DON’T LOOK NOW

It is a well-known fact, accepted by all hands, that if you read a medical book seriously you end up with a slight touch of hypochondria. Even worse is the experience of taking a college course in abnormal psychology. All kinds of nervous tics ensue.

What brought this to mind was reading for about the fiftieth time in two months some feature article on “What Is Wrong with American Youth?” Plenty, I suppose. But right now it seems to be a good thing for magazines and newspapers to cash in on, and I very much suspect that sometimes it is the cash rather than their interest in youth that leads them to such a spate of articles.

An even more disturbing thing is to contemplate what these articles do to the young people themselves. I knew a man who read the Kinsey Report and worried because he hadn’t worked his way up to average yet! Is not one of the contributing factors to “what’s wrong with youth” the articles they read about all the wrongs they hadn’t thought about yet? There is a sneaky kind of journalism (and some of the best magazines in the country are not above it) by which writers point the finger in alarm at some awful situation in order to take a picture of the awful situation in order, in turn, to sell a magazine. To sum up, I am not sure the motives are all clean.

Closely aligned with this is the solid rise among high school and college students of almost endless habits of introspection and analysis. People who work on college campuses are inundated by students who want “counsel” because they have already been taught in high school to need this sort of coaching. An analysis of some of the counseling that is done might be a traumatic experience for all of us.

The heart of the Gospel is that the lines of interest go out instead of in. The Church still has hold of the problem by the right end if it can get young people to quit thinking of their own troubles because they are committed to the help of others.

PROTESTANT INDEX

Thank you for your forthright editorial, “Read, Minister, Read!” (Feb. 12 issue).

In a suburban Chicago home I was recently told by a local Protestant minister that there was no need to read contemporary literature, and that, in fact, a person’s faith might be swayed by reading books that dare to question and explore Christianity. After condemning a long list of notable Christian authors, he admitted to having read none of their writings. In a drastic oversimplification, he dramatically waved his Bible and pronounced, “The Bible is the only book I need to read.” How I wish I had his address so that I could send him a copy of your excellent admonition!

Article continues below

In my current search for a new church home, I have found that the Chicago minister is one of many who are not “students of life,” as you so aptly put it. I hope that many pastors will put to practice your timely advice.

Atlanta, Ga.

[The editorial] came at a time when from despair and failure, with mountains of unread journals, books, magazines, I was on the point of canceling subscriptions right and left … horror of horrors … CHRISTIANITY TODAY included.

You have calmed my spirits, put the will to read back into me, and showed me that it is a worthwhile fight.…

First Baptist Church

New Haven, Conn.

CHURCHILL’S HIGH VIEW

In your editorial comments on Sir Winston Churchill (Feb. 12 issue) you say: “About reconciling the biblical narrative with modern scientific and historical knowledge he was oddly pragmatic: what matters is the benefits of receiving a message that cheers your heart, fortifies your soul, and promises reunion with loved ones ‘in a world of larger opportunities and wider sympathies.’ ”

Stanley E. Anderson, in Our Dependable Bible (Baker Book House, 1960), writes: “Winston Churchill’s opinion of Moses is quoted by Halley on page 147: ‘We regret with scorn all those learned and labored myths that Moses was but a legendary figure upon whom the priesthood and the people hung their essential social, moral and religious ordinances. We believe that the most scientific view, the most up-to-date and rational conception, will find its fullest satisfaction in taking the Bible story literally. We may be sure that all these things happened just as they are set out according to Holy Writ. We may believe that they happened to people not so very different from ourselves, and that the impressions those people received were faithfully recorded, and have been transmitted across the centuries with far more accuracy than many of the telegraphed accounts we read of goings on of today. In the words of a forgotten work of Mr. Gladstone, we rest with assurance upon “The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture.” Let men of science and learning expand their knowledge and probe with their researches every detail of the records which have been preserved to us from those dim ages. All they will do is to fortify the grand simplicity and essential accuracy of those recorded truths which have so far lighted the pilgrimage of man.’ ”

Some years ago I had that quotation, perhaps in the twentieth edition of Halley’s Pocket Bible Handbook, which is the edition to which Anderson apparently refers.

Article continues below

The Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer

Peekskill, N. Y.

NO ANSWER, BUT A POSITION

I am certain that I do not know the answer to Viet Nam, but I am equally certain that I do not think that what we have been doing there is accomplishing anything for the United States.

Mt. Sterling, Ky.

MAN’S ANTIQUITY AND FALL

In the January 15 issue the editorial statement is made that “Christian anthropologists are by no means agreed on an interpretation of the data, but those who insist that Homo sapiens is hundreds of thousands of years old make little effort to correlate this conclusion with an insistence on objective historical factuality in respect to the fall of the first man, Adam, and its implications for the entire race.”

In the Christian Life article “The Creation of Man” (May, 1956), the emphasis on this point was intended to be clear-cut and basic to what followed. The factuality of a first man, Adam, and the reality of his fall with its implications were underlined by reference to the New Testament comparisons of Adam with Christ. It was pointed out that “three historic doctrines pivot on Adam: the first man, Adam, was created perfect; in Adam, man sinned; as a result, all men today need redemption through Jesus Christ.”

Then the chapter on prehistoric man in the volume Evolution and Christian Thought Today, edited by Russell L. Mixter (Eerdmans, 1959), pages 185, 186, carries clear reference to the fact that this doctrine and its implications are essential to the creationist position:

Theologically, the fundamental doctrines of the original perfection and subsequent fall of man and his consequent need of redemption; the role of the Saviour, Jesus Christ, the Son of God in dying on the cross to pay the penalty for the fall, for all who will accept Him, are seriously jeopardized by a first man having descended organically from prehuman parents.

In that chapter it was also pointed out that even the Roman Catholic theistic evolutionary position, which also allows hundreds of thousands of years for man’s antiquity, also holds inviolable the factuality of the original perfection and subsequent fall of the first man.

Another Christian anthropologist, Donald R. Wilson, in his paper, “How Early Is Man?” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Sept. 14, 1962, issue), taking the position that “it certainly is necessary to think of man’s origin in terms of tens of thousands of years and with very high probability in terms of hundreds of thousands,” quotes William Henry Green and B. B. Warfield to the same effect, as I and others have elsewhere.

Article continues below

Certainly if theologians of the orthodoxy of Green and Warfield saw no contradiction between such an antiquity of man and the factuality of the fall and its implications, there should be no reason to think that Christian anthropologists today need to make more than a tacit assumption that there is no dilemma, no paradox, no inconsistency at all in such a position.

In my view, it is one of the strengths of the position on the antiquity of man held by Wilson and me (not to mention other Christian anthropologists like Stipe, Smalley, Taylor, Ellenberger, Nickerson, Reyburn, and others) that almost without exception we are doctrinally “fundamentalists,” who, with Warfield, Green, and a long line of conservative theologians, whether we agree on the details or not, find no contradiction in an antiquity of man of hundreds of thousands of years and the orthodox interpretation of the fall of Adam.

Fundamentalists of today have too often raised the antiquity of man (notice I do not refer here to the creation vs. the evolution of man) to “doctrinal” status, as if there were some scriptural basis for one view or another.

It is the inordinate maintenance of this position in the face of both conservative theological and modern scientific opinion to the contrary that causes the “tension … in evangelical circles” rather than “the inordinate pressures of contemporary scientific theory about the antiquity of man.”

I’m sure that we Christian anthropologists would be willing to study with an open mind any serious, scholarly attempt to invalidate, overthrow, or supersede the classic works in this area upon which our position partially rests, such as William Henry Green’s “Primeval Chronology” (Bibliotheca Sacra, 1890) or B. B. Warfield’s “On the Antiquity and Unity of Human Race” (Princeton Theological Review, 1911).

It seems to me that those who oppose an antiquity of man of hundreds of thousands of years must take these and other such materials into account.…

JAMES O. BUSWELL, III

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

THE TROUBLE WITH LABELS

I have never considered myself as “neo-orthodox.” I have described my position in terms of “orthodoxy as a growing tradition” and “a new Reformation theology.” My basic concern has been to defend the orthodox Christian faith, as expressed in the Reformation, and to reinterpret this faith for the needs of our particular age as Luther, Calvin, and Wesley did for the needs of their ages. In The Case for a New Reformation Theology I emphasized that the movement for which I spoke was a “mood and trend” in theology that did include some of the many divergent figures so often referred to as “neo-orthodox” but that also included many who are called neoliberal or conservative.

Article continues below

If I had been one of the ministers approached in the 1957 survey to which your article (“Reflections on American Theology,” Jan. 1 issue) refers, I probably would have had to designate myself as “conservative” since apparently the only alternatives were fundamentalist, liberal (equated “with classic rationalistic modernism”), and neo-orthodox (identified “with the theology of Barth and Brunner”).

Although I acknowledge a debt to Barth and Brunner, I have never accepted their positions completely.

Professor of Systematic Theology

Garrett Theological Seminary

Evanston, Ill.

The strongest influence on my theology is that of biblical theology. On the Old Testament, men like Eichrodt and Rowley will suffice to indicate the type of biblical theology. On New Testament theology I would be nearest to the thinking of Oscar Cullmann and those in general who share his position. Beyond the Bible I have more sympathy for patristic theology than for Reformation theology. I believe that many of the views of Luther and Calvin have led us into disastrous conclusions. For this reason I am nearer to classic Anglicanism than to Lutheranism or Calvinism. Gore and Temple have left an indelible mark on my mind, and two years at Oxford University only deepened this appreciation. In brief, the Atonement, the Incarnation, and the Trinity lie at the very heart of my basic belief. I trust that a careful reading of two recent books which I have published will sustain this impression. They are Christ and the Church and The Hope of Glory, both published by Eerdmans.

On the question of propositional revelation I am not sure whether we would agree or not. Revelation to me is basically the self-disclosure of God in creation, history, and personal experience, especially the experience of prayer and worship. I would not want to deny that truthful statements can be made about this personal disclosure, but revelation and response are intensely personal in my thinking. For this reason I am more in sympathy with Christian mysticism than I am with Christian rationalism.

A careful reading of John Baillie’s The Sense of the Presence of God will indicate what I have in mind when I speak of Christian mysticism. Pagan mysticism is not my point.…

Article continues below

Professor of Christian Theology

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Louisville, Ky.

TO CORRECT THE RECORD

Re “In Canada, A Climate of Ecumenicity” (News, Dec. 4 issue): I did not say to anyone nor write at any time “that Canadian Baptist scholars agree that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are myths,” nor do I personally agree at any point with the myth theory of biblical interpretation.

President

The Baptist Federation of Canada

Islington, Ont.

FULLER DEFINITION

The concern for the “purity of the visible church” evidenced in some of the recent letters appears inadequate as a characterization of biblical Christianity, unless carefully defined.

Permit me to suggest that by “purity of the visible church” evangelicals mean two things: (1) an intellectual acceptance of Jesus as Saviour (“substitutionary atonement”) and Lord, and (2) the experience of the “new birth.” Christ defined this latter as loving God with all one’s heart and loving one’s fellow man as himself. We need to emphasize that this does not simply mean loving what we understand to be the “truth,” as did certain Pharisees, but loving people, even those with whom we disagree.

A Christian, then, is one through whom the Holy Spirit so loves that he will disagree with tears, so careful lest he bring reproach on the Saviour or offend a brother in Christ. His concern will not be to discredit another, but to gently point to the life of love which is available in Jesus Christ. This is the pure Church for which the evangelical—or for that matter the Christian—would pray.

Assistant Professor of History

Morris Harvey College

Charleston, W. Va.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.

Our digital archives are a work in progress. Let us know if corrections need to be made.

Tags:
Issue: