OF TENNIS SHOES AND BLUE STOCKINGS
We were at the Sunday-evening service. We had sung some half dozen hymns and the pastor had just suggested we pray when a quavering voice from the back of the church asked, “Couldn’t we sing hymn 392 before we pray?”
My teen-age son leaned over to me and commented, “Probably no one else in the whole room wants to sing number 392 but because some little old lady does we’re all gonna stand here and sing it.” He smilingly shook his head with obvious admiration for the power of little old ladies.
We did stand there and sing it—all five stanzas.
Unquestionably little old ladies have suffered a bad press in recent years. Just mention the term and our heads dance with visions of the WCTU and the DAR. We joke about little old ladies from Pasadena, little old ladies in tennis shoes, and blue-stockinged little old ladies.
The implication is that they are the most inflexible railers against young whippersnappers who have committed the sin of being young.
Frankly, I don’t believe it. If anything, little old ladies are less victims of the generation gap than others. I see LOLs passing on their faith to be-jeaned, long-haired youths without getting hung up about clothes and hair.
After all, a little old lady in a Lord and Taylor dress topped by a sweater rescued from the Goodwill box has something in common with a teen-ager in an army surplus coat and overpriced blue jeans.
It’s those of us in our forties who get clenched eyebrows over such things, not the LOLs. They’re more culturally liberated. They’ve seen enough to know that what’s odd today may be high fashion tomorrow.
Contrary to popular myth, little old ladies don’t get shaken up by changes in the church. A new Sunday-school curriculum doesn’t seem to the typical LOL to offer the threat of destroying the church or the possibility of bringing in the kingdom. She taught the class her own way under the old curriculum and she’ll teach it her way under the new. And surprisingly, God will probably accomplish something through it.
Little old ladies are liberated women in the truest sense. They’re free to be themselves. Who but a liberated person would interrupt the appointed order of things to request hymn 392?
Above all, little old ladies seem to know who they are and what they believe. That alone sets them apart from a majority of church-goers.
RELEVANCE COMMENTS
Thank you for Kenneth Hamilton’s article, “The Irrelevance of Relevance” (March 31). It is some of the clearest thinking on the subject that I’ve read in a long time. I read it with great appreciation.
Loxley, Ala.
ON FRIENDSHIP
It was a very great pleasure for me to read Dr. Paul H. Wright’s article, “Friendship For God’s Sake” (March 3). This is a magnificent presentation … of the very facts of friendship.… I heartily concur … that those of us who are committed to the Way of Jesus Christ not only need to develop some very strong personal friendships; we also need to be friendly to those who have no friends—those who need someone to love and understand them.… It seems to me that if more of us would adapt this doctrine of Christian friendship in our relations with others, even in secular and business contacts, much of the hatred and distrust in our society would be alleviated by our very concern for other human beings rather than just for ourselves.
Trenton, N. J.
FROM THREE ‘FUDDLERS’
I am disappointed that John Warwick Montgomery labeled as “class three fuddlers” (Current Religious Thought, “Having a Fuddled Easter?,” March 31) a team of which I was a part. At Dr. Montgomery’s seminary campus, as well as at other colleges and seminaries, I spoke about developing a biblical pattern of giving reasons for the faith. It is a pattern that centers on “reverencing Christ as Lord in your hearts” (1 Pet. 3:15). If Christ is our Lord, we must follow him also in the manner in which we give testimony to the world (cf. 1 Tim. 6:12, 13).
Naturally this involves an appeal to miraculous works (“evidences”) which confirm the doctrine (1 Cor. 15:3–11; John 5:30–47; Heb. 2:4). But: (1) within the New Testament, appeal to miraculous works and witnesses always takes place, not in a vacuum, but upon the presupposition of God’s words in the Old Testament (particularly the doctrines of creation and providence). (2) Historical judgments ought not to “lord it over the Gospel”: the unbeliever may never be given the right to bring the Word of God into subjection to his own corrupt standards of truth (cf. how Jesus puts Pilate “on trial” in John 18). (3) There is nothing more sure than the Word of God, from which that Word now needs to be “proved” reliable. Christ the Son of the living God is more sure than any sense data or (secular) historical documents that we use scientifically (cf. Rom. 3:4). (4) We must proclaim God’s Word as surely true, not merely as “probably true.” From one end to the other the Bible testifies that no man, anywhere, has any right to call God’s Word in question with a “probably so” (Gen. 3:1; Job 38–42; Ps. 73:11–15; Mal. 3:17; Mat. 12:38–42; John 18:38; and so on). Those who say “Probably so (but also possibly not), on the basis of historical evidence,” cherish their own judgments more than the Word.
Such is a summary of what I said. If Dr. Montgomery had heard my talk, he might have understood better, I hope, that our team was striving to be rooted not in an abstract a priori but in Christ and his Word. I only ask that Dr. Montgomery too should base his criticisms on Scripture. As brothers in Christ, we need to go beyond the obvious fact that the Bible uses “evidences.”
Westminster Theological Seminary
Philadelphia, Pa.
The issue is not historicity or possibility of proof, as Montgomery claims; rather, it is the question of the propriety of basing one’s apologetic on these foundations without taking into account the presuppositions of the natural man. Of course Van Til does not teach that sin makes man inhuman (A Christian Theory of Knowledge, p. 231). It is his method as opposed to the traditional approach which does not vitiate the clarity of revelation and relegate it to the realm of probability. Also, contrary to the charge, he does not propagate blind faith (A Christian Theory of Knowledge, p. 32). What he does do is challenge the idea of a neutral reasoning and show clearly the Christian confidence in the law of non-contradiction as over against the non-believer’s concept of the same (An Introduction to Theology, p. 11).
The precise issue then between Montgomery and the presuppositionalist is Van Til’s challenge to the unbeliever at the very beginning of the apologetical question concerning analogical reasoning and the self-attesting Christ of Scripture versus an abstract realm of possibility and logic.
Denver, Colo.
As a recent graduate of “a certain Calvinistic institution that shall remain nameless” I was amused to read that a team of my fellow “class three fuddlers” should manage to make copy in CHRISTIANITY TODAY by fuddling the waters of facticity at Trinity.… Unbelief, when we get down to real basics, is not a problem of inadequate evidence or poorly argued logic; it is a matter of willful rebellion against the God of the facts. The team of my fellow fuddlers doesn’t believe in hiding the glorious facts under a bushel, but in proclaiming them openly as Paul did at Areopagus. But logic and facts will not dent the intellectual defenses of those who have neither eyes to see nor ears to hear. “If they will not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead”.…
We “class-three fuddlers” argue, not that the evidence is meager—the evidence abounds, from the stars in heaven to the five hundred witnesses of First Corinthians 15:6—but that men are not disposed to admit the evidence or able to weigh it until the Spirit unshackles the bonds of sin. The Gospel is God’s power unto salvation, and the foolishness of preaching his appointed means of saving. Let traveling minstrels in these days bring this glad news of merriment and hope, and expect the Spirit of power to open hearts to the truth.
The first three articles of the same issue by Peterson, Woodrum, and Hamilton were just excellent. I read them with much personal profit and enjoyment.
Alliance, Ohio
WHAT HAPPENED TO ORDER?
Ho, to brother slovens! After reading Eutychus (Eutychus and His Kin, “Sloven Power,” March 17), I quickly went to First Corinthians 14:40 and blacked out the entire verse.
Villa Park, Ill.
… AND NOTHING’S CHANGED
Again, exactly a year later, the pages of CHRISTIANITY TODAY have been given to those who deny the inspiration of Mark 16:9–20 (“Resurrection Quartet,” March 31).… The author of the article would have us believe that Mark ends at verse 8—and we are to add the details and somehow imagine the resurrection and the ending. I believe in the Holy Spirit—and I am sure he never did anything by half measures—at any rate he would never dignify the ravings of Greisbach or Lachmann. I do wish CHRISTIANITY TODAY would print the other side of this matter. This is the only fair thing to do.
Runnemede, N. J.
• Some of the editors do accept Mark 16:9–20 as genuine, but our writers are allowed reasonable liberty to reflect such differing views among evangelicals.—ED.
SUBTLE ANTI-SEMITISM?
With regard to the “Personalia” item [in the news section] of your April 14 issue concerning Bishop Frensdorff of Nevada: He is not a “Jew,” he is a Christian: he has been converted to Christ, baptized, and confirmed; therefore he is a Christian of the Anglican communion. It would certainly have been proper to have said, “… a convert from Judaism, born in Germany of parents who died, etc.…”
I am reminded of the time not too long ago when the WASP governing board of an eastern country club (most of whom were Episcopalians!) refused a young lady the privilege of having her debutante ball at the club because she chose as her escort a confirmed Episcopalian whose mother was also Episcopalian but whose father was Jewish. They still considered him a “Jew.” The same strange prejudice seems to lie behind your quiet little item about a “Jew” who was “ordained” over a “gambling casino.”
Incidentally, he was consecrated, not ordained. A candidate for the various ministries of the Episcopal Church is made a deacon, ordained a priest, and consecrated a bishop.
With that out of my system, may I commend you for your superb and Christian editorial on the subject of amnesty for our young men in Canada and elsewhere. It is the clearest statement I have yet read. Thank you!
(THE REV.) WILLIAM K. HUBBELL
Lexington, Ky.
GOOD NEWS
CHRISTIANITY TODAY … is a joy and inspiration to me. I am constantly fascinated by the good news of the Gospel as it is having results in various parts of the world. I know of no other religious publication that provides as much inspiration and information of a positive nature. Too many publications are argumentative and pessimistic, and, one would almost think, glory in the demise of the church.… Thank you for the article “Bibles in the Barracks: God and the Military” by Edward E. Plowman (News, March 31). This was a fascinating article and took a great deal of research and effort.… Keep up this type of reporting and we’ll continue publicizing your paper.
Redford Baptist Church
Detroit, Mich.
NO ONE’S HAPPY
The April 14 column (Eutychus and His Kin, “More Plane Talk”) containing replies to those ten readers who criticized (or questioned) Eutychus’s former literary efforts was so funny. Why, afterwards, did I want to cry?
East Weymouth, Mass.
