They Called The Pulpit Vacant
Last year, if my card index serves me well, I preached in fifty different churches; and every place I went they said, “The pulpit is vacant.” This could well be a comment on my preaching, and we can take that up on another day. What I am really worried about is who the take-charge guy is when a pulpit is vacant—especially who the man or woman is who is supposed to take charge of me when I appear on the scene.
Carnegie Simpson once said that you can change anything in the church except the order of service. This is not to say that the people are aware of what is going on in the church service. It simply states that if you change the order, it will be very noticeable and there will be great decibels of resistance. It happens, therefore, that when you show up at a different church every week, the odds are that you will cause flurries of excitement by being different—not because you want to be different, but because no one really knows how the service ought to be run. They only know when you run it the wrong way.
Try sometime to get anyone in the church to tell you whether the prayer comes before or after the offering. Even the deacons and the ushers will not know. And if you have some really interesting variations, such as baptisms or communion, you will probably get the answer I got in a country church once when I asked them to coach me: “Why, Reverend, we just have communion here the way they do in any church”—only they didn’t. In one church they brought the offering forward and put it on top of the organ, and I suppose the symbolism was that the organ was still to be paid for. For complete confusion, have candle lighting and the chiming of the hours. These things are very pretty, but it is hard to find the person in the church who knows exactly how they are done and the order of events.
When you give directions to strangers, they really are strange. And, incidentally, you might save them a parking place.
EUTYCHUS II
War
As a biblical pacifist I found the discussion “Is Nuclear War Justifiable” very ably presented by the two traditions (June 21 issue). Of the four reasons by General Harrison why nations are peaceable rather than aggressive, probably “they may be relatively so well off that they are satisfied with the status quo” fits our country best. But isn’t the present status quo a cause of war? The population of the United States is about one-sixth of the total world population. Yet we have one-half of the good things of life. If we are not aggressive in the war against hunger, we will be labeled by God as the aggressors in the war caused by hunger.
Just how can the “just war” doctrine subscribed to by Professor Stob defend a war fought to maintain an unjust status quo?
Editor
Missionary Bulletin
Blountstown, Fla.
I question the decision that William Harrison reached when he extends the guilt of aggression to an entire populace when that people has no opportunity, as we know it, to choose its leaders and is kept under control by a hardened core of fanatical rulers who will not tolerate interference with their goals. If it be true that “a ‘moderate’ nuclear attack on the territory of the United States would kill half the population, destroy 75 per cent of its buildings and 90 per cent of its intellectual and material possessions,” as Lippman puts it in the June 24, 1963, Newsweek, then as Henry Stob declares, the nations of the world simply must learn to live together. Even a passively approving citizenry in the U. S. S. R. should not be the target in a nuclear war whose outcome will affect all of mankind in one way or another. The next war might indeed be a war to end all wars!
St. Paul, Minn.
The defects in our culture have not been exposed as anti-Christian; rather there seems to have been a rationalistic attempt to use Christianity as a means for defending our culture as it is without trying to change it.
The Methodist Church
Norway, Iowa
General Harrison is a great man, to be sure. But can anyone imagine Jesus Christ taking a gun to defend himself, or his disciples?
Berlin Bible Church
Narrowsburg, N. Y.
Dr. Stob states Jesus’ words, “All who take the sword shall perish by the sword.” You would say that Dr. Stob is a pacifist. But he states he is not. For instance, if Canada would want to take Michigan from us he would be in favor of war. He states that war is not illegal. So the text he quotes does not fit here. But when a thermonuclear war would come, he would favor not to fight.… Why is it, if minor issues are involved we may fight, and when God’s cause, God’s church is to be or not to be, we may not fight?
Oak Lawn. Ill.
I suppose Mr. Stob feels his hands are clean because he has denounced “general thermonuclear war” on the one hand and at the same time insisted that we must not “deliver ourselves into Mr. Khrushchev’s hands.”
Perhaps Mr. Khrushchev will consult Mr. Stob to learn what “premium” he and others are willing to pay for freedom before Mr. K. would even consider waging a nasty, “impermissible” nuclear war. Mr. Stob could then assure Mr. K. that the price of our “self-determination” is too high. This, of course, would not “deliver the whole world into Russian hands.” It would merely be an open invitation to Mr. K. to come and take the free world at little cost to him.
If a “general thermonuclear war” is able to destroy the “spiritual treasures of mankind,” then we Christians can have no part in such a “wicked act.” We need merely to give up our freedom and entrust our “spiritual treasures” into the kind hands of Mr. K.
Second Congregational
South Peabody, Mass.
In effect, this thesis would urge that whenever tyrannical violence is able to arm itself with nuclear weapons, the legitimate use of the sword (the punishment of evildoers, the protection of the upright) must be discontinued. Accordingly, the prospect of life under law is to be abandoned whenever it seems probable that the life of the sword-bearer may be conterminous with that of the predator. It would seem to follow that, should Righteousness persist in joining the battle with Evil beyond this critical point, Righteousness is to be forcibly silenced. Where the choice is to be Humanity or Principle, Principle will be expected to yield in the interest of existence under the best terms which can be arranged with the Tyrant.… Such phrases as, “makes sense,” “serviceable to meaningful social ends,” “a lasting peace settled on the foundation of justice,” and “the technical, cultural, and spiritual treasures of mankind” would seem to indicate that Mr. Stob’s deepest interests are more congenial with the longevity of man than with the glory of God.…
Where the sword is the Lord’s and vengeance is his, and where he seeks that vengeance by the hand of those to whom he has delegated his authority, then even that sword is justifiable whose use leaves God standing alone upon the scene of the holocaust envisioned by Mr. Stob.
Signal Mountain, Tenn.
The Christian, it seems to me, is faced with the possibility of a nuclear war or the certainty of mass murder, an unrelenting attack of manifold prongs on religion, the enslavement of mankind, and the determined effort to enslave the soul of all of our children.…
To me it is unreasonable to say that a nuclear war would destroy mankind. No one has any intention, and there would be no need even in a nuclear war, of seeing that every section of the globe is saturated with nuclear bombs. For example, Khrushchev would not waste any bombs on Central and South America, unless we had nuclear bases there—and in that case he would aim only at those bases.
Harding College
Searcy, Ark.
Spare The Laymen!
The June 7 issue devoted to “Preaching” was thought-provoking and well done, as one has come to expect from CHRISTIANITY TODAY. But Editor Glendon E. Harris of Concise magazine might better have written on the subject “Preacher, Spare Us Laymen.” If a preacher enters the pulpit without having given proper time to the preparation of his message to his congregation, he has no one to blame but himself!
Having been in the pulpit almost as often as I have been in the pew, and at the same time leading an active business life, I have gained some idea what a preacher’s life is like and what the pew should expect from the pulpit. Far too many sermons are hardly more than a group of quotations from several authors orderly or hastily put together, revealing that the preacher either had his secretary dig out of his library or files items she thinks would fit into his sermon or he himself had done so. There was little or no evidence of any real thought and preparation given to the message. How much of our present-day pulpit ministry is biblically rooted and relevant to our times?
For twenty-six years I conducted a half-hour radio Bible-study program, of which eighteen to twenty minutes were devoted to the spoken message. On no occasion did I give less than eight hours of preparation and study for each message. The same holds true for any pulpit preaching I have done. Of course it has meant getting up early in the morning and going to bed late at night. But what preacher is true to his calling if he does not do the same thing?
Our Lord said, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” That is the preacher’s primary task. In so doing, it is imperative to make the preaching of the Gospel relevant to our day. Our Lord and his disciples did; likewise all powerful preachers have done so. No preacher should allow anything to interfere with the time required for preparation and study for his pulpit ministry.
One Saturday evening I wanted to verify a statement I had heard some years previously regarding G. Campbell Morgan, whom all informed ministers acknowledge was “the prince of expositors.” If I could have verified the fact, I intended to include it in my radio message the following morning. I promptly thought of Dr. Bonnell, who at that time was the minister of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, in which church I had in past years often heard Dr. Morgan preach. I telephoned his home, apologized for disturbing the household at that hour of the night, when Mrs. Bonnell said her husband was in his study at the church. I telephoned the church, reached Dr. Bonnell, expressed surprise that at 10 o’clock at night he was still in his study at the church, on the eve of his Sunday ministry. He answered that he often was in his study at that hour on a Saturday night. He gave me the answer to my question. I was glad I had telephoned him, for I learned the statement I had heard was not correct. But I was even more impressed that a city preacher, occupying an important pulpit, was still in his study at 10 P.M. on a Saturday evening.
While on the subject of preaching, it is a well-known fact that many men in the secular and governmental field use ghost-writers to prepare their talks, but no preacher has a right to be so busy that he must employ ghost-writers for his sermons. Imagine Paul, or John, or Peter doing anything of that sort.
What is more, preachers ought not to “palm off” as their own what actually was the work of someone else. A distinguished Princeton Theological Seminary scholar and theologian told me last summer of two such instances. A research assistant for a well-known preacher called on this gentleman to refresh his memory of something he had heard this professor give in one of his classes. The professor gave it to him. The next Sunday he heard this well-known radio preacher give word for word (as his own) what this theologian gave to his former student.
On another occasion this same gentleman, arriving somewhat late, sat in the rear of a church on a Sunday morning. The preacher occupying the pulpit gave one of the professor’s sermons, word for word. It was not until after the service was over that the preacher discovered the professor was in the audience. With much embarrassment, he acknowledged to him what he had done! So I say, “Preacher, Spare Us Laymen.”
New York, N. Y.
The Sword … And Gideon
In your recent issue you ran a series of articles on “Ministering to the Military” (May 24 issue).… I failed to find any mention of the Word as placed by and through the Gideons International.… Just for the record … according to the last figures I received … 15,885,175 New Testaments have been distributed to members of the armed forces. We could give to you hundreds of testimonies received of men who have found the blessed Saviour or had their spiritual life strengthened through reading them. And even I am an example of this.… The need of the world for His Word is so great, and we do so need the prayers and support of the Church in this work.
Morristown, Tenn.
I have just left my duty as a Destroyer Squadron Chaplain, and I greatly appreciate your sending CHRISTIANITY TODAY aboard my ships. Many of the officers and men expressed to me their enjoyment of the issues. While the magazine is scholarly, and many of the articles technical, it had wide circulation. Needless to say, CHRISTIANITY TODAY stuck out like a sore thumb among the various magazines found in the average ship’s wardroom—and was a testimony by its very title.… All in all, I devour each issue, and my faith is strengthened by your evangelical stand.
Station Chapel
Beaufort, S. C.
The Gracious Days
It was a pleasure to read the review of Spurgeon: The Early Years (May 24 issue). One of the few book investments which I made at William Jewell College was the four-volume edition of the autobiography. That with a set of The Treasury of David given to my father by Mrs. Spurgeon are prized possessions.
Just one tiny correction in the review. Mr. Robinson writes: “In his final illness the attention of the civilized world was contered on him ‘in column after column of almost every newspaper.’ Opinions about him varied. ‘The sauciest dog that ever barked in the pulpit’ was one.”
The opinion quoted is recorded in such a way that the impression is given that it was made during his final illness. Actually it was made many years before, while he was new in London.
To those of us who have made a lifetime study of all that pertained to Spurgeon the present interest in his life and ministry is most gratifying, and it would be still more gratifying if we could see repeated in Britain the gracious days when Spurgeon preached. A few years ago I stood on the now vacant site of the New Park Street Chapel and tried to visualize the scenes when crowds milled around the chapel trying to gain admittance.
This writer is the son of a Welsh Baptist minister who died in my infancy. Later he spent seven and a half years in Spurgeon’s Stockwell Orphanage and was later a member of the Tabernacle.
San Diego, Calif.
Calvin As Cleric?
With the highest regard for your distinguished contributor to “Current Religious Thought,” I must dissent from his statement that “John Calvin was always a layman, never an ordained minister” (June 7 issue). Against this universal negative, there are the following considerations: Calvin began his service in Geneva as professor of sacred letters. Shortly thereafter he was made pastor and, in replying to Sadoleto, declared, “I accepted the charge having the authority of a lawful vocation.” In Strasborg, he was the regular pastor of the congregation of French refugees. He was recalled to be the chief pastor in Geneva, where he exercised all the functions thereof, preaching the Word, administering the sacraments, ordaining officers, presiding over the Venerable Company of Pastors. As the minister of worship, he led the congregation in their common confession of sin and followed the same by a prayer for or a declaration of absolution. Likewise, on occasion he heard private voluntary confession and pronounced absolution, for “the ministers are ordained witnesses and sponsors to our consciences of the forgiveness of sins” (Institutes III, iv. 12). Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, recognized Calvin as properly fulfilling the ministerial functions with which he was occupied in Geneva by inviting him to share with other evangelicals in composing a Protestant consensus creed.
Moreover, Calvin designates the minister of the Word as the most useful office in the Church (Institutes IV, iii. 3), favors the ordination thereto by the laying on of hands (IV, iii. 16), and with qualification is willing to call this ordination a sacrament (IV, xiv. 20). Then Francis Junius, who came to Geneva before Calvin died, stated in 1608 that those who preceded Calvin ordained him to the ministry.
Decatur, Ga.
Pilgrimage From Rome
The negative is well applied in the title of Mr. John J. Moran’s article, “What I Don’t Understand About the Protestants!” (May 10 issue).…
I was surprised, really, to see the name of John Henry Newman brought forth, once again, in the best tradition of a Roman Catholic college undergraduate, but Mr. Moran might just be interested to know that, according to a study published some thirteen years ago, ten Romans are received into the Episcopal Church in this country, every year, for every one lost to Rome.
Trinity Church
Brooklyn, Conn.
Reflecting On An Option
If all the energy of all the people that is used to try to save the world for the people, instead were used to save the people for the Lord, the world would not be in the fix it is in.…
Phoenix, Ariz.
Albright On Errancy
At the request of my friend, Dr. Dewey M. Beegle, I am writing with reference to his recent book, The Inspiration of Scripture. In general I like it, though sorry to see such a brief Epilogue—otherwise excellent. The author tells me that the publishers deleted most of the positive matter he had included.
I dislike the terms “error” and “inerrancy,” since they now often mean “mistake” and “infallibility.” “Error” formerly meant “losing one’s way, wandering,” and was applied to misguided deviation from sound doctrine; it is now used also for simple mistakes in oral and written transmission, editing, copying, translating, etc.—all inseparable from our human condition, to which God condescends (used in its proper meaning). Actually mistakes resulting from change of meaning are nearly as common as other classes of “error.” For instance, many years ago I heard an address by the pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago, reputed to be a converted prizefighter. He stated with superb dogmatism (using this word in its current meaning) that God had created the world and had then destroyed and recreated it. The evidence? In Genesis 1:28 the King James Version says that God had commanded man to “replenish the earth.” In current English this verb means “fill again.” So it must have been filled once before! RSV agrees with the Hebrew as well as with the Elizabethan sense of “replenish,” rendering simply “fill.”
There are many passages in the New Testament which appear to take opposite sides in doctrinal controversies: e.g., Romans and James on faith. Today there are few theologians who are disturbed by the superficial conflict between faith and works, which belong together in “dialectic tension,” like predestination and free will, and so on. Such tension between opposites (now the basis of Niels Bohr’s famous law of complementarity) is the glory of the Bible, which must be taken as a whole; the Old Testament stands in judgment on the antinomianism resulting from arbitrary choice of proof texts in the New, and the New Testament reminds us constantly to follow the spirit, not the letter (Rom. 2:29; 7:6; 2 Cor. 3:6).
Historical tradition in the Bible presents us with similar cases. Without different, even divergent, accounts of men and events we cannot see personalities and movements in perspective. In other words, we should not have the stereographic effect inherent in the very nature of biblical tradition, which preserves differences, even when they seem to be in direct contradiction. In short, we cannot have a historical revelation of God without transmission through human channels. If we follow the trend today and replace such revelation by existential decisions of individuals, our loss is immeasurable. But we cannot deny the Bible its historical humanity without an equivalent loss in rejecting the humanity of “the Word made flesh.”
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Md.
Ministers Of Tomorrow
Your editorial “The Lag in Christian Experience” (April 26 issue) was greatly appreciated for its emphasis upon the “theological giants” such as Luther, Calvin, Owen, Athanasius, and Wesley whose “luminous gifts to the devotional life of the Church … shine as lights from the past.”
In a recent issue of Time, attention was given to the “ministers of tomorrow” now in their respective seminaries. The article stated that many of these future ministers are deeply skeptical towards the Church and that the contemporary theological giants Barth, Tillich, and the two Niebuhrs are the primary subjects in the classroom. No honest critic of these men can deny the fact that they are serious, dedicated scholars attempting to discover some of the answers to the “human predicament.” However, this is what demands our attention: these seminary students need to be referred back to the “lights from the past” in order to avoid falling prey to the contradiction of relativism. The majority of these students have perhaps read “about” the men of the past and all the contemporary criticisms of their irrelevance to the present age, but they do not go directly to their actual works and evaluate them by what they originally stated. This is certainly contrary to genuine scholarship.…
These future ministers … appear to be completely neglecting the fact that they are going to be ministering to congregations of people deep in “sin” (call it existential conflict if you please). Have these divinity students categorized the experience of St. Paul as irrelevant subjective nonsense, or are Christians still supposed to be able to declare, “For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day”?
Bethany, Okla.
For Missionary Societies
Perhaps you can convince various missionary societies to appropriate funds for the provision of TV transmitting and receiving equipment for every tribe and nation in order that the event might be hastened and so that not one single eye shall miss it.
Louisville, Ky.
Assessments
I would like to acknowledge my sincere gratitude for CHRISTIANITY TODAY. With one’s mail box clogged with the jaundiced journals written by men with the “courage of their confusions” and foisted upon pastors and other Christians as “Christian literature,” it is indeed refreshing and rewarding to be able to look forward to CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s fortnightly visit to my study.…
Most religious periodicals are either “boiled watermelon” or caustic soda. Thank you for one that’s both palatable and pungent. Perceptive evangelicals are grateful for and proud of a journal of your calibre and convictions, and its interesting, irenic, and intelligent presentation of the “faith once delivered to the saints”.…
Memorial Baptist Church
San Diego, Calif.
Since we have spent 48 years as a minister and teacher and since a portion of our education was in secular universities, we have learned to be somewhat tolerant, and so we do feel that it is good to know what others think of us, even though we know they are badly mistaken. Therefore, quite largely, in the interest of full religious tolerance, we have decided to spend another five dollars, primarily for the purpose of having a part in your work.…
Avon Park, Fla.
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Please accept my renewal subscription for two years and my most heartfelt thanks for your untiring efforts to keep us abreast of the religious thought and challenge of our day.
The Methodist Church
Carrabelle, Fla.
Your magazine is increasingly worthwhile. It deserves my support rather than silent, ungrateful acceptance.
First Methodist Church
Green Bay, Wisc.
I won’t try to tell you how really great I think your magazine is … you’d think I was just trying to soft-soap you into a price reduction.…
The Union of Churches
Almond, N. Y.
In the major denominations the conservatives need rallying standards. CHRISTIANITY TODAY is helping to meet that need.
Ocean Gate Methodist Church
Ocean Gate, N. J.
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The Presbyterian Church in Canada
Rose Bay, New Dublin, and Conquerall, Nova Scotia
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First Baptist Church
Pine Mountain, Ga.
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Colonial Heights, Va.
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Oak Grove Baptist Church
Covington, Tenn.
Your magazine is appreciated and widely read by all who use our library.
Librarian
The Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention
Richmond, Va.
I find the magazine most helpful to me. Also, when the copies are placed in the waiting rooms at the clinic after I have finished with them, the patients seem to enjoy reading them a great deal also.…
Drew Clinic
Drew, Miss.
CHRISTIANITY TODAY is a disappointment. Instead of meeting the need for a realistic confrontation of the dialectic-socialization of the Church by the power-movement centered in the NCC—The World Church, it is going into competing dialectics, in the realm of greater orthodoxy. But doctrine-theology is not the issue: it is the dialectic smoke screen that covers the mundane. Real-Politik; as truly as was the Church-position faced by Luther.…
Evangelical Congregational Church
McKeesport, Pa.
It seems to me that your magazine would be more forthright if it added to its masthead these words: “A magazine for the purpose of discrediting anything or anyone connected with the National and the World Councils of Churches.
Columbia-Union Presbyterian Church
Columbia, Ky.
The chief goal of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is to please everyone including the devil.…
Canoga Park, Calif.
To my mind, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, despite the fact that it has managed to entice a few of the “big name” theologians to write for it, is simply a sophisticated version of American fundamentalism: bibliolatrous, theologically narrow, ethically backward.
Pottstown, Pa.
The attitude of some of your correspondents will keep you from every worry about Luke 6:26. Therefore, let me suggest a saying that is more apropos: “Take heart when you are lambasted by extremists on both sides of the theological barricades.”
First Baptist
Kittaning. Pa.
I have been a subscriber … for years.… I am a retired Lutheran pastor (Augustana). I retired mid-year in 1960 at the age of 79. Even though I do not see quite as well as I would like, I simply cannot shut CHRISTIANITY TODAY out of my life. It has become too much a part of my trying to keep up with theological and other trends of the present times.…
Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Your magazine has been … of tremendous value and encouragement, and not to me only, but to many of my fellow pastors in the former Augustana Lutheran, now Lutheran Church in America.…
Minneapolis, Minn.
I can no longer restrain myself from writing to protest the inane babble that so often fills the pages of your journal. Issue after issue is replete with pseudo-intellectual jibes at “liberalism” or some other mythical enemy of the Christian faith. When will Protestantism cease this adolescent bickering, which in itself is the epitome of sin?
Columbia Baptist Church
Cincinnati, Ohio
CHRISTIANITY TODAY is scholarly, yet it is inbreathed with a heart of Christian charity.
Studio City, Calif.
I do very much appreciate the magazine. You are publishing a very high-grade periodical. I do not always agree with your theological viewpoint, but I do like to read the other side. We should all be open-minded.… I … have ministerial standing in both the Unitarian and the Congregation-Christian denominations.…
Aberdeen, S. Dak.
Though I am not such a strict evangelical as some of your contributors appear to be, I cannot help being challenged and stimulated by the articles.… They are clearly presented and argued with conviction and sustained by biblical evidence. I have gotten fresh angles on a number of points.…
Peradeniya, Ceylon
I consider it probably the best conservative, evangelical religious journal in the field. I am more liberal in my theology and philosophy than is indicated by most of the articles in your journal. However, I like to read a journal which is more conservative, providing it is based on good scholarship and sound reasoning. Your magazine is not as extreme as most conservative journals. Moreover, you give reports of the ecumenical movement and of church life in general which are not found elsewhere.…
Salisbury, Mass.
You win—never thought I’d give in! I was a Christian Century man. “He who perseveres—succeeds.”
Avenal, Calif.
I do not agree with most of your ideas.
Bauxite, Ark.
Please send out my subscription to CHRISTIANITY TODAY so as I can pick you people apart till hell freezes over and the Kingdom of God comes to us.
Philadelphia, Pa.
Of the 100 or so periodicals which come to this house CHRISTIANITY TODAY is easily my favorite.
Penticton, British Columbia
May I say that there is no periodical that I read with greater anticipation than CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I feel you have conferred upon the English-speaking public of the world an outstanding benefit.
St. Paul’s Cathedral
London, England
