Epsilon Bootis Calling
It’s enough to make you join the ancient Greeks in believing that history just keeps repeating itself. Another astronomer has announced that he has evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization trying to communicate with us.
From time to time these reports arise, excite a limited amount of curiosity, find some small support from a few members of the scientific community, and then disappear forever.
The latest report comes from Duncan A. Lunan, a 27-year-old astronomer and science writer from Scotland. (In deference to Editor-at-Large J. D. Douglas I will refrain from commenting on the generally quirky nature of Scottish writers. Remember, I refrained from saying that.)
Lunan has translated a message possibly relayed to earth by a robot spacecraft that may have been circling Earth’s moon for 13,000 years.
The message:
Our home is Epsilon Bootis, which is a double star. We live on the sixth planet of seven—check that, the sixth of seven—counting outwards from the sun, which is the larger of the two stars. Our sixth planet has one moon. Our fourth planet has three. Our first and third planet each have one. Our probe is in the orbit of the moon.
The problem with these reports is the absence of verification and the lack of cosmic significance in the message.
Consider this latest one. How can we be sure Lunan isn’t luny? And look at that message. All it tells us is that these people know where they live. That kind of information is hardly worth a station-to-station call to Topeka, never mind a planet-to-planet communication between Epsilon Bootis and Earth.
Almost anything from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Love one another, dammit!” to Masters and Johnson’s “Tell us about your sex practices” would be more significant than “Our home is Epsilon Bootis …”
Undoubtedly this story will create a small ripple of curosity, inspire a few jokes, lead a couple of scientists to say they’re keeping an open mind, die, and be forgotten.
Now if we had an authentic verified message from outer space of really cosmic significance we’d give it our full attention. We’d treasure it in our hearts—wouldn’t we?
EUTYCHUS V
A CRITICIZER COMMENDS
From the March 30 issue I like and have profited from Mouw’s and Kuhn’s work. Being a past criticizer of “What If …” and Eutychus V, I am happy to be able to commend them for their recent work. Keep it all up—I profit much from CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
Clarksville, Tenn.
JOHN BATSON
PRICELESS OBESITY
The “What If …” is always good, but the “Be healed of obesity” drawing of March 30 was priceless. Are Lawing’s drawings collected in a book? Does he ever give exhibits? If not, why not?
MARTIN LABAR
Chairman of the Division of Science
Central Wesleyan College
Central, S. C.
CAPITAL FAREWELL
Congratulations on your excellent article, Edward L. R. Elson’s farewell message, “Memorable Years in a Washington Pulpit” (March 30). Congratulations for having him on your list of contributing editors through the years and for encouraging others of us in “Washington pulpits” with his clear, articulate, and Christocentric word.
Dr. Elson has been a great inspiration to many within his own denomination and many out of it because of his unequivocal stand for Christ in a great pulpit—when pressures to stand elsewhere have been intense. His courage has encouraged me immeasurably. And the well-stated farewell ought to be reprinted and read by many within the churches today.
BENJAMIN E. SHELDON
The Sixth Presbyterian Church
Washington, D. C.
Thank you for printing “Memorable Years in a Washington Pulpit.” I have never read such a refreshing and heartwarming message pertaining to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ! How fortunate the congregation of the National Presbyterian Church of Washington, D.C., has been in being able to hear this eloquent man of God proclaim such a ministry for twenty-seven years!
McPherson, Kans.
IDA GRAHAM
TO COME ALIVE
I read with a combination of relief, surprise, joy, and appreciation (and probably other emotions as well) the editorial “First at the Cradle, Last at the Cross” in the March 16 issue. The editorial was a clear, no-compromising statement, and it is needed in the most desperate way if the Church today is to “come alive.” I could go on and on, but will refrain from doing so at this time.
However, your suggestion that “evangelical women band together to encourage one another to fulfill themselves” struck a particular interest of mine: organizing people for the support of good causes. (!) Quite seriously, I am an evangelical woman and I am an active participant in the feminist movement as well. I would love to organize forums, newsletters, job-referral services, etc. etc. I would especially like to be in touch with evangelical women of feminist orientation around the country.
SYLVIA HALLOWELL
Lawrence, Kans.
Your lead editorial is great! I hope every subscriber reads it thoroughly!
Berkeley, Calif.
ANNE EGGEBROTEN
Even though I am of the “younger” generation, I find myself still somewhat taken aback by the editorial “First at the Cradle, Last at the Cross.” The Word of God has clearly taught us that the woman’s place is not in the governing authoritative positions in the church.… I say that a woman’s love, understanding, and compassion for the world around her are important and necessary to the furtherance of the Lord’s Gospel, lessons that we as men could well afford to learn. But leave the woman a woman, and please quit trying to stretch her out to be some type of super-spiritual-liberated-leader-among-men dynamo. I don’t believe that this is the Lord’s will at all. But let her live and love as a mother, a sister, a friend, for this love is the greatest among all men.
WILLIAM HANER LECKIE, JR.
New Orleans, La.
What I have missed, lo, these many years by not subscribing to and reading CHRISTIANITY TODAY! I’ve been challenged, intrigued, instructed, and inspired by the articles in recent issues … and have passed on some of the information received.… The editorial, “First at the Cradle, Last at the Cross,” is very intriguing, but it isn’t exactly the right slant scripturally. I used to be a missionary in the Methodist Church, in Pavillion, Wyoming. As such, it was my duty and privilege to preach one Sunday of the month to two congregations, since I assisted the woman preacher (a deaconess) in her work. In a couple of years, a man was able to come in and be supported by the congregation thus built up. Probably this opportunity is still being extended to those who would avail themselves of it. I didn’t know the Scripture concerning women keeping silent in the church, and not usurping authority over men (1 Tim. 2) at that time. Perhaps when a man won’t do it, God can use a woman who is willing.
(MRS.) ESTHER HATHAWAY
Wilmette, Ill.
A LITTLE … PROOF?
May I please comment on Jack W. Cottrell’s article “Abortion and the Mosaic Law” with the last paragraph of Eutychus’ “Revolting Men,” both in the same March 16 issue. “So there you have the whole unhappy business. It just goes to show that a little proof-texting and some phony exegesis will prove anything.”
Philadelphia, Pa.
RALPH A. LINGLE
Thanks for the excellent article by Jack W. Cottrell “Abortion and the Mosaic Law.” I remember discussing this passage with fellow classmates while still in seminary and coming to the same conclusion. Keep publishing this sort of article. We need evangelical exegesis today more than ever. Mr. Cottrell has provided the same. Thanks!
MICHAEL M. STRONG
Our Savior Lutheran Church
Lawrence, Ill.
I find efforts to resolve or gain insight into the abortion issue through Exodus 21:22, 23 very interesting. However, all the debate over the difference in penalty meted out becomes meaningless in light of verse 20 and the context of the whole chapter. If we use the same logic with this verse that is being used in verse 22, we can only conclude that slaves were and are not fully human beings but mere animate objects, one step above cattle.
JOHN BRILLHART
First Church of the Nazarene
Chicago; Ill.
As Cottrell indicates, to use Exodus 21:22–25 to support permissive abortion is untenable. As I comment in my contribution to the symposium Birth Control and the Christian:
Apart from specific exegetical considerations, one might raise the general hermeneutic question as to whether a statement of penalty in the legislation God gave to ancient Israel ought to establish the context of interpretation for the total biblical attitude to the value of the unborn child (including not only specific and non-phenomenological Old Testament assertions such as Ps. 51:5, but the general New Testament valuation of the brephos, as illustrated especially in Luke 1:41, 44). Should a passage such as Exod. 21 properly outweigh the analogy of the Incarnation itself, in which God became man at the moment when “conception by the Holy Ghost” occurred—not at a later time as the universally condemned and heretical adoptionists alleged? Do we not have in the very nature of Dr. Waltke’s argument a common hermeneutical blunder: the erroneous perspective that does not properly distinguish Law from Gospel and that tends to view the New Testament in light of the Old, instead of the Old Covenant as comprehensible only in terms of the New?
Moreover, even on strictly exegetical grounds, Exod. 21:22–25 does not say what Dr. Waltke thinks it does. He follows the interpretation of David Mace over against virtually all serious exegetes, classical and modern, in claiming that the passage distinguishes between a pregnant mother (whose life has to be compensated for by another life if killed) and her fetus (unworthy of such compensation). But Keil and Delitzsch (Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch, reprinted by Eerdmans, n.d., pp. 134–5), after explaining that the passage demands exactly the same penalty for injuring the mother or the child (“but if injury occur [to the mother or the child], thou shalt give soul for soul, eye for eye, … wound for wound”), comment in a lengthy note as to how the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew text has misled vernacular translators (and a few commentators like the Hellenizing Jew Philo) to adopt the view that “the fruit, the premature birth of which was caused by the blow, if not yet developed into a human form, was not to be regarded as in any sense a human being, so that the giver of the blow was only required to pay a pecuniary compensation”.…
The full meaning of the passage is, then: “If men strove and thrust against a woman with child, who had come near or between them for the purpose of making peace, so that her children come out (come into the world), and no injury was done either to the woman or child that was born, a pecuniary compensation was to be paid.… A fine is imposed, because even if no injury had been done to the woman and the fruit of her womb, such a blow might have endangered life.” But where injury occurred either to mother or unborn child (as we have noted), the lex talionis applied indiscriminately—to the genuinely human fetus as well as to his genuinely human parent.
This interpretation is presented not only by a classic Old Testament scholar such as the 19th century Protestant Delitzsch, but equally by such contemporary Jewish exegetes as Cassuto, whose Commentary on the Book of Exodus is a landmark.
JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY
Professor of Church History
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Deerfield, Ill.
DRAGGED MISREADING
As a part of your argument against amnesty for draft evaders, your editorial of March 2 (“Amnesty, Forgiveness, and Mercy”) claims sweepingly: “But all Christians, except for pacifists, teach that the individual is not called upon to answer for the justice of a war: that decision must be made by the rulers.”
Some non-pacifists, it is true, have always held that the citizen should give the government a moral blank check; but by no means all of them. Those who carefully thought through the implications of the classic just-war doctrine—which means precisely that not all wars are justifiable—have often come to the conclusion that the individual citizen is responsible to make such a judgment on his son. Martin Luther, for instance: “ ‘Suppose my lord were wrong in going to war?’ I reply: If you know for sure that he is wrong, then … you should neither fight nor serve.” He insists that this obligation applies even if such refusal to serve should be very costly. “You must take that risk and, with God’s help, let whatever happens, happen.… If they put you to shame or call you loyal disloyal, it is better for God to call you loyal and honorable than for the world to call you loyal and honorable”.…
You may think as you will about the wisdom of “amnesty” as a political act, the relevance of “forgiveness,” or the obligation of “restitution”; but you only confuse that issue by dragging in a misreading of the record concerning just-war thought. Many non-pacifists, it is true, have turned over their conscience to their rulers; but the intention of the doctrine is not to do that.
J. H. YODER Department of Theology
Notre Dame University Notre Dame, Ind.
A DIFFERENT ANIMAL
I read with interest the editorial on shield laws and confidential sources in the March 16 issue (“Confidential”). I would personally fear any law that would protect the news media from revealing these sources. The motive for shielding a doctor or clergyman is completely different than that for revealing information to a news man. It is not only a horse of a different color, it is a completely different animal. When people come to a clergyman, they come for confession, counseling, and prayer. When they come to a news reporter, they come to give it publicity. When they come to the clergyman, they come in trust it will be kept quiet. I try to protect the individual in every way from publicity. I have even changed prepared sermons to avoid any hint of what went on in a counseling session. Were a news reporter to be protected by shield laws, he could not only act to influence judge and jury, but he could also create the incident to destroy innocent people.
JOHN J. DEYOUNG
The United Methodist Church
Clarksville, Ohio
SUPRIZE!
Imagine my suprize when my March 30 copy of CHRISTAINITY TODAY arived in my mail box. There on the cover for evrybody to see was John Lawing’s incorect speling of the latin word “oikoumene.” Horrors, I thouhgt. With fear and tremling I turnd to Dr Linzel’s article on the subject, and it was with a sigh of releif that he had speled the word corectly, I notised.
So that restord my faith in we evangelicals. We mihgt get our doctirne and even our estachology corect, but if we aint concernd about our speling and grammer nobody educated will lissen to us. And then we wont be abel to comunicate by using words. Well have to use art like John Lawing does.
RONALD YOUNGBLOOD
Perfesser
Bethel Theological Seminary
St. Paul, Minn.
• Here’s an art-full comment by our Art Director.—ED.
EVICT THE UNETHICAL
I have just read your news feature, “Christians, Go Home” (March 16), and want to commend you for the factual nature of the report. In this respect, it is certainly a great improvement on much that has appeared recently in U. S. and world mass media outlets. I especially appreciate your noting that the government of Israel and its officials are doing much to restore religious peace in Jerusalem and other Israeli cities. I myself have worked with some of these officials and know of their sincerity and diligence in working to see that Jews and Christians may live together without strife. The great majority in the government is against the passage of anti-missionary legislation.
However, I must take issue with your headline, “Christians, Go Home.” Certainly it is not the Government, including Religious Affairs Minister Dr. Zerah Warhaftig—a long-time foe of missionizing—and not Israeli citizens, either secular or religious (with the exception of a handful of extremists), who are saying “Christians, Go Home.” The Israelis have allowed the Christians with their churches, bookshops, publishing houses, theological training centers, schools and hospitals to operate freely in the country since its beginning. This degree of religious freedom is all the more remarkable when seen against the back-drop of Christian treatment of the Jews in countries where the state church or dominant religion was Christian for the past seventeen hundred years! What the Israeli government (which is increasingly being joined by main-line evangelicals) is saying is “Unethical Missionaries, Go Home.” In reality, it is the small sects—with loose or no ties at all with known evangelical churches—whose members go about with their proselytizing, using any and all methods to make a convert, that are causing the religious unrest in the country. Jesus himself condemned his own people in his day for just this same sort of harmful activity. These unethical missionizers go after the very young, the emotionally mixed-up, the indigent and the very old, and in a theologically shallow manner, hard-sell their Christianity. Oftentimes they offer material inducements to score. It is precisely the increase in this sort of activity that the present ruckus is all about. So for those expatriates working in Israel at this time, using dubious methods in their proselytizing, I for one join the Israelis in their cry, “Unethical Missionary, Go Home!”
DWIGHT L. BAKER
Representative
Baptist Convention In Israel
Haifa
THE COURAGE TO QUESTION
I was grateful to see another believer with the courage to question the believability of the films we evangelicals have been turning out for so long (The Refiner’s Fire, “Film Evangelism: A Time to Change,” March 16).… I think the reviewer is right—film as a medium for creating a dramatic vision of life cannot convey spiritual truth in the limited sense of the message of salvation. The leading function or motive of film, as with any of the arts, is aesthetic, not theological or ethical. The theological and the ethical are there, of course, since the film-maker and the actors are whole men instead of just conveyors of aesthetic “truth”: evangelicals, however, confuse the aesthetic task and the evangelistic task and do a bad job of both in their naïve efforts to be with it. I think the confusion grows out of our tendency to personalize the Gospel so much that the rule of Christ extends over the time we steal from our jobs and over our personal ethics and morality. That kind of reduction makes the spread of the Gospel the relatively simple matter of distributing Bibles and telling people that Christ died for them.… Up until now, I’m afraid everything I’ve seen from Christian colleges and writing schools is still reductionist. That’s all the more reason for a strong, clear voice from you people—you have influence. I pray that the Lord will give you the prophet’s clear and courageous voice and that one day he’ll raise up a Christian film-maker of the caliber of Bergman or Antonioni, but one with a redeemed understanding of human life.
BONNIE M. GREENE
Snohomish, Wash.
The statement, “It is doubtful that this technique of evangelism will work with moviegoers off the street,” is so wrong. And even if it were right, why should one of your reviewers plant doubts? Why should CHRISTIANITY TODAY have a negative story about Time to Run? How many World Wide Pictures films has Cheryl Forbes ever seen?… Perhaps it would be much better if you had a secular movie critic write for CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
GEORGE M. WILSON
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
Minneapolis, Minn.
Since art of one kind or another is wired into every life and living room, this could be the most significant thing CHRISTIANITY TODAY has undertaken. It is doubly important to the writer trying to span the gap between the despair of man without God, and the bright hope of eternity. For him the name of the game is frustration.…
The hang-up of present evangelical efforts employing the arts is forcefully expressed in one sentence in Cheryl Forbes’s critique of Time to Run—“The film seems to be aimed at an evangelical audience.” The source of the trouble is in the fine, often cognizant editors who are afraid to name or depict sin. Because when you do, sin takes over and righteousness is overshadowed or obliterated, no matter how the story comes through otherwise. Sin remains more attractive than righteousness to unsaved and insecure people, toward whom the story may be aimed.
We are driven, as Paul was, to the conclusion there is only one way successfully to meet the challenge of the arts to dissipate darkness: meet it head on, obedient to the heavenly vision.
Fort Bragg, Calif.
MAC STEIN
BRINGING BACK CHESTERTON
Your comments on the reissuing of Chesterton’s Orthodoxy were greatly appreciated (“Eutychus and His Kin,” March 2). Chesterton is a marvel not only because of his insight and humor but because of his manifest love affair with creation and being alive.
Portland, Ore.
TERRI WILLIAMS
