Letter to the Editor [of the Red River Rationalist],

The revelations of the theologian, who lost his faith in seminary, featured in the most recent publication of The Red River Rationalist are presented as if they are some startlingly new revelations that have just come to light and reveal for once and all their total fraudulence!!!!!

As a matter of fact anyone my age who has studied the history of religion even fifty years ago have been totally aware of everything he has to say for at least that length of time and still remain not uprooted from the Christian faith but more convinced than ever of its essential truth.

In other words, despite the quarrels of the early fathers and the continual subjection to Biblical texts over the centuries by a myriad of critics, even as they stand now they still remain powerful testimony to the life of Christ and His unique Gospel.

One even might suggest in a jocular mood that the particular theologian you selected for your publication has his own critics and twenty five modern Biblical scholars might shoot him down on a number of his claims,making his conclusions equally dubious and unworthy of your wholehearted approval. It's the way things are!

Surely modern Christian theologians, and they are legion in many different denominations ranking from extremely conservative to the liberal avant garde yet remain steadfast in the faith, even acknowledging the tests that the traditional Jewish and Christian writings have been subjected to since early times down through our present age of intensive modern criticism. Spong is a case in point, who though far from Orthodox, strives valiantly to rescue Jesus and His Gospel for modern man. He cannot dismiss the entire Scripture as irrelevant to our life today.

I have not yet thrown my Shakespeare out the door, though his plays have received the same kind of criticism, many scholars so skeptical of the origin of the plays that they think Shakespeare had nothing to do with them.!!!! There are theories that many other more erudite men of his time wrote the plays and sonnets, but that in no way diminishes the beauty and power of what we have to read today.

The same is true of the Bible! With all of its flaws and emendations, it still remains one of the most glorious pieces of literature in human history recording the lives of saints and sinners with all of their blemishes exposed along with their otherwise holy lives. And that is what makes it believable despite all critics.

The disciples for example are presented as bumbling fools throughout the New Testament, who ran away at the end of the story when anyone concocting a defense of Christianity would surely have presented them as heroes throughout the greatest story ever told.!

Jesus is presented as unsure of His own mission until the end of His ministry when He is convinced in the Garden of Gathsemane that He is destined to go to the cross even against His own will. And what writer interested in making the Gospel fool proof would have him cry from the cross itself, "My God, why hast Thou foraken me?" Of course any Biblical scholar would know that those words are the beginning of a Psalm that ends in total victory!!!Check it out!!!!

This particular theologian who is so willing to abandon the Scriptures entirely as worthless mumbo jumbo is all too willing to keep the dross and let the gold go free!

The longer I live the more appreciative I have become of the absolute genius of Shakespeare and the writers of the Bible. With all the criticism they have endured since their first compositions, they still stand , as Jesus said of His church that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against them.

And I predict that long after this theologian is dead and gone, mankind will still be turning to the Scriptures to find meaning and direction for their lives in a way that science and reason alone can never do alone!!!!! Atheists have not yet and never will offer convincing proof that there is no spiritual dimension to life!

Lee Paulson