Article August 24, 1963 Issue

Signs of the Times

Carl Leiden

Christian Herald

Prof. Carl Leiden
University of Texas
in the Christian Herald
New York, New York

We should ask ourselves, I think, what it was that made early Christianity acceptable to the first converts, what features of Christian belief there were that appealed to historical man, and what aspects there have been that have allowed it to live for so very long....

Christianity has not lived because of the philosophical nature of the Trinity or the debates it engendered. It has not lived because baptism, necessary or otherwise, proved to be appealing. Indeed it has not lived at all because of the great bulk of the theological debates on the nature of God and man that have characterized it for the last two thousand years. It has lived because in that early message there was a hope for man. The truth of God is simple and pure and comprehensible; its complications are the work of man. It is this kernel of simplicity that has lived. The complications are forever coming off like the dead bark of an old tree.

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