VERSE

...The people are demanding it...

...It seems odd for Christians to reject a doctrine on these grounds, since it is the very heart of the Gospel to challenge conventional and accepted attitudes in any age...

...The endless, specious arguments between pro- and anti-abortionists serve, merely to solidify these positions, while obscuring the one approach on which the majority could agree—cooperative efforts to reduce the need for aibortions...

...Shortly after the publication of her article, Daniel Webster, one of the inmates of North Carolina's death row, took his own life with a razor blade, dramatically illustrating his own suicidal drive [News & Views, Dec...

...The authors of The Myth of God Incarnate,* some of whom I suspect of having been brought up on fhis docetist heresy, are in revulsion against it...

...By exercising his freedom to choose, man becomes responsible for good and evil and can never be free of this responsibility to live the childlike existence of Eden...

...But, we cannot discharge this responsibility without the knowledge of good and evil, and the traditionalists' claim to this knowledge is being seriously challenged by those who clearly see the evil in the unloving consequences of what the traditionalists call good...

...Can Christian love become the impetus for a sharing, cooperating world...

...marilyn kramer ______Death on Demand_______ Raleigh, N.C...

...They reject it, however, not because the Church long ago threw it out as an option incompatible with her life, a heresy, but because it is found to be incompatible with the European way of life in the second half of the twentieth century...

...Thus, in our outrage at violence, we collaborate with it and encourage it...

...Cooperative efforts on hunger and poverty are encouraging, but certainly Christianity is failing to meet this challenge in the abortion issue...

...Father Greeley should have asked whether Christian theology and liturgy will be able to make Christians aware of the awesome mystery and paradox of this gift and give us the sense of direction, purpose, and humility to discern and follow goodness without creating a crutch, a fantasy, escapism, that allows us to avoid responsibility for good and evil...

...When Christians do this it is cussomary for them to do so in the name of the incarnation, the doctrine that the one person, Jesus, was both fully human and fully divine...

...149 There is a view that Jesus was not quite as human as we are—that he was the Son of God disguised as a man, not a real man...

...The question remains whether it is possible to have an authentic version Westminster, edited by John Hick, paper, $4.95...

...Or will Christianity remain a haven for those who want the comfort of a commitment to the loving Jesus without the discomfort of a commitment to help and share with their fellowman, a platitude to justify selfinterest, with love distorted into the self-righteous duty to save the world for our own personal salvation, becoming a force for evil rather than good...

...Sometimes the authors merely seem to mean by 'mythical' the same as 'subject to the limitations of religious language.' I do not think they have any very clear analysis or critique of religious language (they do not, for instance, distinguish between analogy and metaphor) and I do not find their use of 'myth' here particularly helpful or illuminating, but if all they are trying to say boils down to the assertion that the doctrine of the incarnation is a religious or theological statement like any other, then, of course what they say is right though not very interesting...

...still, they do reject icetism, and that can't be bad...

...In the face of incidents like this, it is hard to see how proponents of the death penalty can continue to believe that it is effective as a deterrent...

...A state senator said to me several months ago with regard to capital punishment, "We do not know if it is a deterrent or not, but we have to do something...

...Professor Maurice Wiles at first talks definitely about a "Christianity without incarnation," but then goes on to speak of it as a 'myth,' and it is ndt at all clear whether a myth is always meant to be an untruth...

...And later, windows rolled down, speeding the two lane back to a life as if you really wanted to get there, the car becomes a private blizzard of milkweed silk...

...150 lost forever the fairy tale land of Eden...

...At least I think they are rejecting it...

...What is peculiar to these authors is that they think the rejection of docetism involves also the rejection of its contrary, the incarnation...

...Can Christianity find a broader criterion for morality that will bring goodness closer to the loving that frees others from selfconcern to love in their turn, as Jesus did...

...COLLINS KILBURN Director of Social Ministries North Carolina Council of Churches 159...

...We do not know how many murders are motivated by a desire to destroy themselves, but there have been studies which document increases in homicide rates before and after highly publicized executions...

...I expect that this kind of desperation and frustration lies at the base of much popular and legislative support of executions...

...To the Editors: The article by Sister Lois Spear in the November 25 issue underscores one of the frequently neglected arguments against the death penalty, namely, that it most probably induces some persons to murder...