Eutychus and His Kin: March 1, 1963

Fasteners

New fasteners have not yet made buttons obsolescent. Even zippers have not closed the gap in the clothing field, and the cocklebur strips favored by some pajama manufacturers have a disadvantage which is apparent to the man who must peel his pajamas off his chest in the morning. Buttons have hung on because they can’t jam and they don’t interlock with your skin.

But the day is coming when only space capsules will be buttoned up, and it will be necessary to play “Button, button, who’s got the button?” with discarded push-buttons.

We won’t lose our buttons, however, until technology has devised a better solution to the fastening problem. We don’t hear so much about the field of articulation, or ligation (or whatever term is used by big joiners), but no doubt the drawing boards have revolutionary new fasteners ready to clinch us.

Fastening is a problem in the Church, too. Jesus warned of the problem of sewing new patches on old wineskins. Not every fastener will serve ecclesiastical connection, and there are junctions it is folly to attempt. Zerubbabel’s reply to a historic merger offer was, “Ye have nothing to do with us in building a house unto our God” (Ezra 4:3).

Church fasteners are not buttons or zippers. Neither are they burrs! The New Testament rather speaks of supporting ligaments in the body of Christ, which receive their strength from the Head (Eph. 4:16). The tie that binds is living and spiritual: the unity of the Church is the work of the Holy Spirit. But the Spirit moves real people to real actions. Church fastening can’t be accomplished with handcuffs, but handclasps serve the purpose, and they are fully as visible.

For the most of my life I have suffered from a torn knee ligament. When the injury is at its painful worst it is no great comfort to be assured that my leg is still part of my body.

The unity of the Church must be functioning unity, and that calls for healed ligaments. Healing is Christ’s work, and we are his members—ligaments in particular.

Ministers For Ministers

I commend you for the excellent issue dated January 18.… I appreciated your articles entitled: “Who is Ministering to Ministers?” by George C. Anderson and “The Church and Psychiatry” by Johannes D. Plekker. I say God bless you for taking the lead in giving the truth about this important part psychology has in the religion and the church of today.

Palm Harbor Methodist Church

Palm Harbor, Fla.

May I say “It’s about time”? It’s about time we took a realistic look at the spiritual needs of pastors. What greater area of need is there, really, than that of feeding those who spend their time and effort and lives in feeding others? The engine of a train may do the work of pulling a hundred people or cars, but without fuel, not only does the engine not move, neither do the people and cars that depend on the engine to get them to their destination.…

I have long felt the need for a man to whom I might go when buffeted by the wiles of Satan and the flesh. How wonderful it would be to know that such a one would pay me occasional visits and help and advise me in my personal and family needs! Some of the most miserable home conditions I have ever encountered have been in evangelical, fundamental, Bible preachers’ homes! They need help! And fast!…

Community Church

Cumming, Iowa

Since the minister really has “nobody to turn to” in those darker moments Brother Anderson writes about (really the minister has no time at his disposal for worship!), why not a “church for the minister”? A group of ministers in a town or a city … could come together, hire their own minister, and learn together through a “worship service” of their own.…

In the larger cities, it would probably have to be a denominational thing. The smaller communities could band together in a true inter-denominational gathering.

Warrenton, Va.

As one who has been involved in the Church all my adult life, I am aware that the minister has many difficult problems and I have always tried to be sympathetic. On the other hand, there are standards for the minister, and I think a man in the ministry who is unwilling to accept them had better find some other field.

… We must face the problems which are ours and solve them. No one else can solve them for us.

President Emeritus

Pikeville College

Pikeville, Ky.

“Who is Ministering to Ministers?” … alerted my mind to a significant by-product of the Larger (or Cooperative) Parish Plan.

Designed originally to provide a more adequate ministry to the small congregations of a given area, the multi-staffed Parish also affords opportunity for ministers to minister to each other in significant ways.

Coordinator

The Jo Daviess Cooperative Parish

Scales Mound, Ill.

The Inn Is Out

In demythologizing Christmas, has Pastor Peterson (Eutychus, Dec. 21 issue) taken a good long look at Luke 2:8, “in the inn”? The word, “kataluma,” is interesting, especially since it is found again in Luke 22:11 in reference to the upper room.

All tradition notwithstanding, I’m afraid that the story of a heartless innkeeper is knocked into a cocked hat. Since that was the city of their fathers, is it too far-fetched to believe that Joseph and Mary stayed at the humble abode of some relative, where a sleeping place was provided for them in a lean-to stable? This is the theory of Lenski. To me this robs the miraculous birth of nothing, but makes it more homey still.…

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church

Sioux Falls, S. Dak.

Shock Envisioned

It will no doubt come as something of a shock to John Vanden Berg (Eutychus, Dec. 21 issue) to learn that there are any number of American citizens who do not care to pay taxes for the particular kind of religious instruction he favors in a school system. Mr. Vanden Berg fails to recognize that what impresses him as being sound, godly instruction and deserving of tax support does not impress millions of others in the same way at all. In a country of pluralistic faith like this one, it is obviously much sounder procedure to have religious instruction of a particular kind supported by those who believe in it. I myself am a Protestant minister but would object to paying taxes for Mr. Vanden Berg’s school.

I note that Mr. Vanden Berg is an official in Citizens for Educational Freedom. I wonder whether the disclosure that the literature for this group is being anonymously written by Jesuits will make any difference to him?

Associate Director

Protestants and Other Americans United

Washington, D. C.

Note The Quote

Under your main heading “Worth Noting” you have a subheading, “Worth Quoting” (News, Dec. 21 issue), and you have a quotation there which appears to be attributed to me.… What you are quoting is actually a quotation which I used from Dr. Margaret Mead. She said those words in an address … at the Triennial Meeting of the Women of the Episcopal Church in Detroit, September, 1961. It has been published by the Episcopal Church under the title, “Women’s Role in Today’s World.”

I think you probably got this from a press release [issued by the WCC—ED.] on a speech which I was said to have delivered at the D.F.M. Assembly at Buck Hill Falls. The whole press release was misleading, for it was based not on my speech but on a paper which I wrote some months before.…

I am sure you will understand that I felt I ought to draw your attention to this and give Margaret Mead the honor due to her!

Div. of World Mission and Evangelism

World Council of Churches

New York, N. Y.

T. S. Eliot And The Manger

The devotees of Mr. T. S. Eliot form not so much a company of the admiring as a cult of the worshipful. It is not surprising, then, to read in your December 7 issue a wholly uncritical commentary on Mr. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi.” Nor do I imagine that any lay reader’s questioning the merit of the poem is likely to provoke more than further raising of the eyebrows among the cultists; but I cannot resist asking one question, nonetheless, about the poem and about Mr. D. Bruce Lockerbie’s scholia upon it.

The question is this: Do other readers stumble with me at finding the climax of the Magian journey expressed by the rhetorical device of understatement? One treads all the bitter miles as the poet imagines them, diluting the pain in anticipation, only to find at road’s end a neat little self-conscious writer’s trick, so transparently theatric, indeed, as to evoke from Mr. Lockerbie the heady accolade “understatement of all time”; but likely, I should suppose, to impress non-cultists as at least grotesque, if not skirting the blasphemous.

John Calvin remarks that “the heavenly Father chose to appoint the star and the Maji as our guides, to lead directly to his Son.” But Mr. Eliot’s “sophisticated amplification of the familiar Bible story” (this interpretation is Mr. Lockerbie’s) ignores the star altogether, blots out the “exceeding great joy” of the Wise Men (Mr. Lockerbie finds, without visible pain, that this is simply the “one respect” in which “Eliot differs from the story in Matthew’s account”), and finally leads us directly—not to “his Son”—but to a writer’s gambit, timeworn long before the Babe was born.

Like charity, poetic license covers a multitude of sins, and one should not begrudge the poet the full range of his opportunities under so broad a dispensation, but the “Journey of the Magi” suggests to me that the literary world might find better guides to the Manger and its meaning than Mr. T. S. Eliot—and not in this instance only.

Director of the Library

Calvin College and Seminary

Grand Rapids, Mich.

After Laughter, Nears Tears

I couldn’t help laughing—and then I almost cried—when I read the news item “Offense of the Cross” (Dec. 7 issue). Imagine the Post Office Department issuing a special Christmas stamp, but rejecting a design for the same because it “suggested a cross.” They could observe a religious holiday, but could not exhibit a religious symbol! Do you suppose the department has not learned the meaning of Christmas? Or perhaps Christ has been thoroughly enough eradicated from Christmas that it is now a wholly secular “holiday,” free from religious contamination, and safe for our nation to recognize.

Ryegate, Mont.

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