Eutychus and His Kin: May 7, 1971

ENTERTAINING ANGELS

The other day my family tumbled into our debt-laden station wagon and headed for the circus. It’s been years since I was at a circus and I had forgotten the utter confusion that reigns in the stands. We fought our way through a mass of vendors intent on loading us down with toy monkeys, swords, inflated plastic elephants, ray guns, snoopy dogs, and twirling sparklers.

We reached our seats just as the overture began and the spotlights went on, revealing a display of clowns below.

I am crazy about clowns. The attention given clowns as existential symbols of human existence is well deserved. They, of course, constitute the most intellectual element in the circus. Or, to put it in the words of my seven-year-old, “They’re funny!”

Below us in the arena were clowns of all description in glorious display, obviously outfitted by some mad haberdasher. There were astonishing plaids and incredible stripes in all sorts of neon colors. Some had enlarged shoulders, pinched waists, bell-bottomed trousers, oversized shoes and undersized hats. Others had bouffant hair, bulbous bellies and striped stockings. The whole picture was a comic understatement of our human attention to externals.

Standing out in serious relief against this technicolor display was a poor fat fellow in black and white shredded rags, with a lugubrious expression.

In his hand he held a couple of knitting needles and an incomplete sweater. As the other clowns made their turn around the arena, my ragged friend admired each glimmering costume, feeling the material and gesturing helplessly toward his own rags.

With gestures he indicated to a dwarf that he was knitting himself a new costume to replace his ragged outfit.

After a few minutes the clowns disappeared from the arena. Later during the grand procession he reappeared atop a gold and white rococo carriage, smiling happily, and dressed in magnificent gold lame shredded rags. I laughed out loud at his supreme joy over his new attire. How could he be so happy? Gold lameé rags are still rags.

But then, as they observe the earthly arena and my own comic pursuit of gold rags, perhaps angels are entertained by me unawares.

PIETY’S ALOOFNESS

“Look Redeemed” (April 9, page 19) states an obvious truth; that the Gospel should be proclaimed “with authority and conviction” to make an impact.

The sociologists referred to are probably Stark and Glock. The main thrust of their study had to do with the relationship of religious orthodoxy to “works.” What they find is the sad fact, known to many, that the more Christians are committed to conservative theology the less likely they are to have a social concern. They have demonstrated with statistical charts that the churches of the pietistic sector of Christendom are guilty of real heresy and error. The plain teaching of the Bible on the absolute necessity of loving and serving our fellow man is ignored and sometimes ridiculed by conservative Christians.

Wrote the late Kyle Haselden, “A Christianity which concentrates on personal piety and which makes aloofness from the world’s agonies a prerequisite of piety does more mischief in human relations than a score of atheistic cults.”

Peak Publications

Colorado Springs, Colo.

SUCCINCT SIGNIFICANCE

My thanks to Lon Woodrum for “Easter Is Not For Everybody” (April 9). It is the most succinct, well-written statement of the significance of Easter that I have read in quite some time. It was well placed as the first article.

First United Methodist Church

Cambridge, Ohio

STEPPING FORWARD

We read with great interest the news item, “Evangelical Colleges Plan Consortium” (April 9). This is indeed a step in the right direction in giving students at Christian colleges quality education in more areas than one school alone can supply.

Our interest is personal because we feel we have already taken a small step to meet this need at the Urban Life Center in Chicago. In the spring of 1970, a group of students, professional and lay people, and educators—well acquainted with evangelical colleges—decided to put concrete under our mutually felt need for a “semester in the city” for students from suburban Christian colleges. We brought together both suburban students (mostly from Wheaton College and Trinity College) and urban students (from Roosevelt University and also Upward Bound students) in a live-in concentrated program of urban studies, life, and culture. Our instructors include a former Wheaton professor, a Trinity professor, and a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago. The academic end of our program is currently accredited through Roosevelt University, but we hope to expand to more formal involvement by several Christian colleges.

The consortium concept, regardless of what it will eventually be called, is an encouragement to us, as we feel Christian colleges should and can lend and consolidate their resources and programs to everyone’s benefit. It is our hope that the Urban Life Center can work hand in hand with this forward step.

Coordinator

Urban Life Center

Chicago, Ill.

FAULT WITH ‘NO FAULT’

Without debating the full merits of the case, I must question the validity of your comparing “no fault” auto insurance with the no-fault provisions of life, health, and fire insurance (“No Fault With ‘No Fault,’ ” April 9). Rarely is a fire loss attributable to anyone but the policyholder. Likewise, rarely is natural death under life insurance or the contraction of a serious illness or an accident under health insurance attributable to anyone other than the policyholder (even though the germs, in the one case, could have come from someone else, rarely can the culprit actually be identified ex post facto).

If you wish to make a comparison, you could perhaps compare fire, life, and health insurance to the physical damage-collision portion of an auto policy, that portion that pays the policyholder if he causes damage to his own car.…

I also would question the need for any kind of criteria for insuring drivers if no-fault insurance were instituted, since the most careful driver might well file numerous claims due to the carelessness of others. Therefore, the safe driver would surely have to pay higher rates, since he would be financially supporting about as many claims for damages as would the careless driver. And, obviously, it would be nearly impossible to award safe-driving discounts or incentives of any kind.

Columbus, Ohio

REFRESHING RAINS OF REVIVAL

It was refreshing to read [the news] report “Revival Reaches Out: SDA Students Carry It On” (March 26). You have done your readers a good service by keeping them informed of the mercy drops that are now falling. We have waited for this revival for a long time. To us it is the “sound of abundance of rain.”

Your report quotes one student as saying that the traditional system failed to communicate Christ. It is hard to imagine how this is possible. Many of us in the ministry and other phases of Adventist work had deep encounters with Christ on Adventist campuses. Christ is the very foundation of the Adventist plan of education. Says Ellen White in Education (page 30): “In the highest sense the work of education and the work of redemption are one, for in education, as in redemption, ‘other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.’ ” She further adds: “To aid the student in comprehending these principles, and in entering into that relation with Christ which will make them a controlling power in the life, should be the teacher’s first effort and his constant aim.”

As a church we have endeavored to lead our members and our students to Jesus. Perhaps this is why our students are now accepting him as their Lord. For, like Timothy, Adventist students from their youth up have known the holy Scriptures, “which are able to make” them “wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

The Hampden Boulevard Seventh-day Adventist Church

Reading, Pa.

I was … fascinated by the statement, referring to an SDA student, that “he and others in the movement speak of new respect for Mrs. White.” My own observations have convinced me of just the opposite.… As a case in point, I cite the March 3, 1971, issue of the Lancastrian, official school publication of Atlantic Union College, an SDA institution in Massachusetts. There it stated on page one that “George W. Target, a Seventh-day Adventist novelist and playwright,” was holding a series of lectures at the institution. When I joined the SDA Church in 1943 I was instructed never to read novels or plays; every SDA knows the writings of Mrs. White are full of denunciations of fiction, especially the youth-oriented “Messages to Young People.” The endorsement of novels by an official SDA journal can only be interpreted as a downgrading of Mrs. White.

Pembroke, N.C.

RIGHT ON TO ‘NO-MAN’S-LAND’

Tell the brother from Candler (“Social Reform: An Evangelical Imperative,” by Claude Thompson, March 26) that there is a rapidly increasing number of evangelicals who dare to join him in the no-man’s-land between fundamentalists who lack social concern and liberals who recklessly cast aside basic doctrines. If daring to be evangelical means catching it from both sides, so be it. Right on, Brother Claude!

Asst. Prof. of History

Messiah College at Temple University

Philadelphia, Pa.

JUST ANOTHER CULT

The news story by Edward Plowman, “Followers of the Way” (March 26), is of much interest to us here in Greenville. In addition to some of their heretical views as stated in Mr. Plowman’s article, The Way does not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. We believe that their denial of the deity of Christ makes them just another cult.

Principal

Greenville Christian Academy

Greenville, N. C.

TRACKING DOWN LIFE

I read with great interest … “Let’s Put Life in Church Services” (The Minister’s Workshop,” March 26).… [Mr. Plowman] is on the right track.

Administrative Asst.

The United Methodist Church

Hopwood, Pa.

HIGHLY MISLEADING

Peter Wagner’s “High Theology in the Andes” (Jan. 15) is misleading. May I make three observations:

1. There was no such thing as an “Inter-Varsity bloc” at the Cochabama theological conference, December, 1970. Several of those who supported my position have nothing to do with the student movement I represent, and at least one who is on the staff of this movement in Latin America lined up with those who opposed my view. Furthermore, those of us who attended the conference did so on a personal basis, not as representatives of any particular organization or church.

2. The question of an inerrant Bible occupies but a fraction of my paper on the authority of Scripture (one and a half out of twenty-nine pages, to be exact). I find it difficult to understand why Wagner regards that point as representative of the whole paper and why he fails to make clear that my real objection was not to inerrancy as such, but to separating the Bible from the history of salvation, the revelation of Jesus Christ, and the witness of the Holy Spirit, in order to make inerrancy the basic issue on which the whole structure of bibliology should rest.

3. While supporting different opinions on the practical importance of insisting on the inerrancy of the Bible’s original documents, Professor Andrew Kirk and I were in full agreement with regard to most of the issues raised during the conference, notably the question of the propositional or verbal aspect of revelation. Significantly, the article makes no mention of the united voice that Professor Kirk and I, with most of those attending the conference, raised against the exegetical acrobatics Peter Wagner engaged in for the purpose of providing a basis for his church-growth theories.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

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