Eutychus and His Kin: September 29, 1972

TWO TIMES TWO

Strangely enough, I still remember my initiation into the mysteries of the multiplication table. It happened in Mrs. Dunlap’s room in the third grade. Confronted with that great mysterious acrostic with 144 squares I thought, “I’ll never learn that.” I was almost right. Without a little mechanical help I might never have gotten through the whole nightmare.

Now it can be told. My father had given me an automatic pencil with a revolving barrel. One strip of the barrel was of clear plastic exposing a row of the multiplication table to view. By spinning the barrel one could find any product up to twelve times twelve.

I became expert at holding the pencil just below the corner of my desk and spinning the barrel with my thumb. (Mrs. Dunlap, wherever you are, forgive me.)

By the time I entered the fourth grade the pencil had disappeared, and that meant trouble. It was one of the few times I was ever in a sweat to learn. My assiduousness impressed both parents and friends. It wasn’t easy. After rattling off the seven table I would realize the six table had fled my memory.

Eventually, however, sheer repetition did the trick. Now, waked in the middle of the night I can provide you with the product of eleven times eleven or of seven times nine.

Our youngest son is presently going through this struggle. He came home after the first day of school and announced, “We had a math test. The teacher wanted to see how much we remember from last year.”

“How’d you do?” I asked.

“Pretty good. I only missed six.”

“How many questions were there?”

“Twenty,” he responded cheerfully.

Archibald Rutledge, former poet laureate of South Carolina, once commented that he wrote his first poem on entering the third grade. Seeing what he was supposed to remember from the previous year he versified:

Every summer

I get dumber.

But he learned it all. And my son will learn the multiplication table and fractions and percentages. Once he does, he’ll never forget them.

My question is, why can’t we get the lessons of the Christian life down pat like the multiplication table? Why does Jesus have to keep teaching us the same old lessons over and over? If you have an answer please send it to …

RENEWED APPRECIATION

The editorial in the June 23 issue, “The Lord Is Coming Again!,” was pointed, powerful, pertinent, and personal. It would be much easier for me to modify my views and stand with the majority of our day who are looking for a reign of Christ on this earth. At the same time I cannot be dogmatic about my amillennial views and break fellowship with precious warm-hearted brethren who are laboring for the Christ who is coming again!

Big Lake Church of God

Columbia City, Ind.

P.C.U.S. AND INERRANCY

It is cause for both alarm and sorrow when we see men who profess to be Christian leaders undermining the very basis of the Christian faith. This has been happening all over the world, and one recent incident of this nature prompted me to write this. I refer to your news item in the July 7 issue on the annual meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church U.S. (“Southern Presbyterians Elect Bell, Stay in COCU”), reported as “rejecting 264 to 50 a report that would have put the denomination on record as holding to biblical inerrancy”.… One wonders how people who have been born again through faith in Jesus Christ can make such a tragic error.

Courtenay, British Columbia

NOT OF TRINITY

The paragraph which mentions the People’s Christian Coalition group in your Explo ’72 story (July 7) could lead some of your readers into directly associating this group with Trinity College and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Although this group has many legitimate grievances, they are but a small fraction of the college and seminary student body of about 1,200. It should not be thought that their ideas and beliefs are in any way representative of the student body. Unfortunately, some of the supporters of Trinity have tended to be misled by the extent of the publicity that the Coalition has received, much of which has been distorted. They do not represent Trinity, neither are they supported by Trinity.

Deerfield, Ill.

MORE PARTICIPATION NEEDED

I disagree with the premise in your editorial “Sport: Are We Overdoing It?” (August 11). In the Old Testament tradition, man was a fully unified being of body, soul, and spirit and no part of him should be neglected. Sport is an altogether appropriate activity for the Christian, perhaps one that most Christians have neglected. The problem, which you fail to mention, is that sports today is too much a spectator thing than a participatory one.

Washington, D. C.

WELFARE FOR ALL

As an old and appreciative reader of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, I am intrigued with your editorial “Sunday Laws and Human Welfare” (July 28). I can understand a religious motivation for Sunday laws, but using welfare as the “reason” for such laws makes no sense to me. If the welfare of all workers is our real concern, we should exact laws which guarantee to every employee of all business concerns, including supermarkets, a five-day working week. The employee could choose to work a sixth day at time-and-a-half pay. Working the seventh day of any given seven days would be prohibited, or in certain cases permitted only if the worker is paid double time. Such a plan would effectively protect the worker and would not arouse the cry of “blue laws.”

Hinsdale, Ill.

TOO MUCH DRY CEREAL?

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is too much “ivory tower” for me to get much out of it. Eutychus I dig, L. Nelson Bell sometimes, but the monotonous professionalism in the wordy articles makes me turn the page—only to find more of it there.

And your poetry! Why don’t you get a human being for a poetry editor? I’d like to see more poetry, but such as can be read from a pulpit and grasped by a congregation. Preachers that I know don’t have time or inclination to sit and ruminate over what you print.

I subscribed to CHRISTIANITY TODAY for some years and dropped it. Then in order to get the Living Bible I signed up again. I’d like to renew for the paper, not for a “come-on” offer. But frankly speaking, most of the contents is like shredded wheat without milk, possibly nourishment but not too appetizing. The redeeming feature of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is its sincerity. I’m strong for that, but what I want is some milk and sugar on my shredded wheat.

Portsmouth, N. H.

JUXTAPOSITION

The position of two news items in your August 11 issue was most suggestive (“Holy War in Canada” and “Unhistoric Judgment”). I don’t know what Forrest published, but one argument for the Jewish review alleged that Christ was illegitimately born (blaspheming his virgin birth of the Holy Spirit). Is B’nai B’rith also subject to libel suits over alleged anti-Christian libel?

Almonte, Ontario

NOT SECOND HAND

Leon Morris, in his Current Religious Thought column “God’s Dice or God’s Purpose” (August 11) gives us an excellent example of a person using a pretext in place of a text. It is surely unconscionable to rebut Monod’s argument while acknowledging that he has read only a review of Monod’s Chance and Necessity. It is ingenuous of him to think that Monod’s argument can be rebutted with the old homely illustrations. Those who have read Monod and found him persuasive will simply be alienated by Morris’s shabby scholarship. Those who have read Monod and want to rebut him know that it cannot be done at second hand.

Chairman, Humanities Division

Wabash College

Crawfordsville, Ind.

There are several points in addition to those Morris made which may be helpful in appraising the current scientific scene, especially to people unfamiliar with the ways man’s total depravity has affected his scientific endeavors.

In distinction to Morris, it is not a good enough apologetic to get people to ask “Why?” instead of “How?” because the scientist already has his reasons which go no further than the laws of physics, chemistry, and chance, and which therefore exclude the God of Scripture. Such a scientist also is not ultimately impressed by the apparent enormity, design, regularity, and purpose of the universe, for even these senses of grandeur have their explanations in physical laws of human brain molecules. When men form their hypotheses around the postulate that no God exists, it is not at all surprising that they end up without him.

Thus it is not a matter of giving “more than one explanation of an occurrence, such that each is true and each is complete in itself,” for not only would Christianity be no longer an imperative, but Scripture passages that point to the prior necessity for the knowledge of God would be vitiated. As Christians, we are not allowed to compartmentalize our thoughts into what is scientific and what is of faith, for whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Our message, then, must involve presupposing God’s special revelation as a framework into which we fit our scientific findings, not vice versa. Monod, therefore, is not simply seeing but one side of existence; he is dead wrong.

Cambridge, Mass.

WORD OF PRAISE

Part I of Harold Lindsell’s article on “The Infallible Word” (August 25) deserves special commendation. I found it especially refreshing to read such a presentation of the case from the pen of a well-known and respected evangelical when so many well-known evangelicals seem to have betrayed their trust in the integrity of Scripture. It was highly gratifying to read his treatment of “inerrancy.” Altogether too many are willing to surrender on that point in the face of a “world come of age.” I anticipate the forthcoming conclusion to the article, and trust that it will be of like caliber!

Wilmer Independent Baptist Church

Phoenixville, Pa.

An erroneous explanation of the inerrant Word scarcely helps understanding. The editor says, “The writers of Scripture were inspired …”; and, quoting the Baptist New Hampshire Confession, “We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired”—neither of which does the Bible say. However, in explaining pasa graphe, it is correctly stated, “The very words of Scripture are thus inspired …”

Fortunately inspiration is a quality not of the men who wrote but of their product. All the Scripture writers are dead, but inspiration did not die with them for inspiration was a quality not of their persons but of their writings. Theopneustos, God-breathed, is a verbal adjective used in the New Testament only this once, and it modifies graphe, the written word, only. While the prophets spoke from God and were born (pherō) by the Spirit, we only add confusion by stretching “inspiration” to cover matters other than graphe. Probably this already weasel word should be abandoned even though so deeply intrenched in systematic theology. “God-breathed” does it better, and is true to biblical theology. For a short definition we would say, Inspiration is that quality God imparted to the Scripture writings of men chosen by him and born along by the Holy Spirit by which their written word is God-breathed. And if a Doctrine of Inspiration, why not also a Doctrine of Profitableness, since ōphelimos bears exactly the same relation to graphe as does theopneustos?

Hillcrest Heights, Md.

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