Eutychus and His Kin: April 14, 1967

Dear Job-Seekers:

“WANTED: versatile YOUNG MEN. For job opportunity requiring multiple skills,” announced the full-page magazine advertisement. Here, I excitedly thought, might be my big chance for a fantastic new career in the space program or corporation management. So I read on. “Applicants must expect to serve as teacher, counselor, administrator, psychologist, preacher, and brother to people in all walks of life.” How could any mortal handle such an assignment?, I mused. The ad further stated: “Compassion, understanding, patience and endurance necessary qualifications.” Finally came the appeal from the United Presbyterian Church Council on Theological Education: “Interested applicants should address themselves to: The Christian Ministry.”

I hate to reveal my naïveté, but I had always thought that basic requirements for the Christian ministry were Christian conversion and a call to this sacred office from God (rather than an advertising copywriter). But it seems that such hoary requirements may no longer be operational in modern Protestant seminaries.

Another ministerial recruitment ad apparently supported this conclusion. Placed by the Episcopal Seminaries, it was entitled, “He Didn’t Wait for Voices in the Night.” Under a picture of a thoughtful seminarian the ad stated, “Like most young men searching for a career he gathered all the facts he could … and made up his mind. But instead of deciding to be a lawyer or an engineer, he decided to be a minister.” How embarrassed, I thought, this seminarian would have been by divine illumination! The ad continued: “He didn’t see the ‘light flash’ or hear ‘voices whisper.’ Neither have most men in seminary! Because the call to the ministry is much like the call to any other profession, it doesn’t bowl you over.” Then, to assist inquirers, the ad offered the booklet, “Are You a Many-Sided Man?”

I asked myself, Am I a many-sided man? Certainly I deny being a square. But the four sides of the “now” minister do intrigue me. What other profession would allow one to serve as (1) the compleat expert on matters ecclesiastical, theological, political, and economic, (2) the enrobed prelate of liturgical renewal, (3) the courageous leader of marches that shake up placid communities, and (4) the symbol of religious good will at ceremonial occasions?

Maybe I will answer those advertisements after all. With my versatility, multiple skills, and no-nonsense approach to this challenging career, I could give God a real lift and possibly lead the Church to heights unknown since Constantine secularized Christianity.

Your would-be man of the cloth, EUTYCHUS III

Insights Into The Impasse

I appreciate Mr. Kucharsky’s insights (“Confronting the Impasse in Evangelism,” Mar. 3) into the present-day impasse in evangelism. He sees through our programs as an expression of our sense of guilt at not being a Nate Krupp or a D. L. Moody.

I wish he could have pursued this idea of guilt to a solution instead of leaving us condemned before a Christ-less world. One reason evangelical Christians don’t witness is that in spite of all our preaching on assurance of sins forgiven, they are not at peace about their standing with God. Decades of condemnatory preaching have produced Christians who are paralyzed by guilt and almost totally devoid of the New Testament keynote: joy.

We should know by now that we can’t witness to something which is not vitally real to us.

TIM SHUMAKER

Missionary Intern

Spring Arbor, Mich.

The article … is food for thought for every evangelical, and liberals, too.

ROBERT W. SCHWARTZ

The Pittsburgh Press

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Your article ends with the haunting question, “Where do we go from here?” This is a question which bothers all who are concerned about world evangelism.

The only answer it seems to me is how to get Christians reading the Gospels again and sharing their findings. I long for the day when someone will come up to me and say, “I just read an incident in the life of Jesus Christ and God spoke to me through it.” I must confess that this is rare in my evangelical circle.

JAMES E. BERNEY

Richmond, Calif.

The reticence of evangelical Christians may not be because they have not been taught how to witness but because not having found the Christian life in practice as abundant as they were led to expect (a fact they dare not admit openly) they simply cannot commend what has been a disappointment to them with enthusiasm to others.

W. FRANCIS B. MAGUIRE

Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd

Bonita, Calif.

You have rightly, in my estimation, pointed the finger of responsibility, or lack thereof.

JERRY BEAVAN

Vice President

Rexall Drug Company

Los Angeles, Calif.

How Many Jews?

I admire your magazine.… But you say (“Evangelical Failures and the Jew,” Mar. 3), “Hitler’s dastardly extermination of six million Jews.…”

I have seen that quote in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and considered the irresponsible source.

For God’s sake, please don’t be a “copy cat” of such publications. Who says there were 6,000,000 Jews exterminated?

FRANCIS H. DUNN

Rockville, Md.

Et tu, Brute: the great myth of the six million Jews killed by Hitler. Wrong is wrong, against whomever committed. And let the facts at last become known. The legend has no factual basis. You, perhaps, would be willing to give space to truth.…

We had hoped that CHRISTIANITY TODAY would be the clear counterpart to the anti-Christian, Communist “ecumenicity” of the entire system of the World Church. A part of that “ecumenicity” is the sacredness of all things Communist, including Zionism—the brain and leadership of Communism—and all things damned that are anticommunist, such as Germany.

JOHN F. C. GREEN.

Pastor Emeritus

Evangelical Congregational

McKeesport, Pa.

• In his meticulous study The Final Solution (1953), Gerald Reitlinger put the figure at 4,194,200 to 4,581,200. The post-war Anglo-American Committee used the figure 5,721,800 in preparing the Nuremburg indictments. At the trials, two S. S. officers testified that Karl Eichmann, chief of the Gestapo’s Jewish Office, said that between five and six million Jews had been killed. In The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), William L. Shirer reports there were ten million Jews living in Nazi territory in 1939 and “by any estimate it is certain that nearly half of them were exterminated by the Germans.”—ED.

Hard-Headed Witness

James Warwick Montgomery’s “Inductive Inerrancy” (Current Religious Thought, Mar. 3) was a delight. His hard-headed egg-headed witness to faith in the written Word is always a refreshing thing to read.

WILMA LITTON

Espanola, N. Mex.

It was good to learn … that he accepts the priority of induction.… I was pleased to learn that even the gestalt must be inductively derived.

After this initial concession, however, he appears to muddy the waters. To be explicit: any gestalt which decides ahead of time that certain phenomena are not compatible with a proper doctrine of inspiration can hardly be an inductively derived gestalt.…

The other point which calls for rebuttal is the implication that the serious exegetes who wrestle with the literary problems of the text do not trust Scripure in the same way as Jesus and modern evangelical dogmaticians. An unwillingness to smooth over textual difficulties in no wise means a “doctrine of limited biblical authority.”

ROBERT H. MOUNCE

Dept, of Biblical Literature

Bethel College

St. Paul, Minn.

Montgomery’s comments are unconvincing for the following reasons, among others.

1. Choosing a gestalt to facilitate understanding is itself an inductive procedure.…

2. Mr. Montgomery makes the factual material (such as genealogies and other lists) seem relatively irrelevant, whereas it is probably more relevant than any other kind of information, if it can be had.…

3. In any case, there is no such thing as the gestalt any more than there can be one and only one (legitimate) explanation for some event or class of events. Bloomington, Ind.

ALLEN HARDER

There is no need to bolster the authority of either Christ or the Bible by making the kind of sweeping assertion that he makes. I wish that our dogmatists could stop making us look ridiculous. The Bible will argue well enough for itself if people will stop waving red herrings. Prestwick, Scotland

PHIL PETTY

We who do not believe that the Bible is absolutely inerrant also follow the Lord Christ.

PAUL H. SEELY

Philadelphia, Pa.

Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Your editorial, “An Infallible Hatred” (Mar. 3), is barking up the wrong tree. What arouses antagonism on the part of those this editorial condemns is not the idea of biblical inerrancy but the arrogance it so often produces in those who embrace it with idolatrous devotion. I can understand how the adjective “demonic” might come to mind in such instances.…

That some “liberals” find it easier to regard the pope as a Christian brother than some Protestant fundamentalists is easily explained. They see signs of the Catholic Church moving away from concepts of its infallibility as interpreter and applier of Scripture teaching, while fundamentalism is moving in the opposite direction. The Catholic Church in due caution limited infallibility to one person at a time, the pope, while fundamentalism tends to disperse it among all its adherents.

MARCIUS E. TABER

Delton, Mich.

Reading the dully familiar meanderings of Willis “scribal mentality” Elliott on the “proper” use of the Holy Scriptures is about as interesting as a posthumous interview with Laura Secord. His kind ought to be crowned. Hard!

ARTHUR DURNAN

Scarboro, Ont.

I am forced to write this letter (I really couldn’t hold it back!) by the beautiful editorial on “An Infallible Hatred.” I hope you keep repeating it until the ecumenists are forced to take a stand on the dogma of an infallible pope.

JACK E. MARTIN

Eatontown, N. J.

Two things:

1. Dr. Elliott is not “a spokesman for the United Church of Christ.”

2. We must be patient with his overzealousness as he comes to us from another denomination and as a “convert” is likely to overdo at times.

PAUL DOUGLAS

St. Paul’s United Church of Christ

Mineral City, Ohio

Two matters of some substance:

1. In the opinion of every Catholic intellectual I personally know—and that is not a few—the doctrine of papal infallibility is a preposterous fraud perpetrated by a Tridentine council (Vatican I) which, because of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, did not have time to produce the polar balancing doctrine of conciliar authority (though that arm could not have established a real balance, anyway). Of course it was not inappropriate for Vatican I to pronounce on the authority of the papacy, but it was tragically inappropriate and excessive to set that pronouncement in the infallibilist frame. This, too, is precisely my opinion. But let me now put my objection to biblical infallibility similarly: it is tragically inappropriate and excessive to set the doctrine of Scripture in the infallibilist frame. (Bible and pope both suffer from the overclaim.) Your editorial’s implication that I am hard on biblicism and soft on papism has, in its second member, nothing to back it. I am, and have been for more than a quarter century, hard on all claims of historical infallibility. But this does not prevent my working closely with Rome: soon I shall be working in the Vatican as a Protestant theologian (in a consultation on the faith and the new leisure). Nor would it prevent my working closely with evangelicalists if they would permit it. From another angle: within the Roman church so many so high-placed voices are denouncing papal infallibility that recently the pope has been making noises that sound suspiciously like “I am too infallible!” Among evangelicalists no comparable groundswell of intellectual leaders against biblical infallibility exists. Rome may well let God deliver it from its idolatrous primitivism before the evangelicalists are willing to surrender theirs—and this for the simple reason that, like monolithic Communism (now, Maoism), evangelicalism liquidates internal criticism. I need not tell you that instant ostracism occurs when an evangelicalist openly denies biblical inerrancy, though I might remind you that it happened to me four times.

2. In a previous letter I told you of a woman (incidentally, the wife of America’s most exciting lay theologian in the Roman church) who gave up individual infallibility (inner-light Quakerism), then biblical infallibility (Southern Baptist variety), then papal infallibility (since Vatican II). She, a gay and creative Christian if I ever knew one, was recently discussing with me these three deliverances.… She has let go three times, and each time has gained.…

WLLIS E. ELLIOTT

United Church Board for Homeland Ministries

New York, N. Y.

You quote my fellow United Church minister, Dr. Willis Elliott, regarding hatred of biblical inerrancy.

You conclude by suggesting that it is evangelicals whom we ecumenically minded dislike.

Precisely.

I prefer not using the word hatred at all. But honestly I’m more ill at ease in the company of evangelicals any day than in the company of priests (Roman Catholic).

Probably there is a good psychological explanation for this feeling, but I’ve noted many of my fellow United Church ministers who feel the same malaise with evangelicals, so it is not a private discomfort.

Individual evangelicals I like, respect. Their doctrine, as for instance that often delineated in “A Layman and His Faith,” is quite obviously the kind we dislike, as you so clearly observed.

Impasse? Yes, so long as evangelicals insist upon the old Calvinist essentials, however modified.

But then we ecumaniacs are doctrinaire too, aren’t we? Nobody’s perfect. First Congregational

BRADLEY LINES

Moravia, N. Y.

I could not help wondering whether the antagonism which exists between we new evangelicals and the ecumenical movement is caused not by our possession of an infallible Bible so much as our supposedly infallible opinions regarding ecumenism. Possibly the reason the ecumenists have closer liaison with the Vatican than with the evangelicals is because of less recalcitrance on the part of the former.

There are areas, for instance, where the NCC and the NAE could find a certain fraternity, especially in the area of diakonia. But instead we go to the expense of establishing our own “evangelical” counterpart of such things as “The One Great Hour of Sharing.” We may have our reservations about the ecumenical movement, but let’s leave the uncharitable opposition of this movement to the members of the International Council of Christian Churches. The possibility does exist that the Holy Spirit who worked at Berlin can also work at Geneva, and even Vatican City!

ALAN R. HARLEY

Free Methodist

Goderich, Ont.

It’S No Monkey

The Elder Board of the Bibletown Community Church has asked me to write you expressing the shock we received when we read the news report, “Under New Management” (Mar. 3). We want your whole staff to know our auditorium is not a monkey (“the biggest monkey on Bibletown’s back is a 2,500-seat auditorium …”).

For your information Dr. Eshelman was not removed. For three years, he had asked to be released from his duties. This year he insisted on doctor’s orders.

C. E. GANNON

Secretary, Elder Board

Bibletown Community Church

Boca Raton, Fla.

A Brilliant Parody

“Amos Goes to Washington” (Mar. 17) was a brilliant parody, with accurate and disturbing insights. It most certainly ought to be reprinted as a tract.

C. R. STEGALL, JR.

Westminster Presbyterian

Fort Walton Beach. Fla.

Lon Woodrum’s modernization of Amos was very clever, managing to make Amos sound like a “right-winger and extremist” saying “naughty, naughty!” to LBJ and a seedy cast of bohemians. Carthage Christian

ROBERT B. LEWIS

Cincinnati, Ohio

Persecution After Affluence?

Your pictorial presentation of “Hindrances to Evangelism Through the Ages” (Mar. 3) attracted my attention. I am not sure that it was intentional, but it certainly leads one to the sobering thought that the next phase in the cyclical trend to follow affluence is persecution.

RALPH GIANNONE

Wyckoff, N.J.

Combatting Anti-Semitism

My sincerest congratulations to Geoffry W. Bromiley for the article, “Who Says the New Testament Is Anti-Semitic?” and to CHRISTIANITY TODAY for the splendid editorial, “Evangelical Failures and the Jew.” The latter was a particularly penetrating analysis of a very sensitive and complex issue. Such publications cannot help but aid in spreading a mutual understanding between Christians and Jews.

WILLIAM C. WILLIAMS

Kearny, N. J.

It is a valuable contribution towards a better understanding between Jews and Christians. Both Jewish leaders and anti-Semites, although their aims are divergent, have been misquoting and misinterpreting various passages to prove that the New Testament is an anti-Semitic book.…

Jewish leaders who seek to discredit the New Testament as being anti-Semitic would do a real service to their people if they would credit it as being the most pro-Jewish book in the entire world. It is certainly more pro-Jewish than the Old Testament. If they really wish to promote good will between Jew and Christian, they should advocate the study of the New Testament. It is a fact that wherever the New Testament is revered and studied, as for example in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries, the Jews have prospered. On the other hand, in those countries where the New Testament is little known and revered, the lot of the Jew has been most deplorable.

JACOB GARTENHAUS

Founder and President

International Board of Jewish Missions

Atlanta, Ga.

‘Scarcely A Report’

Your report about the American Baptist Evangelism Team’s biennial meeting (News, March 3) left much unsaid. In fact, it scarcely could be considered a report at all. The team … adopted three major areas of work for 1967–69, as follows: (1) the new American Baptist Curriculum, known as the Faith and Work Plan; (2) promotion and use by local church planning conferences of the new book by Paul L. Stagg, The Converted Church, and (3) continued emphasis on programs previously introduced: (a) ministry to Baptists who change residence, (b) relational visitation with biblical studies, and (c) area-sponsored preaching missions.

FRANK A. SHARP

Director

Department of Public Interpretation

American Baptist Convention

Valley Forge, Pa.

Mergers And Vows

Your report (News, Feb. 17) on the merger plan for the Reformed Church in America and the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. leaves one mistaken impression. After quoting the first of the proposed ordination vows for a merged church, you say that “Presbyterian ordinands now are asked if they ‘believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.’ … The draft follows current RCA forms for clergy ordination except that the vow omits the promise to ‘reject all errors’ contrary to the Bible and doctrinal standards.”

As a matter of fact, the proposed ordination questions deviate from the practice of both denominations by the omission of any vow specifically asserting the divine origin of the Scriptures. RCA ordinands have heretofore affirmed that they “believe the books of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God and the perfect doctrine unto salvation …,” paralleling the PCUS vow quoted above. The absence of such a vow, presently required in both churches, will certainly be one of the most serious weaknesses which the drafting committee will be called upon to correct before presenting a final draft.

TOM STARK

University Reformed Church

East Lansing, Mich.

Most Helpful

Hermann Sasse’s challenging article, “Sin and Forgiveness in the Modern World” (Mar. 3), was most helpful.

JOHN V. MOORE

Charleston, W. Va.

Is sin and forgiveness any different today than it has been at any time from Sinai until today?… Please thank Mr. Sasse. I have extracted sixteen very useful thoughts from the three pages. It is well worth the time to read and restudy.

L. E. MORRIS

Norfolk, Neb.

The Institute Marches Forward

Please accept from the Evangelical Covenant Church Sunday School the enclosed gift to go toward the proposed Institute for Advanced Christian Studies.… We are all fully cognizant of the importance of this ambition to the growth of evangelicalism in our age.

EUGENE H. LOWE

Sunday School Supt.

Evangelical Covenant

Pasadena, Calif.

• The action committee is proceeding toward early incorporation of the Institute. This $25 gift, the first from a Sunday school class, lifts the total to $798, including interest.—ED.

Enclosed you will find my dollar. I believe it is of utmost importance that such an institute be established for the greater glory of God.

BRUCE EDWARDS

Roxboro, Que.

Please keep reminding subscribers to send in their dollars for the proposed institute. We had forgotten. Enclosed $3 for our family of three.

ANNETTE BOOMKER

Oak Park, III.

Enclosed please find two dollars from my wife and myself.

FRANK L. ARNOLD

The Brazil Presbyterian Mission

Sao Luiz, Maranhao, Brazil

[Contribution enclosed] for the Institute of Advanced Christian Studies.

STEPHEN TSUI

Hong Kong

I am enclosing my check for $5.

J. FURMAN MILLER

Bryan College

Dayton, Tenn.

Forward!

JOHN, FRANCES,andALLEN HARDER

Marshalltown, Iowa

Sorry to be so slow in sending my dollar.…

JACK FRIZEN

Executive Secretary

Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association

Ridgefield Park, N. J.

Evangelism And The Ncc

If evangelism consisted of a constant running and negative attack on the National Council of Churches, you are indeed evangelical.

If evangelism is down-grading, perhaps even falsifying, the work of the National Council of Churches, you shall surely be known as the evangel.

If evangelism means publishing a magazine that has little to contribute editorially other than to lean on the National Council of Churches, you are evangelistic. (If the National Council of Churches should go down, you’d really have to dig for an idea of your own.)

W. T. HORST

Brunswick Methodist

Crystal, Minn.

The Funeral Problem

The Christian vs. sinner funeral-service dilemma to which Duane H. Thebeau refers in his virtually textless “Are We Burying the Gospel at the Grave?” (Mar. 17) is another example of un-scriptural tradition. Scripture does not support the Church’s dabbling in the heathen-oriented … funeral service. Bible Study Chapel

W. F. HADEL

Mountain Home, Ark.

Mr. Thebeau, as well as others who share the problem he raises, will be interested in knowing that the Liturgy of the Reformed Church in America provides a service “for one who has lived apart from the church.”

ARIE R. BROUWER

Bethel Reformed

Passaic, N. J.

The funeral when rightly conducted is a worship service in which we worship our wonderful risen Lord. This is at least true of the saved who are present at the funeral. In this respect the funeral can always be Christian. The service at the grave can very easily be geared for the benefit of the living without making any consignment of the departed’s soul. First Baptist

SEIDE B. JANSSEN

Tuscola, Ill.

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