Eutychus and His Kin: July 21, 1978

The Eclectic Sandwich Bar

The Catalyst is a snack bar staffed and managed by Fuller seminary students. Here are some items from the menu.

St. Francis: a humble sandwich. Provolone, cucumber, sprouts, tomato, wheat bread.

John Wesley: the perfect sandwich. Swiss, provolone, sprouts, tomato, sheepherder bread.

Martin Luther: sin and eat boldly. Beef on german rye.

John Calvin: made for “two-lips.” Ham, swiss, lettuce, tomato, french roll.

Harold Lindsell: the inerrant sandwich. Ham, cheddar, cucumber, sprouts, rye.

The Heretic: syncretist’s delight. Any two meats, cheeses, vegies on any bread.

To these, our Eutychus snack bar adds the following:

Francis Schaeffer: why then should we live? Liverwurst, swiss cheese, peanut butter, strawberry jam on pita.

Jim Bakker: the “electric church” sandwich. Porkroll, Tomato, Lettuce.

Donald McGavran: the church growth sandwich. Six-foot-long submarine (hoagie, hero).

Robert Schuller: this is the sandwich, etc. Pheasant under crystal.

Jerry Falwell: old-time sandwich. Red-eye gravy on biscuit. (No fixed price—contributions accepted.)

Bob Jones: the pure sandwich. White meat on white bread, or dark meat on dark bread. No substitutions.

EUTYCHUS VIII

Filing Material

Thank you for Ronald O. Durham’s piece on process theology (June 2). I found it a helpful elucidation of Whitehead’s difficult views and I intend to file it. I was troubled, however, by one point: Durham’s seeming willingness to abdicate an evangelical stance in favor of engaging Whitehead’s philosophy on its own ground. Whitehead rejected the biblical view of God as “barbaric.” Thus he also dismissed any possibility of special revelation as evangelicals conceive of it. Instead he pursued a speculative philosophical method in which everything, including God, is brought before the bar of reason and given a rigorous going over. Anything that could not stand his rational examination was eliminated.

A. DUANE LITFIN

Assistant Professor of Practical Theology Dallas

Theological Seminary

Dallas, Tex.

On the Nose

I thought the June 2 issue was superb, especially William Wells’s review of James Barr’s Fundamentalism, and not only for its cogent analysis. He pointed out very clearly the essential issue of the whole inerrancy controversy; namely, what is and should be the believer’s attitude toward the Bible?

DOUGLAS FOSTER

Missoula, Mont.

Battle Cries

As a follow-on to your editorial on “Decent Speech on the Airwaves” (May 19) it should be noted that more than indecent language is affecting the general welfare. There has been a deterioration in the moral tone of much of the programming selected for airing on television and radio …

The network and stations become only middlemen between the sponsors and the audience—a broker of air time for commercial exposures. Government and citizen attacks on broadcasters miss the true offenders. To get at the roots, visible criticism needs to be leveled at those companies which use indecent programming to hawk their wares. Let’s quit railing against the broadcasters and start working over the sponsors!

LAWRENCE W. WRIGHT

Edmonds, Wash.

A Call To Action

Donald Tinder’s laudable insistence in “A View of the Holocaust” (Editorials, May 19) … that we search for a preventive lesson in the ruins of the Holocaust, despite Elie Wiesel’s assertion that the disaster is unutterably unique, prompts me to write.… To recoil in horror and disbelief at the appallingly routine and systematic dehumanization and murder of Jews in Nazi Germany is natural. It helps us to preserve our sanity, just as the use of slander and euphemism helped the Nazis preserve theirs. But if the magnitude of the tragedy is unique (and there are some who would dispute even that), its roots are not. There is at least one, “down home” lesson to be learned from it. Once I can begin to persuade myself that my neighbor and not my circumstances could be the problem standing in the way of some imagined happiness, I may well find myself tempted to move him out of the way, as I would any impediment. Unfortunately, the logic of that action dictates that I will not have truly solved my problem until, left to my own devices, I am able to remove him completely. That fatal attitude, in all its gradations, is as available to us now as it was then.

BILL WIELAND

Crawfordsville, Ind.

Timely Music

I want to thank you and Dr. Leafblad for the fine article “What Sound Church Music?” (May 19). Especially timely and helpful were the “four prevalent approaches to church music,” which have no support in Scripture.

Evangelical Christianity needs to learn the lesson that God is the one who calls men to salvation, man only proclaims it, and God does not need our gimmicks in order to save men … no, not even contemporary music. It seems we have forgotten that though we are in the world that we are not of the world, and that rather than being conformed to the world, our minds are to be transformed.

JAMES L. DAY

Big Trees Community Bible Church

Arnold, Calif.

Your special music issue left me cold and sad. I fear that the concept of excellence presented by Leafblad prohibits most believers from pleasing God. There is something far more important than technical excellence when the redeemed soul makes melody before its Redeemer. And the Christ Church program of Oak Brook offers little to the 100-member fellowship with its simple folk who love to sing.

More importantly, I searched for some small mention of the music of American blacks. There is the very rich heritage of the spirituals. And how can you present Stookey and Girard without mention of just one like Walter and Eddie Hawkins, James Cleveland, or Andrae Crouch? Their music is used and enjoyed by blacks and whites alike. A magazine on Christianity today must broaden beyond the main-line churches and schools, to include a vast host of people making praise in all sorts of rhythms and beats.

Pontiac, Mich.

WILLIAM C. FORBES

Correction

We regret the recent error that slipped by us in “Evil and God: Has Process Made Good Its Promise?” (June 2). “We quote the world” should have read “We quote the word.”

Striking Pose

Thank you for the very striking cover to your May 5 issue. Annie Dillard’s face is as unique as her writing. Both are haunting, beautiful, and full of both certainty and question. Cheryl Forbes takes issue with Dillard’s belief that God is “animated in nature; yet … quite apart from his creation.” Ms. Forbes observes that “you can’t have it both ways.” Can’t you? Mustn’t we all come to grips with a God whose nature is a paradox to our finite understanding, who is both Lamb and Lion, who often works outside our rationalist framework, who is, in this case, both immanent and transcendent?

One of Dillard’s most pervasive questions is about pain in the world and the nature of the God who permits it. Cheryl Forbes speaks to the crux of the matter: “The answer to the question ‘Does God care?’ (was) given in the Incarnation. What we know of pain and irrationality God knows because Christ does.”

LUCI SHAW

Editor

Harold Shaw Publishers

Wheaton, Ill.

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