Eutychus and His Kin: May 21, 1971

SECRETS OF A POSTMISTRESS

Of late there has been a hue and cry about the loss of privacy in American life. Many people seem to sense a threat in the fact that both government and private agencies systematically collect this information about us.

Those who are so profoundly disturbed obviously have never met Mamie, our local postmaster. (Once when I called her “postmistress,” trying my best to be correct, she nearly threw me out of the post office for using suggestive language on government property.)

Mamie knows everything and never forgets a thing—except once in a while to have the mail delivered. When the February issue of one of four magazines came, Mamie apparently remembered that she was still reading the January issue. Both issues arrived at our house the same day with the January issue neatly dogeared where Mamie had marked her place in the continued fiction piece.

The comprehensiveness of her information was brought home to us a few months after we arrived in town. My wife dashed off a postcard to her mother signing it “M.B.” She was interrupted while addressing it and absent-mindedly mailed it with only her mother’s name on the address side.

The following day when she was in the post office Mamie handed her the card saying, “Here’s your card to your mother. You forgot to address it.” Some of our best friends don’t know my wife’s maiden name, but Mamie does.

Where the FBI collects material, Mamie assimilates it and forms a judgment about the character and personality of the individual involved. By carefully studying what various members of the community are reading, she has put together a mental dossier on each that would put the FBI to shame.

Jim Hicks is the “seed catalogue man.” The fact that he earns his living as a consulting economist is to Mamie not nearly so indicative of his character as the fact that he regularly receives seed catalogues.

Sam Furman is the “writer fellow.” Sam, an electrical engineer, receives Writer’s Digest and other publications designed for the professional writer. I don’t know if Sam has ever put a line

on paper, but he’s forever identified in Mamie’s mind as a writer.

I shudder to think what might happen if some unwary student in our town decided to study Communism directly from Communist publications.

You see, in Mamie’s view a man is not what he does but what he reads. And perhaps she’s more profound than she realizes.

SHAKY GROUND UNDER ‘ISRAEL’

As a faithful reader of your magazine, I am continually rewarded by the insights within its pages. But I believe that a Christian periodical is on shaky ground when it ventures to make political position statements other than those which follow directly from Christian tenets. Such an aspect was not obvious in the editorial “Pressures on Israel” (April 9). A statement weighing purely political issues deserves no place in the editorial pages of your fine magazine, unless the writer considers himself privy to information that is otherwise not widely available.

Surely many of your readers feel, contrary to your editorial opinion, that the first step toward peace in the Middle East (in accordance with the November 22, 1967, United Nations Security Council resolution) must be Israel’s return of Egyptian territories obtained as the result of a pre-emptive first-strike war, and that modern warfare makes an illusory “geographical security” a poor exchange for political security. But to elaborate further on this alternate view would be beside the point, for who is to decide between our varying political convictions? Rather, my point is that essentially non-religious pronouncements on clouded issues serve only to dissipate the authority with which, on other occasions, you can effectively relate the claims of Christ to the affairs of men.

Brookline, Mass.

HERE ARE THE ‘FACTS’

With regard to [John Montgomery’s] “Current Religious Thought” column (“The Last Days of the Late, Great Synod of Missouri,” April 9), please note the following facts:

“Non-evangelical theology that espouses non-inerrancy” is not an issue in “the central trouble-spot, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.” Forty-one of the fifty members of the faculty, over their signatures published in Synod’s official organ, stated November 15, 1970:

We affirm with the Constitution of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (Article II) and in keeping with our vows of ordination and installation that we accept without reservation the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament as the written Word of God and the only rule and norm of faith and of practice and all the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church as a true and unadulterated statement and exposition of the Word of God.

Taking the Scriptures seriously directs Christians, also their theologians, as pilgrims to bring the Word of Life, while there is time, to all who need it, rather than to hover like vultures waiting for churches to die.

“I know you cannot endure evil men.… But I have this against you: you have lost your early love. Think from what a height you have fallen” (Rev. 2:2, 5, NEB).

Secretary of the Faculty

Concordia Seminary

St. Louis, Mo.

I much appreciated Dr. Montgomery’s series on the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church and especially the last installment, despite the chagrin in the Editor’s Note. Christianity needs more men of his caliber who refuse to be mollycoddled into believing that “time” will “implement their mandate and maintain the integrity of the synod’s historic witness without doing irreparable damage to its structure,” for history demonstrates the opposite; who, when they see that a church has departed from the faith, no longer try to work from the inside, but scripturally forsake it, regarding it as apostate; who realize that half of affirming the truth is denying error, in opposition to the doctrinally inclusivistic attitude so prevalent even among evangelicals; who can see an end of being tactful and a need for rebuke, despite pressure groups which would like to minimize doctrine, setting it in contraposition to practice; and whose guide is sola Scriptura. Would that certain other Protestant denominations had men like him!

Cambridge, Mass.

EVIL ARGUMENT

“The Problem of Evil” by Hubert P. Black (April 23) attacks a subject that should receive much more attention than it does.… Dr. Black is to be commended for writing on a subject many short-sighted Christians prefer to avoid. Nevertheless … [his argument] is unacceptable because it contradicts Scripture.

The author tries to defend divine omnipotence. God can do anything, but he limits himself by giving man freedom. Whatever small value this may have relative to omnipotence, it has no bearing on God’s goodness. Can God be good if he grants man freedom, knowing ahead of time what terrible evils man will commit? If God were good, he would not have made such a man.…

Further, the appeal to freedom completely ignores the tragedies of earthquakes in California and Peru, tidal waves in East Pakistan, and the Black Death in medieval Europe. God can control nature, can’t he?… [But] the author contradicts the doctrine of creation ex nihilo in his statement, “God’s power is not limited by natural events that thwart his will but is relative to actual occasions in the sense that they provide the conditions for the exercise of his creative power.” This sentence not only makes God’s acts of creation dependent on a prior existing nature, but also asserts that nature thwarts God’s will. Apparently God cannot prevent tidal waves and earthquakes. The sentence quoted begins by saying that God’s power is not limited, but it ends by nature thwarting God’s power.

Professor of Philosophy

Butler University

Indianapolis, Ind.

The discussion of the problem of evil given in current articles published on the subject might mislead one to suppose that the Scriptures have no contribution to make toward a solution of this problem. Surely the statements of Genesis 50:20 and Romans 8:28 were made by men who had insight into the answer to this question.

Boulder, Colo.

“The Problem of Evil” does not really slip between the horns of the dilemma: if evil exists, how can God be both good and omnipotent?

Though man indeed sins “because he chooses to do so and is responsible and thus culpable,” his sinning act, nevertheless, is predetermined. Only one example is necessary to disprove the article’s contention to the contrary: the greatest sin of all time, the crucifixion of our Lord, was brought about by the “predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23, NASV). Yet human responsibility and guilt for this action are not diminished. Rather they are juxtaposed with divine predetermination in the same verse, “This [Man] … you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put [Him] to death.” Thus, God planned the crucifixion, but men were responsible for its sinfulness. We accept on faith that God is not the author of sin, as James 1:13–17 shows.… From our point of view the problem of evil must remain a problem. God’s predetermination and man’s culpability are equally taught in the Bible. They must be equally accepted. Yet the Christian can rest in the sure hope of the God who works everything—even evil—together for good and his own glory.

Jackson, Miss.

HOW COULD HE?

I was shocked and disappointed to read Eutychus V (“Jesus and Juicy Fruit,” April 23) saying: “I don’t condemn beer drinking.”

(MRS.) GRACE C. MILLER

Anderson, Ind.

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