A new year (’66)—with the new confession (’67)

Ho And Hum

Well, I have just been reading a few more things about new theology and new morality and the recent death of God, and for some reason a statement came to mind that I read many years ago in a book by Warwick Deeping called Old Pybus. “There is nothing so damning as being just damned clever.” If the devil is half as intelligent as Blake makes him look and Milton describes him to be, he must be having a boring time these days. Such an easy job. It’s not much fun pushing people down when they fall down from their own inner weakness.

One of the slickest plays in football is the draw play. By faking the defense out of position with a threatened pass, you open up a hole for one of the backs to gallop through. The defense out-maneuvers itself. We used to make a lot out of the mousetrap, too, which was a pretty nice way to handle an aggressive tackle; you let him run full speed through your line and then help him along his way while the play runs through the hole he left. The Church has had a hard enough time for a good many centuries trying to beat the devil around the bush; I don’t know what he is going to do if we start running with him instead of against him.

Oh, yes, and a sign of the times: The Beatles were knighted. All I can say is, every man to his taste. But the reason for their being knighted shakes me up a bit. They were knighted because they helped the British balance the trade, which means in simple language that they cleared a few million dollars out of our country and took them over to their country. Let them be knighted, I say; but what kind of a day is it when four men like that can make a balance of trade for Great Britain?

EUTYCHUS II

Chirpings And Mutterings

In his critique of the United Presbyterians’ proposed “Confession of 1967” (Dec. 3 issue). Professor Gerstner shows how it is remarkable for its turgidity and lack of clarity, not to say intellectual dishonesty.…

At the beginning of their onslaught, the humanists ridiculed Christian beliefs as being obscurantist. Today it is becoming clearer and clearer that it is humanism, whether it manifests itself through the “Confession of 1967” or simply by chronic doubting, which is obscurantist.

STEPHEN B. MILES

American Council on Correct Use of

English in Politics

Falls City, Neb.

Professor Gerstner is to be commended on his clear and forthright article.… We need more of this kind of plain talk. The framers of the new confession have sought too much unto the modern familiar spirits that chirp and mutter, and have spoken too little according to the law and the testimony (Isa. 8:19, 20).

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J. TUININCA

Philadelphia, Pa.

Thank you for the informative discussion concerning the proposed “Confession of 1967.” The tragedy, however, is that the proposal of this confession, whether the authors so intend or not, constitutes a denial that there is final, ultimate, eternal truth.

To assert that, in order more accurately and clearly to express the truth of Scripture, the language of the Westminster Confession should be modernized (although actually the language is modern and scriptural and such a proposition is wholly unnecessary) is one thing. To relegate the Westminster Confession to a book of confessions and to seek to derive one’s message from “… principles drawn from living theology,” as is stated in the section of the report, “Confessions of the Church: Types and Functions,” by Edward A. Dowey, Jr., is simply to deny ultimate truth.

This is the real tragedy. If this proposed confession is adopted there will be no essential difference between the United Presbyterian Church and the world. It will be one of the saddest days in the history of Christendom.

EDWARD J. YOUNG

Professor of Old Testament

Westminster Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

The author of this article urges Presbyterians to resist aggiornamento. What a pity!… A “Protestant” who would hold back this aggiornamento will have to run to catch up with the twentieth century. Wake up! This is the atomic era. The world lies “stripped,” “beaten,” and “half-dead” on the side of the road. Priests and Levites spend their days arguing about the supremacy of some sacrosanct creedal statement.

RICHARD H. PETERSEN

Chaplain

Pfeiffer College

Misenheimer, N. C.

It is pointless to denounce the creed committee for rejection of the Bible’s “historical and scientific statements,” because the Bible is a theological statement and deals with neither history nor science in the finitude of human academic pursuit. It is much more priceless and eternal as the record of the revealed salvation of man, not the revealed record of the salvation of man. As such it is without bondage to traditionalism, creedalism, inspirationalism, or any other rational “ism-idolatry.” If the toes of the body must continually scratch at one another to the depreciation of the will of the Head, let us err not on the side of creedal conglomeration but rather on something stupidly simple, such as the creed of the first disciples: “Jesus is Lord!”

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ALAN KIEFFABER

Church of the Brethren

Franklin Grove, Ill.

What an incredible hodge-podge of half-truths, insinuations, and misinformation! One hardly knows where to start in unraveling the errors in this thoroughly bad piece of work.…

DEANE F. LAVENDER

First Presbyterian

Monroe, N.Y.

Westminster On Scripture

The idea of reprinting the original Westminster Confession’s chapter on Scripture in large characters (Dec. 3 issue) was great. May it remain written large in our hearts and churches.…

ROGER NICOLE

Gordon Divinity School

Wenham, Mass.

Big Bang And Steady State

It is quite true, as you imply in the last paragraph of “Demise of the Steady-State Theory” (Dec. 3 issue), that some people accepted the steady-state cosmology because they believed that it removed at last the final vestige of the idea of God from the universe.

But to say that the big bang is “more congenial” to the Christian world view is to make an equally serious error. Science does not have the wherewithal to determine a zero-point in time. Both the big-bang and steady-state universes are infinitely old, as far as any cosmologist can tell. This is not because a creation by God is logically impossible, but because it could never be detected by scientific means. Surely it is physically meaningless to say that “the universe began at a discrete point in time and space.” God cannot be “ruled out” of cosmology. Neither, however, can he be “ruled into” it.

A steady-state universe does not have to be “completely at variance” with a Christian view. God could create a steady-state universe just as easily as a primordial atom for a big bang. “In the beginning” the steady-state world would be just as formless and full of void as anyone might please. God’s sustenance of the world-system would consist in part in the continual creation of new hydrogen. Such an idea may be unusual, but it is hardly unchristian.

As well as beating a dead horse that never should have lived by your talk of Genesis-cosmology “resolutions,” you demonstrate an ignorance of contemporary cosmology and a misunderstanding of the scientific process. Matter, in Hoyle’s cosmology, was not produced “out of energy” (or anything else), although some steady-state cosmologists held that view. There is no “oldest” matter any more than there is a largest integer, in a steady-state world, that is. Hoyle’s new cosmology is equally as “self-contained” and “self-perpetuating” as his former one. And any contention that a steady-state universe must be “doing violence to physical law” is simply not in accord with the nature of the scientific enterprise. If the steady-state universe had been found to be true, then it would not be said that it had done violence to a physical law, but that the laws previously held to be true were, in fact, false. Besides, some steady-state cosmologies do not conflict with any known laws, even though they include continual creation.

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ALLEN HARDER

Bloomington, Ind.

• Our effort was not “to rule [God] into cosmology” but to point to the reduction of tension that should result from Hoyle’s abandoning a theory that effectively ruled Him out of it.—ED.

The Second Cause?

John Warwick Montgomery’s article on “Why Churches Decline” (Current Religious Thought. Dec. 3 issue) was very interesting. You gave much space in this issue to the first cause, namely, the presence of liberal theology. Why not work up an issue on the second cause—namely, “social conservatism”—for the decline of Protestant churches.… Or is it fate that we use doctrinal conservatism to defend social conservatism?

HUBERT BROM

Saint Andrew United Presbyterian

Iowa City, Iowa

Protestant Poetry

I’d like to congratulate CHRISTIANITY TODAY on the letter by E. Margaret Clarkson in the November 5 issue, and to second her remarks—with reservations. One reservation, obviously, must be an absence of objectivity on my part, since CHRISTIANITY TODAY has been gracious enough to use some of my own poetry. Beyond that. I would go further than she in not always liking what you do use, I fear. But I, too, would certainly wish to congratulate the magazine for its emphasis on freshness, vitality, and avoidance of the stereotype.

Recently I have gone through piles of religious magazines, in connection with my teaching of creative writing, and I am appalled at the triteness, sentimentality, and banality which dominate the poetry in the Protestant press. Roman Catholic magazines seem to be much more aware of twentieth-century literary currents.…

ELVA MCALLASTER

Greenville College

Greenville, Ill.

Stopping Short

You use part of the last sentence of the excerpt from Olov Hartman’s Holy Masquerade as a title for the piece (Dec. 3 issue), thereby apparently endorsing its sentiment: “Oh, to live in a time with clear colors when the ministers believed.…” Presumably you also endorse the conclusion of that sentence: “… in angels and devils and atheists were burned at the stake just as if they had been martyrs of the faith.” In the terms in which belief is understood by Pastor Svensson’s wife and CHRISTIANITY TODAY, the two parts of that sentence are inseparable.…

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RALPH W. JEFFS

Episcopal Chaplain

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, Calif.

• The phrase used as a title was intended to stimulate reader interest. But we do not endorse the unquoted portion of the sentence. We would not advocate burning heretics at the stake.—ED.

Among dozens of publications that come to my desk, CHRISTIANITY TODAY is one of the best by far.…

The summary from Holy Masquerade spoke to my heart.… It gives me, an evangelical, renewed faith in Jesus Christ. May her prayer be mine: “Oh, to live in a time with clear colors when the ministers believed.…”

STANLEY R. LEWIS

Hadley Methodist

Hutchinson. Kan.

Tillich’S Treatment

I must commend you on your objective and kind editorial of November 19 regarding the passing away of Paul Tillich. I only wish now that the leading liberal religious magazine in the nation would be as kind toward evangelicals as you have been toward those individuals of the liberal persuasion.

ROBERT GEORGE WICKENS

Berea, Ohio

The World Of Cheats

Congratulations on your willingness to publish “I Hate Cheating Because …,” by Nancy M. Tischler (Nov. 5 issue). It places in relief an obvious and disturbing factor of American academic life. The lack of proper proctoring of examinations and the allowance of plagiarism in essays nullifies the plea of the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation.” Moreover, professors are as guilty as students when many of them present material in a “bookish” fashion that is dearly not their own. Hence the result is shallowness in scholarship and the encouragement to declining moral standards by the future leadership of our country.

ERNEST V. LIDDLE

Librarian

Undergraduate Library

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pa.

They Do Not Undersell

Re “Quiet Revolt in Gospel Music,” news section (Nov. 5 issue): While it seems that there will always be an area in which the denominational publishing house and the independent firm both feel that the other has the greater advantage, it simply is not true that our choral music is priced below that of our competitors, whether they be independent or denominationally owned. Furthermore, the Nazarene Publishing House is not subsidized but rather channels all of its profits directly into the worldwide program of The Church of the Nazarene.…

R. W. STRINGFIELD

Manager

Music Department

Nazarene Publishing House

Kansas City, Mo.

Buildup In Bombay

What a blessing it is to receive … CHRISTIANITY TODAY. You are making a very vital contribution to the building up of our Indian Christian leadership.

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Only this week I attended the monthly pastors’ meeting where twenty to thirty pastors met. Oh, you would have been thrilled to have seen them gathering up the magazines. Their faces truly reflected their gratitude for this help.…

ROY BAKER

President

Asian Screen

Bombay, India

A View Of News

I think CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S news coverage is about the best you can find.…

STEPHEN C. ROSE

Renewal

Chicago City Missionary Society Editor

Chicago, Ill.

Lunchtime Companion

Often this publication has been my companion during the few minutes at the noon-hour lunch period, and many times I have found much spiritual comfort and guidance in my quest for truth.…

MRS. GEORGE H. COCKRUM

East St. Louis, Ill.

Why Not?

With everyone so all-fired anxious to get one-man-one-vote for Rhodesia, I wonder why there isn’t an equal amount of agitation to get something like that for, say, Hungary.

JACK IMMELL

Buffalo. Okla.

Anabaptists And Liberty

In re “Our Protestant Heritage” (Oct. 22 issue): The Anabaptists were the pioneers of religious liberty, out of which eventually grew the idea of democratic liberty, and they paid for the privilege with their lifeblood. The Reformers established only state churches, not free churches, and whoever dissented in any Protestant state was a heretic and had to be dealt with.…

SHEM PEACHEY

Quarryville, Pa.

The Bodily Resurrection

May I call to your attention a most interesting article that many have overlooked.… The article is a restudy of First Corinthians 15:50 by J. Jeremias in New Testament Studies (II, 151–59).

Developing an interpretation earlier stated by A. Schlatter, Professor Jeremias … says, “It is wrong to assume that the sentence ‘Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’ is speaking of the resurrection. It speaks rather of the change of the living at the Parousia (Second Coming), and only by analogy is anything to be inferred from it for the Pauline conception of the resurrection”.… “Look at the transfiguration of the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, then you will have the answer to the question how we shall imagine the event of the resurrection.”

In 1896 a discussion of Paul’s doctrine of the resurrection and the judgment by E. Teichmann misinterpreted this significant terse as teaching that the body of the resurrection will not be flesh or blood. On this error Teichmann assumed two tremendous mutations in Pauline eschatology, according to which in First Thessalonians he taught the Jewish conception of the rising of believers in their earthly bodies; then in First Corinthians set forth a complete annihilation of all that was connected with the flesh, so that only the spirit remained to receive an entirely new body at the resurrection; and thirdly in Second Corinthians five expected the new body from heaven at the moment of death. The resurrection was thus spiritualized into Hellenism. Indeed, some translations, such as Goodspeed and the Revised Standard, were led to support this misinterpretation of First Corinthians 15:50 by inaccurately rendering Paul’s adjective psychical as physical in First Corinthians 15:44. This also led to radical results in reinterpreting the testimonies of the Gospels and Acts as to the resurrection body of Jesus. The disastrous role of this misinterpretation of First Corinthians 15:50 in New Testament thought has been evident these seventy years since Teichmann.

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In opposition to this established “liberal” interpretation, Jeremias shows that flesh and blood refers to living persons, not to dead ones, and points to the Parousia rather than to the resurrection of the dead. Flesh and blood is rightly read in Nestle as singular, and this single conception, as parallels in Matthew 16:17, Galatians 1:16, Ephesians 6:2, and Hebrews 2:14 show, refers to natural man as a frail creature in opposition to the mighty God (cf. also Isa. 31:3). It does not state a distinction between the physical and the spiritual aspects of man. Since both flesh” and “blood” exclude an application of the word-pair to the dead, this phrase refers only to living persons.

On the other hand, the next clause, that “corruption cannot inherit incorruption,” does refer to the dead. The parallelism is not synonymous but synthetic; that is, corruption refers to corpses in decomposition. The verse means that neither the living nor the dead are to take part in the Kingdom of God as they are but that both are to be changed at the Parousia.

In the following verse the Apostle reverses the order of his thought, as he does several times in this chapter, according to the logical figure known as chiasmus. In verse 53 he mentions first the dead, stating that this corruption must put on incorruption; then, returning to the living, the living men of flesh and blood, he says that the mortal must put on immortality. That is, the dead will experience what happened to our Lord at his resurrection, while those who are living at the coming of the Lord in his glory, the men who are still flesh and blood, will experience what happened to him at his transfiguration.

We cannot too highly commend this significant reinterpretation of this much misunderstood verse and bespeak it the careful study of our ministers, that thereby the truth of the actual bodily resurrection of our Lord and the Christian hope of our resurrection may be restored to Christian thinking and proclamation.

WILLIAM CHILDS ROBINSON

Columbia Theological Seminary

Decatur, Ga.

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