Herewith, Professor Merle Meeter presents an interesting and challenging article on “Seek First the Kingdom – in Literature.” This is the first in THE OUTLOOK’S new series of articles under the general title, “Seek First the Kingdom.” Professor Meeter teaches literature at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. 1n Matthew 6 our Lord promises us […]
Report 36 on “The Nature and Extent of Biblical Authority,” which appeared in the Agenda for Synod – 1971: The Christian Reformed Church ( pp. 268–304), is a lengthy response to a letter requesting such a study that was sent by the Gereformeerde Kerken of The Netherlands to the Reformed Ecumenical Synod. which letter of […]
The following interesting and informative question-and-answer is written by Merle Meeter, teacher of English at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. 1. Q. What is romanticism? A. Romanticism is a religiously held view of life that tends to absolutize individual, subjective, emotional responses to one’s natural and human environment; moreover, it tends to remove all […]
Editors TORCH AND TRUMPET Dear Sirs: My commendations to T. AN D T. for printing Rev. Girod’s cogent and straightforward article “What About CRC-RCA Merger?” (Oct., 1969 ) It is a clear and charitable presentation of the current situation in the RCA, and it also points precisely to several serious Haws in the Christian Reformed […]
Literary critics today write much about comedy and little about humor, perhaps because comedy nowadays is considered a larger concept, a comprehensive way of looking at life. Comedy in literature may be defined as an optimistic attitude, an interpretation of life that posits a happily-ever-after ending, an objectified (in metaphor, character, scene, plot) approach to […]
The editors of TORCH AND TRUMPET, being concerned with a Biblical approach to current social problems, devote this issue to the problem of civil disobedience. Dr. Edwin Palmer’s position paper was sent with the accompanying letter to Christian scholars throughout the United States and Canada. The editors hope that this interplay will contribute to a […]
When people ask, “Why hasn’t the Re· formed community produced any writers?” they usually mean novelists and poets. That question has bemused and baffled us increasingly as works of fiction especially are published by the hundreds in the English language every year. Stolid temperament, provincialism, lack of refined culture, middle·class status, unbookish occupations, paucity of […]
The cross of Christ is an offense because it exposes both man’s depravity and his helplessness to save himself. If man can make the cross appear less offensive, less condemnatory, less humiliating, less absolute in its antithesis-establishing significance, he will obscure the sharpness of its message: “Choose today whom you will serve; you cannot serve two […]
Karl Barth diabolized contemporary theology with his meretricious distinction between “Historic” and “Geschichte”; many theologians today have renounced their faith in the infallibility of the Bible through accepting Barth’s seductive allegorizing of Biblical events, such as Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection. Bultmann’s demythologizing of the Scriptures has been equally pernicious. In “Rudolf Bultmann: A Call to Arms?” (The Reformed […]
Poetry is words arranged in metrical—or rhythmical—patterns called. verses; these may be regular or irregular in number of syllables and stresses. Poetry is also succinct verbal expression of thought and feeling. Often metaphorical and symbolical, its imagery suggests universally meaningful concepts. Idea presented through poetry (not doggerel or the work of poetasters) is coherent and […]