Eutychus and His Kin: April 1, 1977

Some Recent Events And Happenings

Carl McIntire and Billy Melvin met for prayer last week.

Bill Pannell has revealed that he voted for Gerald Ford in the recent election, “as a matter of conscience.”

Bob Schuller just announced that Jim Wallis will speak at the dedication of his Crystal Cathedral.

John F. Alexander has accepted a position as fund-raiser for the Crystal Cathedral.

The other John Alexander is holding a seminar on witnessing at Arrowhead Springs, California.

Moody Bible Institute has extended an invitation to David Hubbard to speak at next year’s Founder’s Week.

Christianity Today’s board has just rescinded its decision to move the evangelical fortnightly to Carol Stream, Illinois. Instead, the magazine will relocate in Bogalusa, Louisiana, where property values and salaries are lower.

Nancy Hardesty has agreed to write the foreword to Marabel Morgan’s next book, Total Wow, Woof and Flutter.

Bob Jones, Jr., announced that BJU’s student admissions policy will be changed to a quota system in the fall. Quotas will reflect the racial mix in Greenville, South Carolina.

Jack Anderson has joined the Assemblies of God as director of public relations.

Russ Hitt has been given responsibility for future acquisitions by Rupert Murdoch. Hitt says his first recommendation will be that the Australian publisher acquire The Sword of the Lord and move it to Washington, D.C.

April Fool.

EUTYCHUS VIII

Forbidding Fuzziness

Kudos to A. Duane Litfin for “The Perils of Persuasive Preaching” (Feb. 4). What he said needs to be shouted to all of us involved in training men and women for the service of the Master. So much preaching and teaching is fuzzy because we forget that our task is to proclaim and explicate the Word. The God-given integrity of each individual forbids any attempt to manipulate others. “Behavior modification” is neither my task nor any other person’s. That is the Spirit’s task. This article ought to be required reading in every course in the social sciences, education, and homiletics.

G. LLOYD CARR

Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies

Gordon College

Wenham, Mass.

Litfin missed the spirit of the New Testament. The early Church did not preach only to announce the Good News. They strove to convert all men. Can you imagine Paul saying, “My heart’s desire for Israel is that they might become cognizant of the truth”?

The article suggests that preaching should aim at comprehension rather than yielding. New Testament preaching seems to include all levels of conversion. It is filled with pleas for surrender and action. Part of the confusion comes from dividing preaching from the work of the Holy Spirit. Many people seem to think that the Spirit is anxious for the preaching to stop so he can work. Does a carpenter want his hammer to stop falling so he can drive the nail? Preaching is the work of the Spirit.… Litfin adeptly poses problems that modern preachers must face. What pastor is not vexed by the use of gimmicks to get people down the aisle? But these concerns should not turn us from attempting to lead people to Christ.

DAVID YOUNG

First Baptist Church

Warner, Okla.

The author might have mentioned another great danger in such preaching, namely, the strong possibility that anyone intelligent enough to see through it (which is, after all, no great feat in many cases) will be turned off by it. Part of this reaction has rational roots—if some view or product can’t stand on its own merits and has to be pushed by supersalesmen using high-pressure techniques, you wonder how good it is. But, at least in my case, the main ingredient is a strong emotional reaction—if I feel like I’m being conned into believing or doing something, I get mulish about it. And I wonder whether there are not many who might otherwise become Christians who are held back from it by such a reaction.… By the way, Filostrato was not the mad clergyman (“The Still Forbidden Fruit,” Jan. 21): he was the corrupted scientist, the “Italian eunuch” in Bill Hingest’s phrase; Straik was the name of his “mad parson.”

DAVID H. TUGGY

Tetelcingo, Morelos, Mexico

A. Duane Litfin appears to be the early leader in the 1977 Evangelical Straining-at-Gnats-While-Swallowing-Camels Competition for his stunning exposé of the “perils of persuasive preaching.” On the one hand we find a devastating critique of mere contentless homiletics (something that all of us cerebrating sheep outside the fold of the theological sanctuaries learned to despise long ago), but look what slipped through the back door in the form of a major premise: “It now seems to be within man’s power to alter experimentally another person’s basic values, and to control the direction of the change.”

Come now, gentlemen. To quote psychological megalomaniacs of the brand of McConnell, Marcuse, and Rokeach is one thing, to take them seriously quite another. From bitter personal experience, let me assure you that the naïve lay conception that psychiatrists possess mind-controlling powers is fortunately nothing more than popular mythology. Having myself despaired during a year of psychiatric training of finding the key to that mysterious ability, I have since turned to family practice, where I languish in the face of the common cold and warts.

The Zeitgeist has its rewards, of course. That hoary heresy, determinism, produces a most liberating release from personal responsibility, with predictable results in society. Now any sensible person realizes that environment modifies one’s personality at every step of development; but the Lord of both genes and environment (if I read my Bible aright) does not prorate the responsibility for our attitudes and actions on that score.

May I suggest to Dr. Litfin that he re-examine his anthropological presuppositions? We can well live without his proscription of pulpit theatrics; but can we long resist the pounding surf of modern materialism without the solid rock of personal responsibility?

DOUGLAS ILIFF

Fayetteville, N.C.

A Faulty Equation?

I have recently resubscribed to CHRISTIANITY TODAY after a lapse of two years. The fact that you are now carrying the Refiner’s Fire every edition pleases me.

Although I have been “absent” for some time, and you may have covered this point in previous editions, G. Aiken Taylor’s article “Is God as Good as His Word?” (Feb. 4) raises a question.… The author moves in an interesting and I think basically worthwhile way through inerrancy and infallibility and their various merits and faults or problems, but then falls into the perennial trap in this debate of equating inerrancy with literalness of interpretation. One could hold to a view that the Bible is inerrant but not feel that the Garden of Eden, the belly of a whale, or the size of an ark has anything to do with the discussion. That’s why I like his dependence on the authority of the Bible in the first place. To equate authority with a literal dependency is, I think, fallacious, and could be further developed.

You make me think, and I enjoy that.

JOHN H. BRAY

Barrie, Ontario

As a student who is aware of and concerned with the current issue of biblical authority, I wish to thank you for Dr. Taylor’s perceptive article. Seldom, if ever, has anything I have read on the subject elicited such affirmative response from both my heart and my mind, neither of which should be ignored.

JERRY L. WALLS

Houghton, N.Y.

G. Aiken Taylor’s article is another cordial attempt to build a bridge between those who find the Bible infallible but not inerrant, and those who imagine no way in which the Bible could be inerrant and still be infallible.

David E. Kucharksky’s editorial (“A Barrier to Christian Belief”) could well have been made part of Taylor’s discussion! As one who has moved from the “scientific” to the “theological” world, it appears to me that modern evangelicalism is too often ensnared by those “little errors in the beginning that have plagued modern philosophy since its start.” Kucharsky well states that there is not an equation between the “hard facts” and God’s reality.

One cannot help but wonder why so many evangelical “moderns” can accept the sovereignty of God vis-à-vis the freedom of man, the manhood of Christ vis-à-vis the deity of Christ and the concept of the Trinity, yet insist on applying Greek (and very Western!) thought to the rest of the Bible. If one can accept these three (obvious) scientific “errors,” well then why is it difficult to perceive that someone else might have the faith to accept God’s word as being fallible even while containing (what man has designated!) errors?

EDWARD R. DAYTON

Director

Monrovia, Calif.

MARC

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