Vol 45 Issue 13

The call that First Church directed to Rev. Heys to be Missionary to Jamaica was done for Synod which appointed it to be the calling church. Because this involves our entire denomination First Church asks that the missionary-elect be, remembered in your prayers that he may know the will of the Lord for him in this matter.

BIBLE STUDY BOOKS; Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.  St. Mark, by I.H. Marshall; 64 pp., $.I .25 (paper). St. Luke, by E.M. Blaiklock; 94 pp., $1.25 (paper).  St. John, by R.E. Nixon; 85 pp., $1.25 (paper).  Acts, by R.P. Martin; 90 pp., $1.25 (paper).  I Corinthians – Galatians, by R.P. Martin; 126 pp., $1.25 (paper). 

The period from five hundred to one thousand after Christ is often referred to as The Dark Age. There was much corruption in the church, especially among the popes that controlled the church. Paganism and barbarianism still prevailed in much of the continent of Europe. And there was often a bitter struggle between the church and the pagans. One of the clerics of France wrote in the early part of the tenth century (909), “The cities are depopulated, the monasteries ruined and burned, the country reduced to solitude . . . .

In our preceding article we had begun to call attention to the view of sin as held by Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas was the Doctor Angelicus of the schoolmen, and by far the most influential theologian in the Latin Church since the days of Augustine. Anselm taught that original sin, although simply the loss of original righteousness, is nevertheless truly and properly sin. Others, however, including Abelard, took the position that the loss of original righteousness left Adam precisely in the state in which he was created, and, as his descendants share his fate, they are born in the same state.

Prof. H. Hanko in the Oct. 1, 1968 issue of theStandard Bearer gave a brief summary of the decisions of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod which met at Lutheran in the Netherlands on August 13-23, 1968. Those interested could well review that article.

Last time we closed our discussion of this matter of getting something for nothing by suggesting that we examine our own live to see to what degree we are trying to practice this evil. What now did you find?

TURMOIL IN EDUCATION  Every day there are new outbreaks of violence on the nation’s college and university campuses. The violence takes on many different forms. Sometimes students take over various buildings and hold them against the combined efforts of campus authorities and the police to oust them: Sometimes school property is destroyed and records confiscated. Sometimes the students are content with picketing, sit-ins, free-speech demonstrations and campus parades espousing some cause.

Now it is indeed true that especially through the labors of the late Dr. A. Kuyper, Sr., the theory of presupposed regeneration (the view that all the children of the covenant must be supposed to be regenerated, and that only on the ground of such a presupposition may Holy Baptism be administered to the seed of the church), has again been on the foreground in recent years. 

The Questions From a consistory which prefers not to be identified come the following questions: 1) Why is the collection after communion limited only to those who partook? 2) Why is that the elders take this collection instead of the deacons? My correspondent added the followingrelated questions: 1) Would it be wrong to take an offering also from those who are no communicants? 2) Would it be wrong for the deacons to take that collection, or is it simply a custom that the elders do so? 

Some questions about the communion thank offering which appear elsewhere in this issue reminded me of other matters concerning liturgical practices connected with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper in our churches. Perhaps this is as good an occasion as any to mention them.  I am referring to the wide divergence of practice in our churches with respect to the use of the Form for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper. In my travels as a wandering supplier of pulpits I have come upon this divergence.