Eutychus and His Kin: December 20, 1974

How Many Angels

When wags wish to mock those concerned with spiritual truth and sound doctrine, they frequently deride them for quarreling over “how many angels can dance on the point of a pin.” This question is attributed to a medieval scholastic disputation, but extensive reading in the Latin Fathers has failed to locate the exact source. Following the example of the U. S. Supreme Court about certain “constitutional” rights, however, we may well say, “We can’t find it, but we’re sure it must be there. It’s so in harmony with the spirit of medieval theology.”

The interesting thing about the angels and the pin is that even if we can’t find the citation, the question itself is not only “typical” but also actually relevant. The question, you see, is whether there is anything material about angels. For if there is nothing material about them, a limitless number can occupy a minuscule space. But if there is any material substance to angels at all, then the number, while it may be immense, is necessarily limited (finite). So the question really asks whether there is a truly spiritual reality that is entirely independent of physical, material dimensions. The philosophical materialist would deny this, claiming that only matter is real. The opposing philosophical school, idealism, alleges (unwisely, it is true) that only the idea is ultimately real.

This “medieval quarrel” may never have been seriously argued, but it is a valid reminder of the fact that biblical, historic Christianity is neither materialistic nor idealistic. The materialist would say, “There are no angels.” The idealist might counter, “There is no individual pin, only the idea (or spirit) of pin-ness.” The Christian may wonder whether angels, who are basically spiritual beings, may not have some tiny material component, however infinitesimal. But he is not in doubt as to whether angels are real. Nor does he doubt the existential and ontological reality of individual pins.

As the Nicene Creed has it, God is the Creator of “all things visible and invisible.” He has created a universe that is incredibly rich and has both material and spiritual components. Both aspects are real. There are pins, and we should try not to sit on them, and there are angels, real messengers of a real God who do his bidding. How many may be in the vicinity of any particular pin is, in one sense, a facetious question. But in another sense the question exhibits, in a wry way, the truth that God has created both a visible, material world and material beings, and a spiritual, immaterial world and its beings—and us, who have a share in both.

Feeling Touch

While Dr. Linton has written a thoughtful article, it really lacks feeling (“How Are You Feeling?,” Oct. 11). I am grateful that God made us “feeling” persons. Jesus was a feeling person. He wept, had joy, loved, was angered, disappointed, felt rejected, unwanted. While the thought process of the brain is necessary, without the feeling it is cold, sterile, and dull. At times I listen to sermons that are really boring because I know that it has passed through the minister’s head but never his heart. The problems that we experience in helping families and marriages in counseling are that they can express little feeling toward each other. They may have an intellectual commitment, but without feeling, they cannot touch each other’s lives.

Let’s not let T/A, Gestalt, and all the new behavioral sciences have a corner on the emotions and feelings so that persons have to turn to these experiences to find their personhood. Some emotional sharing might allow us to discover anew some of the fruits of the spirit, i.e., love, joy, peace.

Director

Presbyterian Counseling Service

Seattle, Wash.

“How Are You Feeling?” by Calvin D. Linton, was fantastic. It stated in logical, literary, and biblical terms exactly the place of human emotion in the process of salvation. You are to be commended on publishing such a splendid article, and the author is, likewise, to be commended on the writing of such.

Central Baptist Church

Gainesville, Ga.

For A Forum

I was amused by the editorial in your October 25 issue, “The Breadth of Christian Art.” The writer seemed to be afraid that many young Christian artists are going to focus their talents into doing “secular” art. Ha! This statement housed in a magazine that devoted a total of nine column inches in that fifty-four-page issue to editorial art—two minuscule cartoons. Beautiful and expensive four-color printing was wasted on your cover by having as your graphics mechanical, rub-off lettering.… The Refiner’s Fire happens to be one of my favorite parts of one of my favorite magazines. The column’s overriding theme seems to be, “We need good Christian art(s)!” Let me paraphrase a mutual friend of ours: “Thou that preachest that there should be good Christian art done by today’s Christian artists, dost thou provide a forum for said art and artists?”

Sonday Funnies Comic Corp.

Akron, Ohio

Non-Completion

In a news story you referred to a book written by Paul Daniel Neidermyer on the Pennsylvania “Plain People” (Oct. 25). It stated among other things that Mr. Neidermyer is a senior in this institution. This is in error. He was a student here from September, 1968, to May, 1970, when he withdrew without completing his course.

Registrar

The Theological Seminary of the Reformed Episcopal Church

Philadelphia, Penna.

From History

I am more than a little distressed that a church historian would make assumptions without the facts of history as presented in “The Reformation: Will History Repeat Itself?” (Oct. 25). It is well documented that the Anabaptists did not expect “that there would be an alliance between the faith chosen and the institutional and political environment in which it lived.” They espoused the free-church concept from their beginning.

The writer also assumes that the Anabaptists would have used the arm of the state to advance their cause. This cannot be substantiated from the events of the time or from the 450-year history of the Anabaptists and their spiritual descendants.

Olar, S. C.

Wrong Background

In the news item about Billy James Hargis (“Hargis on the Shelf,” Nov. 22), [you say], “Hargis … has a Southern Baptist background.” Not so. Billy James Hargis has a conservative Christian Church background (the same as your former managing editor, the late James DeForest Murch). Hargis attended (but did not graduate from) Ozark Bible College, a Christian Church college, in Joplin, Missouri; he was minister with the First Christian Church in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, before embarking on the Christian Crusade ministry; and he is still listed in the “Directory of the Ministry of Christian Churches.”

Decatur Christian Church

Decatur, Ala.

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