THE ESSAY BY WARREN LEWIS

We are publishing in this issue what will probably be the most controversial article ever sent forth in this journal. So it may be appropriate to say a word in advance as to why we are doing so.

It comes to us at least second hand, having been refused (though apparently accepted at first) by another journal among us. In the process it sort of got kicked around. The margins were adorned with such editorial comments as Is this biblical?, This is Mariolatry pure and simple!, This is palpably false, and even Bah! This must have been the work of a second or third editor, for the manuscript had been prepared for the typesetter. We presume that it got vetoed on the grounds of being too far out, and it is far out—for us.

This is of course a good reason for publishing it. Our people are so seldom called upon to do hard thinking. Too much spoonfeeding. Too much is canned or already shelled. We should print more stuff that will allow the reader (not the editors) to write his reactions in the margins. You too may say Bah! to some of the things Lewis says, but we believe you need more opportunities to make this judgment for yourself.

In publishing the stuff that appears in this journal we give almost no consideration to whether we believe or disbelieve it, and not a great deal of thought to whether it is true or false. We rather ask: Is there something here that should be said? Does it touch a neglected area of thought? Might it open avenues to new truth? Will it jar people into doing a little thinking for themselves? Is it reasonable, responsible, and informative?

Warren Lewis article passes these tests and so we commend it to you or those grounds. Is he right?, you ask me The answer, as I see it, has some yes to it. But read and decide for yourself. I am your editor, not your priest.

But let me add that I chose to publish this article also because Warren Lewis wrote it. After making his way through our own schools, he spent several years at Harvard. Then he spent three years at the Pontifical Institute at the University of Toronto, studying medieval theology. Now he is studying at Tubingen in Germany, which is probably the most exciting graduate school for religious studies in the world today. He is the most dedicated young scholar that I know and has one of the most astute minds I have ever encountered. He is destined to become one of the most brilliant scholars in the history of Churches of Christ.

Yet he is a humble, Spirit-filled, Christ-loving child of God. He has a heart touched by God’s grace and a mind that is expanding and growing to the glory of God. I am therefore interested in anything he has to say. I may not believe it, but if it is the fruit of his growing, searching soul, I want to hear it. Too, I don’t want him to leave us. We need more like him, not fewer. So we should listen to what he bas to say. And even if he is wrong in some of his views, think how much truth his creative mind will pass along to us through the years.

So we don’t have to say Bah! let’s just say Let me think about it!—the Ed.