God’s Book And Guiness’s

On a stormy Sunday morning we were visiting a little church at land’s end—literally—on the Oregon coast. The minister began to pray, “Here we are, a group of little people, way out on the edge of nowhere … with Thy Word.”

Little flock, little pastor, little people. Little at any time, but especially at the end of the big seventies.

Today’s catchword is growth, church growth. A church that stays the same size (unless it is already enormous, I suppose) is perceived as failure.

The church is called the “household of God” (Eph. 2:19), the “family” of Jesus Christ (Eph. 3:15). Members are called brothers and sisters. So we have a New Testament parallel between church and family.

Is it stretching that parallel to suggest that procreation is not the only function, or the determining test for success, in the family? No, the family normally enjoys times of birth, of growth. But for long periods of time it does not, its reason for being is other than increasing in size.

Bringing children into the Kingdom as well as into the world, nurturing them, training them to make decisions and cope with a wide range of problems, nursing them through physical, emotional and spiritual illnesses: these are worthy functions of any family even during periods when it remains constant in size.

A family with twelve members isn’t better or more successful than one with four. It may just be noisier.

Back to Oregon. I guess what impressed me most was that pastor’s qualifying statement, “with Thy Word.” Where God’s Word is believed and taught, any church is big—big enough for God, if not for Guiness.

EUTYCHUS VIII

Dividing Lines

I came home the other day after having just turned in my thesis on Christian community to find your magazine with a cover story on … community! (“Journey to Renewal,” Jan. 13).

After reading the article, I was encouraged by Dr. Lundquist’s emphasis on the need for Christians to have some kind of daily corporate demonstration of Christianity. Other things about Dr. Lundquist’s article, however, distressed me. In particular, one should rejoice, to be sure, that the “theological variations” he listed had lost their divisiveness in the Christian communities he visited. But the prominent place of Catholic communities in the article suggests, by implication, that their theology should be tolerated as well. At this point, Lundquist has lost his theological integrity. Some theological issues must be divisive because they are absolutes. This does not mean that we should encourage division. But on the other hand, simply because we have let non-absolutes be divisive in the past does not mean that we should keep true absolutes from being divisive now.

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HERB REESE

Dallas, Tex.

I found Lundquist’s article, “Journey to Renewal,” very discouraging. He has revealed quite dearly the basic assumption underlying the modern “renewal movement”—that doctrine is not considered really very important. There is a denial of the principles of the Reformation. The Reformers taught us the sufficiency of Scripture. Now this objective standard is being placed in the background as the emphasis shifts to subjective, charismatic experiences. This drift back to what is really a Roman Catholic viewpoint should be shocking to any Protestant. Lundquist speaks of being “In a Catholic setting … laying hands upon a kneeling priest.…” Certainly we must be thankful for the spirit of love in Christ, but what has happened to the spirit of Mr. Valiant for Truth, that great hero of The Pilgrim’s Progress? Where would the “renewal movement” be if we began once again to “… earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3)?

MARSHALL C. ST. JOHN

The Bible Presbyterian Church

Concord, N.C.

What’s the Source?

Thank you very much for the most interesting interview with Cornelius Van Til (Dec. 30). There is, however, one question that might have been asked in order to further elucidate his position on the Word and sovereignty of God.

If one must presuppose the Bible’s truth because of the sovereignty of God, how, then, is one to evaluate the Christian Bible and teachings with those of another religious persuasion whose followers, for reasons of their deity’s sovereignty, must also presuppose the truth of their written revelation? If Van Til would point to the subjective conviction of the Holy Spirit, could not the person of another faith point also to his own inward verification? Were Van Til then to look at objective historical criteria to support the superiority of the Christian revelation over another, would this not be the very thing he repudiated, namely, the application of any human test to God’s Word? Might not even subjective verification be an example of this? It seems, then, that Van Til is left with merely the hope that he has chosen the one true revelation of God which, of course, every cult and sect assumes of their source of truth.

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PAUL VON FANGE

Lutheran High School

Mayer, Minn.

Pressing A Question

J. Robert McQuilkin’s article (“Public Schools: Equal Time for Evangelicals,” Dec. 30) is informative and provocative. It raises several educational policy questions with which Christian parents should be concerned. Although McQuilkin does not elaborate upon it to a great extent, it seems to me that the most pressing question is whether or not evangelicals can in good conscience continue to support public schooling as they have for a century and a half.

JAMES C. CARPER

Assistant Professor of Foundations of Education

Tulane University

New Orleans, La.

I identify with the article.… When my wife recently recommenced teaching, she was instructed by the Christian authorities in the public schools that she was not to read the Bible or pray with the children because of the objection from certain secularist humanists! I have long contended that whether the Supreme Court intended to erase Bible reading and prayer per se from the public school classroom is a moot question. Look at the result!

McQuilkin speaks of “released time” for religious instruction under the auspices of the public schools. We experienced this in Australia, where our children attended public schools for a time. That there is value is beyond question. What I question is whether one can seriously equate one to two hours of specialized religious instruction per week with an integration of Christ and the Bible into the whole curriculum.

In any event, McQuilkin’s statement is sure to be the classic war-cry of serious-minded evangelicals: “Free the Christian teacher to teach his religious and moral convictions as the secular humanist is free to teach his.”

GENE L. JEFFRIES

Dean

Arkansas Institute of Theology

Fayetteville, Ark.

Understanding Children

For the most part I have no quarrel with the editing of the manuscript—even the changing of the title (“Reading, Writing, And … Right From Wrong?,” Dec. 30). However, I am very concerned about one change which resulted in a substantive error. I wrote that as an example of a stage I response to the Heinz story, the child may say, “He shouldn’t have done that because then he’d be a thief if they caught him and put him in jail” (note page 10 of the manuscript). It was edited to read, “He shouldn’t have done that because now he’s a thief and they might catch him and put him in jail.” The statement as it now reads is a combination of stages 4 and 2 and in no way typifies stage 1. “Now he’s a thief” would be at stage 4 and “they might catch him and put him in jail” is a typical stage 2 concern. To the stage 1 child, the man is not a thief unless he is caught and punished.

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The reason most adults do not understand the thinking processes of children is because they constantly do this kind of reinterpreting of the child’s speech to fit in logically with adult patterns of thought. Piaget found that young children are incapable of either true induction or true deduction and therefore have difficulty with problems adults find easy to solve. I’m concerned about misinforming the reader and also do not wish those who are in the field of moral judgment to consider that I do not know the area I have written about.

BONNIDELL CLOUSE

Professor of Educational Psychology

Indiana State University

Terre Haute, Ind.

Working Writers

May I suggest that you inform writers submitting articles to be considered for your pages of the extent to which their articles may undergo revision. In the process, my own recent article (“Salvation According to Scripture: No Middle Ground,” Dec. 9) not only enjoyed some improvements—for which I offer thanks—but also suffered the imposition of grammatical mistakes (such as a split infinitive and a pronoun with a nonsensical antecedent), stylistic weakening (such as the substitute of passive verbs for active and of the verb to be for verbs of action), an exegetically erroneous insertion (Matt. 25:31–46 says nothing about “amount” of charity), wholesale recasting of sentences, and omissions of supportive scriptural references, words, phrases, and even whole paragraphs—including some of major argumentative importance. All this happened without any advance notice, let alone consultation with or permission from me as author. Let writers beware and readers understand that what they read may differ markedly from what was written!

ROBERT H. GUNDRY

Professor of New Testament and Greek

Westmont College

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Not Satisfied

Regarding the lead article in the January 13 issue, on the Vanauken book, “A Severe Mercy”: your condensation spoiled that book for me. I’m sorry you were not satisfied to do just a book review. Midland Park, N.J.

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M. GRASSER

On Target

Ruth Beechick is right on target in cautioning about humanistic values which may be concealed in moral development theory, and in urging biblical revelation as the only basis for truly Christian moral education (“Lawrence Kohlberg: Why Johnny Can Be Good Without Being Religious,” Dec. 30).

Kohlberg’s stages, however, refer to cognitive structures, and so basic are these structures to the process of moral reasoning in all human beings that even Christian thinking cannot escape them. In a recent book called I’m Saved, You’re Saved, Maybe, Jack R. Pressau also makes use of Kohlberg’s six-stage typology to show how our Christian understanding of “salvation” changes with our moral stage framework. He also evaluates movements such as Youth for Christ and Campus Crusade from the perspective of moral development theory, noting with a pragmatism akin to First Corinthians 9:22 that you cannot work with people except where they actually are. The Kohlberg approach may not have all the answers, but on the whole, it seems to represent less of a threat to Christian education than behavioristic or psychoanalytic ideas of how morality develops.

LENNART PEARSON

Librarian

Presbyterian College

Clinton, S.C.

Correction

In the January 27 issue, page 14, John W. Doberstein was misspelled with a “v.” We regret the error.

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