Science in Christian Perspective

 Letter to the editor

The Dichotomist Should Become More Wholistic
Paul H. Seey 
2807 Balfaur 
Milwaukie, Oregon 97222

From: JASA 24 (March 1972): 36-37.

Mayers (Journal ASA 23, 89 (1971) ) suggests that diehotomistic people are unlikely to ever be led by the Spirit of God to praise God in tongues. Speaking in tongues is too non-linear, too irrational for them. Mayers' analysis may be quite right (I'd like to see his thesis developed more fully and concretely); but, I can't see that the answer for the diehotomist is to find other ways to open up to God and to praise Him.

Opening up to God and praising Him in the fullest sense are in-spirit things-of the very warp and woof of speaking in tongues. And, the dichntomist not only cannot speak in tongues, he normally cannot pray in groanings, he guided by the Spirit or an angel, exercise the charismatic word of knowledge or wisdom, prophesy, heal the sick, or raise the dead. The dichotomist because of his inability to operate in the nonrational, non-linear, in-spirit realm has little or no experience of any of these matters.

The answer then, if the Biblical revelation is the true religion, is for the dichotomist to become at least partly wholist: so that he can accept all of the Bible. The dichotomist is isolated in the realm of intellectualism and unable to move into Biblical mysticism. He can pray and praise with his mind, but not with his spirit. (I Cor. 14:15) When it comes to the in-spirit realm the dichotomist is uninitiated and hence sees in-spirit activities as irrational. (I Cor. 14:23).

When William James analyzed religious conversion, he decided that some people-the "healthyminded", which he found in primarily modernist churches and Unitarianism-were not particularly susceptible to conversion and really did not need to he "twice-born." No doubt, the "healthy-minded" are not particularly susceptible to conversion; but, they need to be born again anyway. So, with the diehotomist who is not particularly susceptible to speaking in tongues (or to any other in-spirit activity), he needs it anyway. Or, as Paul said, "I wish that ye all spake in tongues."

It is not entbnoceotrism nor selfish rejection that leads Paul, a wbolist, to wish that all Christians would speak in tongues (and even more to prophesy, an equally mystical exercise), but rather the love of God, who wants all men to be whole.