Muslim friends.

Many evangelicals seem to be playing this justifying game with the Israelis either because they view Israel as a fulfillment of prophecy or because they feel sorry for the Jews on account of the persecution they suffered in Europe. Neither is a correct foundation for justifying what has taken place in Palestine. The evangelical is called to stand for righteousness. For the Jewish Zionist terrorists to have been able to take over Palestine and set up a Jewish state in a multi-religious area was not righteous. To continue support of this state and to justify its existence is not righteous.

I am sure that Mr. Kent misspoke himself when he referred to Jericho as the name of “a bus stop, the address of a friend, a picnic area” for Israelis. However he is sort of ironically correct about the “address of a friend” for he could be referring to the hundreds of refugees living in the two huge camps near Jericho who used to be neighbors of the Palestinian Jews. Palestinian Muslims, Christians and Jews were and are rightly entitled to set up a free state in the land that is theirs. Zionism has called and is calling Jews from all over the world to come occupy the homes and the land from which they have evicted the rightful inhabitants. This is quite a game!

Instructor in Religion and Philosophy

Beirut College for Women

Beirut, Lebanon

Up, Ireland!

It was with a great deal of interest that I read “Review of Current Religious Thought” (Nov. 23 issue) by J. D. Douglas.…

It is the irony of our times that brilliant men, honest men, diligent men, men who have received vast blessings from the Reformation, should at such a trying time in the history of men and nations attempt to go back to that from which, by the grace of God, they through their ancestors were set free.…

You eliminate the Irish from Romanism and what have you left? Nothing else but the entire fall of Rome.…

Philadelphia, Pa.

Up, Scotland!

Ivan Bennett (“The Best There Is in the World,” Nov. 23 issue) is wrong in saying the Archbishop of Canterbury gave the Bible to Queen Elizabeth—it was the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

London, England

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