Fasten Your Seat Belts
It was a shame in a way that that woman, whatever her name was, from Russia, jumped off into space and had a very successful trip. This is not really surprising to me, because I have long since concluded that women are without question the superior sex. What hurts, however, is that the whole thing was apparently so easy. Some girl parachutist happens by, steps into a space ship, and is off into orbit. If conquering space is going to be this easy, it hardly seems worth so much excitement—not to mention money.
When Grace Kelly’s father won a race at Henley the British handled this so much better. Since he was undoubtedly a commoner, they just concluded that he didn’t win the race, because how could he, you know. Now this woman has come along and taken all the glamour out of space flight.
“Conquering space” is, as we know in our sober moments, a fundamentally ridiculous idea. We are well up in relation to the planet Earth, but we are still nowhere in terms of space. Space has to do with light years. That means traveling at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), and the only way we can travel at the speed of light is to become light or some other form of basic energy. We might start to conquer space by being turned into units of energy, being fired off into space, and being reintegrated when we arrive at the other end. Apart from the little problem of being reintegrated, we are still faced with distances measured in hundreds and thousands of light years.
The phenomenon of angels is reported here and there, and there is even a kind of systematic treatment called angelology. I was never too clear about such things, but I am impressed by one title: they are called “ministers of light.” This, with their personal habit of appearing on the scene out of nowhere, makes me wonder if there may be something to this traveling through space as light, followed by some power of reintegration. At least, any notion of conquering space seems to lie in that direction, and in a scientific age angels are, strangely enough, easier to believe in.
EUTYCHUS II
For Greater Evangelical Dialogue
Especially did I enjoy Kenneth McCowan’s article, “Historic Contemporary Fundamentalism” (July 5 issue).
The vast majority of us would indeed be among Mr. McCowan’s fifth classification. Unfortunately the word “fundamentalism” has so been dragged through the mud that the word itself is ambiguous. “Evangelicalism” or “conservatism” might be far more appropriate. Any classification, however, will be misunderstood.
I do not feel that Mr. McCowan is naive. Indeed, with God all things are possible. I shall continue to pray as did our Master, “that they may all be one.”
Would that there might be greater dialogue between those on the extreme right and those in the conservative middle. Sad to relate, the new fundamentalism will invariably refuse fellowship to any who will not accept their position.
First Baptist Church
Gloversville, N. Y.
Kenneth McCowan has done us a great service in accurately stating the case for a large number of us who are tired of seeing ourselves painted as “main line deviates,” “fringe group reactionaries,” out of touch with the real world, and socially unconscious. Frankly, I cut my theological teeth on “historic fundamentalism,” and I never had an uneasy conscience about it. You are doing us all a great service by publishing such helpful material, and I want to thank you for accurately classifying me at last. I shall wear the tag without the slightest feeling of guilt, knowing that I am in excellent company.
Village Bible Church
Garden Grove, Calif.
Kenneth McCowan’s brief article says exactly what needs to be said. I am not sure that the designation used as his title is the best descriptive for the bulk of evangelical Christians, because we’re not too concerned about a label. We’re just the majority, the mainstream of Bible-believing, converted people.
We’re not heard of too much because we don’t make good enough news copy or black enough headlines. We like to think of ourselves as independent thinkers, and not as rebels. We give the largest numerical support to Billy Graham, Youth for Christ, Inter-Varsity, Campus Crusade, and Young Life. Most of us probably are outside the ecumenical movement, but some of us are in it. We’re found in both new-line and old-line denominations, and can work together.
We will continue going about our business of winning the lost and building the Church. All we ask is that we be heard!
First Baptist Church
Grand Marais, Minn.
On Nuclear War
General Harrison and I hold many positions in common (“Is Nuclear War Justifiable?,” June 21 issue). Neither of us is a pacifist in principle. Both of us believe that God himself has authorized the state to wield a sword in defense of righteousness and order. Neither of us believes that the state is justified in standing idly by when armed lawlessness stalks the earth and tyranny threatens the freedoms God wishes us to exercise in Christian obedience and love. Both of us endorse the just-war doctrine elaborated in the course of history; we recognize that in an evil world painful surgery upon the social organism and the body politic is sometimes a regrettable necessity.
Our agreements, I have no doubt, extend even beyond these points. I hold, and I trust General Harrison holds, that a war, to be accounted just, must fulfill certain conditions. A war fit to receive Christian endorsement cannot itself be lawless. Nor can it be ecstatic. It must be conducted according to certain rules, and it must envisage concrete historical ends. It must be waged within a settled moral framework, and it must serve to reestablish both a sound political order and a meaningful social community able to inherit and appropriate accumulated goods and values. On this I trust we are agreed.
General Harrison and I are even agreed in thinking that a just war can deploy atomic armaments. Although my Christian conscience begins to hurt me when I come to think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the indiscriminate destruction associated with these names, I do not deny that a localized nuclear blast set off within a limited war can be serviceable to mankind and presentable to God. This kind of social surgery is fraught with frightful peril and can be performed only with utmost trepidation. It also stretches to the limit the morally dubious principle of “military necessity.” But I am not yet prepared to rule it absolutely out of order.
What I am not prepared to accept and to baptize in Christ’s name is an all-out nuclear struggle, a general atomic war that on this shrunken planet encloses all, or nearly all, of mankind in its destructive embrace. This kind of war can in my judgment receive no Christian sanction. It is by definition total, indiscriminate, uncontrollable, and unserviceable to meaningful historical ends. I do not know whether the next war, or the following one, will be of this sort. I only know that this sort of war is impermissible. It can be placed in no moral frame I know of, and it can serve no concrete purpose. I am sorry, therefore, that General Harrison did not see fit to veto it.
A veto would have driven General Harrison to advocate with me and with most observers of the present scene the one practical measure that requires immediate adoption: the scrapping of atomic weapons under international surveillance within a framework of mutual agreement. Instead my correspondent contemplates with apparent equanimity the drift of mankind toward all-out nuclear war and undertakes to prepare in advance a moral justification of it. This I regret.
I particularly regret his novel suggestion—rightly characterized as “rarely considered in discussions of the matter”—that the great mass of the country’s population has the guilty responsibility for the initiation and prosecution of a war of aggression and that consequently mass destruction of the population is no more than a just judgment upon the guilty. In this suggestion the ancient principle of “discrimination” and “control” is with one stroke surrendered, and “total” war is given moral and religious sanction. In the process the traditional doctrine of the just war, with all its inbuilt qualifications, is surrendered, and one is left with no, or with nothing but the most attenuated, rules of civilized warfare still in effect.
I can therefore muster no sympathy for the General’s suggestion. I cannot accept the notion of a lawless or a nearly lawless war, nor one that does not envision the eventual assignment of the defeated people to its secure and rightful place in the family of nations.
Calvin Seminary
Grand Rapids, Mich.
Mr. Stob makes the point that a Christian would rather live as a slave or die as a martyr than participate in the nuclear destruction of civilization with all that he is fighting for. It would be difficult to argue against that viewpoint. But, the obvious next step is to urge immediate surrender to Khrushchev, thereby avoiding any risk of such catastrophe. Mr. Stob does not advocate it. The reason is that he realizes correctly that nuclear war is not demonstrably inevitable, and that non-nuclear war and the deterrent value of our nuclear weapons do serve currently to preserve our own and others’ freedom. Consequently, to surrender now would be to abandon our own and other nations to Communist tyrants before we know it to be the only alternative to nuclear war. Such abandonment he says cannot be right, and I agree with him. To surrender once further resistance becomes futile has been a common practice in military experience, but to surrender life’s greatest human values while there is still a reasonable chance of defending them has never been acceptable practice.
Dr. Stob sees the impasse in which we find ourselves and believes that a multilateral disarmament is the only way out. This would certainly solve the problem. Nuclear war is so terrible and unholy, with Russians as well as us living “in the shadow of the bomb,” and disarmament being the obvious solution, one asks: Why then is there no disarmament? The American experience in disarmament negotiations shows that the Russians will not participate in any action which gives us, as well as themselves, a reasonable guarantee of security. If “the shadow of the bomb” is so terrible, how can they act so foolishly? They can see danger as well as we can. The answer is that they are not in the shadow of the bomb in any degree approaching our own danger. A little reflection will show why this is so.
In the cold war the United States has been consistently on the defensive, seeking fair agreements, making many unavailing concessions in order to get them. The Soviet government has been always the aggressor in military actions, espionage, subversion, and threats of extermination. Knowing that our nuclear policy is retaliatory, Russia can engage in tentative military adventures with relative impunity, knowing that we will not risk nuclear war unless we are forced to do so. Nuclear war has little chance of erupting unless the Communists force it on us. It should be clear to anyone that Russia will not do this, because it would suffer the destruction of its homeland. No external gain could compensate for that loss. On the other hand who can doubt that the Russian dictators would unhesitatingly destroy our country if they could do so with small risk to themselves?
The deterrent value of our nuclear weapons lies in the belief of the Russian government that, if forced to do so, we will use them with annihilating effect. Believing this, they will avoid such risk while keeping us under constant pressure, hoping to intimidate us, to force weakening concessions out of us, and gradually to reduce us to the point where they can secure our submission without a fight, or destroy us with nuclear weapons if we don’t submit.
Under such circumstances, and given their known determination to eliminate the United States as an obstacle to their effort to dominate the world, how can we expect the Communists to engage in a bona fide multilateral disarmament? At best, our hope is that the deterrent effect of our weapons will prevent nuclear war, permit us to hold for ourselves and the free world such freedom as we possess, and give time for a possible change in Russian purposes to develop.
As stated above, the deterrent power of our weapons lies in the Communist belief that we will use them if necessary. It is impossible to deceive or bluff the Communists in a matter of this kind. If we were to change our present retaliatory policy the fact could not be concealed. The political pressures on our government would be widely known and would only encourage the Russians to increase their pressure on us, probably taking dangerous risks that might well cause the very war we seek to prevent. Ultimately the deterrent value of our weapons rests solely in our determination to use them if forced to do so. It is impossible for us to possess and not to possess this determination at the same time. If we must launch our weapons it will almost certainly be after Communist missiles are speeding toward us. Within moments our own disaster will be complete and the doom of the free world certain unless we have retaliated. The guilt of the aggressor population, as explained in my article in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, makes this retaliation an act of simple justice, horrible as it is, and might actually save the rest of the free world.
We cannot have our cake and eat it too. We must choose between:
1. In order to avoid all risk of a possible future nuclear war of unknown probability, we now abandon our armaments, our people, and the free world to the tender mercies of Soviet Russia and Communist China. I agree with Dr. Stob that this cannot be right.
2. We continue to protect ourselves and others by maintaining our nuclear capabilities, determined to use them if forced to do so, thereby accepting a risk which may not be as serious as many think. This course affords further time to await that hoped-for day when Russian intransigence may give way to reasonableness.
I support the second course. If it cannot be right to abandon our people and the free world it is right not to abandon them. To do wrong now in fear of something that may never occur seems to me to be unethical. To know to do good and then not to do it is sin (James 4:17). As a Christian I believe we should do what we know to be right for the present moment and trust God to take care of the future risk and danger. Such a course is a normal experience of Christians.
Largo, Fla.
Irs Vs. For
In commenting on the Fellowship of Reconciliation tax case (June 21 issue) … when … you associate yourself with the … IRS argument, namely, that the FOR is “essentially engaged in political activity” and hence disqualified for tax immunities accorded to religious societies, both your information and your argument appear defective.… First, there is nothing in the FOR policy or program (no Washington office, no lobbyists, no systematic legislation-influencing action) which would enable one to speak, as you do, of “the group’s concentrated efforts towards the congressional vote,” or the implication that its work focuses primarily on legislative “mechanisms.” Do you, perhaps, confuse the FOR with other agencies who honestly and legally pursue such goals?
Second, the real domain of FOR work is the “sea of ethics” in which, according to Chief Justice Warren, the law floats, the domain, incidentally, characterized in America by the dialogue of freedom, ardently defended by another writer in the same issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. In any event, the architects of the FOR through the years, often at the price of great sacrifice, achieved a far deeper insight into the human predicament than to assume that legislative fiat is the key to conflict resolution. Hence, if your intriguing distinction between “regenerative spiritual dynamisms” and “legislative solutions” means a recognition that our problems are basically spiritual, FOR members would likely endorse your platform. If, however, it means that those dynamisms ought not to spill over on occasion into legislative paths, they would likely recall the intra-mural definition of religion common in another part of the world, and would, notwithstanding occasional theological aberrations, likely prefer the company of Jesus.
Exec. Sec.
The Church Peace Mission
Washington, D. C.
Liberal Encouragement Lacking
Thank you for your fine June 21 issue. I wish every critic who says that conservative Christians have no “social concern” would please read that issue. After listening to this old line since I became a Christian five years ago I have concluded that what such critics really are saying is quite different. What they mean (but will not admit) is that conservative social concern does not square with their liberal philosophy of things. In the areas of the military, the campus, juvenile delinquency, and mental health (in all of which I and/or my wife have had some experience), the most persistent and sometimes vicious liberal attacks always seem to be leveled against conservative Christians who are carrying the Word of God into action in public. If it were a case of no “social concern” on the part of the conservatives, why attack the conservatives who are doing something? Why not encourage those who are applying the Gospel to social problems (and I do not mean the social gospel to spiritual problems!)?
(Lt.) CHARLES A. CLOUGH
Corvallis, Ore.
Your June 21 number is the best on so many subjects regarding liberty. “Faith and Freedom” by J. Howard Pew, “The Illusory Promise of Security” by Ben Moreell, “Money, Man, and Morals” by Elgin Groseclose, and the editorial “Land of the Free”—all are tops. Yet nearly every number is the same.
First Baptist Church
Salisbury, Mo.
Across The Three-Mile Limit
Part of the article on the Conservative Baptist fellowship’s twentieth annual meeting (News, June 21 issue) reads as follows: “It was noted that American Baptists, with five times the total constituency of the Conservatives, have fewer foreign missionaries.”
If we would like to measure things in this way, I would refer you to statistics from The Baptist World of June, 1962, which showed that the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society had work in seventeen countries with 389 missionaries, no national workers, 227 mission churches, and a church membership of 21,593 people. At the same time the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society has work in nine fields with 334 missionaries (already less than the Conservative Baptists), 10,026 national workers, 5,268 mission churches, 645,451 people in church membership.
I think the statistics speak for themselves. We do not measure the success of the orthodoxy of our program purely by the number of people we send across a three-mile limit to do what we call Foreign Missionary Work.
First Baptist Church
Bloomington, Ill.
The State’S Business
Governor Mark Hatfield’s answers to the questions asked by Professor O. Roberts (“The Christian and the State,” June 21 issue) are heartening.… I am encouraged and pleased by his position as to the role of individual, church, and state.
His opposition to capital punishment on the grounds of economics—the inequality of its application—that is, the poor die and the rich get off, is, however, inconsistent. He virtually says that because the law is not carried out justly is cause to call the law unjust. Doesn’t this inequality of application exist in every area of law enforcement? Still Mr. Hatfield says, and rightfully, “What right do we have to say, ‘Go, sin no more’ to the person who has committed the capital offense, and not say the same thing to the person guilty of tax fraud …?” and “The state is not in the business of dispensing grace; it is in the business of dispensing justice.” Let’s underline justice. I wish every law maker and administrator and citizen wholly understood and subscribed to this biblical principle that the state’s business is to administer justice.
Monroe, Wash.
Luther And The Pope
In the June 21 issue are two corresponding and very interesting articles: “A Pontiff’s Love and a Council’s Anathemas” (p. 27) and “The Papacy: Then and Now” (p. 47).
Luther’s sharpest rejection of the pope is found in the Smalcald Articles of 1537. These articles are one of the confessions of the Lutheran Church, not just a private opinion of the Reformer. A Lutheran pastor—at his ordination—confesses that the confessions as contained in the Book of Concord are in agreement with this one scriptural faith, and he solemnly promises to preach and teach the pure Word of God in accordance with these confessions of the Lutheran Church. We are, therefore, compelled to confess with Luther: “The Pope raised his head above all. This teaching shows forcefully that the Pope is the very Antichrist, who has exalted himself above, and opposed himself against Christ, because he will not permit Christians to be saved without his power. This is, properly speaking, to exalt himself above all that is called God, as Paul says, 2 Thess. 2:4” (Smalcald Art., II, Art. IV, 9, 10).
The Council’s anathemas are not yet repealed, especially those canons of the sixth session which prove that justifying faith is not merely ignored or only changed by additions or subtractions, but plainly rejected.
Canon IX: “If anyone saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to cooperate in order … (to obtain) the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will: let him be anathema.”
Canon XII: “If anyone saith, that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake; or that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified: let him be anathema.”
The first stanza of Luther’s hymn “Lord, keep us steadfast in Thy Word” reads in the original German: “Erhalt uns Herr, bei Deinem Wort und steur des Papsts und Tuerken Mord, die Jesum Christum Deinen Sohn, wollen stuerzen von Deinem Thron!” This hymn is entitled “A children’s hymn, to be sung against the two arch-enemies of Christ and His holy Church, the Pope and the Turk.”
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church
Casa Grande, Ariz.
The Court And The Schools
The Supreme Court assumes that God is the giver of human rights and it is up to the state to recognize what God has done. The court finds the recognition of God allowable in the oaths of public office, in chaplain programs, and soon. But in the Supreme Court’s opinion, the acknowledgment of God in school is unconstitutional. They seem to be saying that religious observances are allowable if they extend from the federal government, but unallowable if they extend from the state government. Public education, of course, is a state government function. It could also be true that the court is only waiting for new cases to dislodge the influence of religion in the chaplaincy and elsewhere.
The court has said two opposites are true: (1) that it is a realistic political fact that religion can never be completely separated from government (“we are a religious people”) but (2) in governmental function of education, religion must be separated. As I read their opinion I can see not logic, but only opinion. As I read the decision I can see still further secularization of our society and the continued withdrawal of our religious emphasis and the growth of a moral vacuum in America which someday may lead to our downfall.
Community Presbyterian Church
Chester, N. J.
If a God-fearing parent cannot afford a private school for his child, what then? Must he defy the “powers that be” and withdraw his child from school (as has happened recently in Falls Church, Virginia, because of an obscene book being taught to ninth-graders)? Or must he helplessly continue to submit his child to teaching that corrupts morals and denies the Creator? Can our Constitution be so interpreted? It is high time that an amendment be adopted which will protect those who believe in Almighty God, but who have no other choice than a public school education. Or will the time come when there will be no public schools, Bible-believers establishing their own, the atheists theirs?
Fairfax, Va.
Plea For Missing Issues
CHRISTIANITY TODAY fills a need which I have long felt existed—that for a conservative periodical using superior English (without the usual fundamentalist cliches) and unafraid of scientific investigation. I am also pleased to see articles by persons with whom the editors might not be in absolute agreement.…
As librarian of the Near East School of Theology (Beirut, Lebanon) I find the book reviews extremely helpful. The fact that the good points of books even by non-conservative authors are cited is indicative of a genuinely scholarly attitude.
We are unable to bind two volumes of CHRISTIANITY TODAY due to certain missing numbers.… Perhaps an appeal can be made to readers.
Box 235
Beirut, Lebanon
• Is any reader able to send Numbers 5 and 6 of Volume I? Our supply is exhausted.—ED.
Strategy
Elect bishops, superintendents, and other officials for their ability to present evangelical Christianity clearly and forcefully over mass media. Reduce our rash of promotional material by at least nine-tenths, and use that money for national and local TV, with our best youthful talent. Without such support, Protestant work is ever more difficult.
Methodist Parish
Purdys, N.Y.
Preaching Plus Practice
A statement in a news story (“An Organization Spared,” December 7, 1962, issue) appears to have given rise to a false impression. The statement read: “The Wisconsin Synod frowns on cooperation with bodies with which it does not have doctrinal agreement, but the word was discreetly dropped last month that it was participating with the other three denominations in an urban church planning study in Milwaukee.” This item has been used to suggest that the Wisconsin Synod does not practice what it preaches.
A news release from this department made it quite clear that while the planning study was being conducted concurrently with congregations of the National Lutheran Council and of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, it was being conducted independently. There were no joint meetings with other Lutheran church bodies. There was no cooperation, even in the elementary sense of sharing or pooling information. Dr. Walter Kloetzli of the National Lutheran Council, who was in charge of the planning study and a nationally recognized expert in such mystical affairs, was engaged by the Wisconsin Synod congregations as a consultant on a fee basis. Dr. Kloetzli, in every phase of the study, was most understanding of our fellowship principles.
Director of Public Information
Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod
Milwaukee, Wis.
A Barge And A Seminary
Flying from New York City to Atlanta, Georgia, the other night I skimmed through the Saturday Evening Post for June 1. The feature article was by Walter Wanger, producer of the newest Hollywood extravaganza, Cleopatra. He reported that the cost of this super-colossal spectacular, which evidently depends on unabashed sensuality for its box-office magnetism, ran $37,000,000. A specially built barge for one sequence cost $277,000—enough to support our seminary for more than two full years! But why worry about money? Moviegoers will pay between $63,000,000 and $100,000,000 (estimates vary) for the privilege of seeing Elizabeth Taylor play Cleopatra. All of which compels a Christian to reflect on values.
President
Conservative Baptist Seminary
Denver, Colo.
