Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Student's Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 5. April 2 1968

Chaplain in defence

Chaplain in defence

Sir—As I said in my sermon, one of the important functions of the University is to be a community where ideas can be freely questioned. I was therefore delighted that Janice Eames took issue with me in this week's Salient.

Janice thinks it is obvious that man can't be cut up into parts—body, mind and spirit, but she had already used an analogy (minister of religion is to spirit as dentist is to teeth) which showed that she had missed the point. She is thinking of spirit as a differentiated "part" of man, similar to his teeth. But not only are they entirely different concepts, it is also far more obvious that man possesses teeth than that he possesses a "spirit". True, a man may have among his needs and interests those which are loosely called "religious" or "spiritual" (both words being notoriously difficult to define adequately), but these are the needs and interests of the whole man. To minister to these needs in isolation is futile and can be dangerous.

My conclusion from this was not that the Church is therefore indispensable (I agree wtih Janice that this would be an "absurb implication") but that the only worthwhile participation by the Church in the university total participation.

I agree with Janice when she says we need to do more than get a degree or participate in extra-curricular activities — I hoped I had made that plain; but I can't agree that wisdom is never "acquired by anyone lacking a sound and joyous Christian faith". Must we delete from the ranks of the wise such people as Socrates or the Buddha—or even Job himself, on whose idea of wisdom I based my sermon and who was not particularly joyous and was certainly pre-Christian?

Yours faithfully,

Peter Jennings.