Dear Editor,
Thank you, Chris Sinkinson, for your timely article ‘Should we get rid of books by disgraced authors?’ in the July issue of en.
I suspect this is one of those issues which could generate disagreement and subsequent heat. May I add two points?
1. I am glad that our gracious and merciful Lord did not expunge David’s writings from His book;
2. I note that being brought face-to-face with a woman caught in the act of adultery, His words are ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’
Yours sincerely,
Rod Ruston Milton Keynes
Dear Editor,
I have two books by Roy Clements which I still refer to. The Strength of Weakness is an excellent exposition of 2 Corinthians, in the form of 13 sermons, published in 1994. Don Carson in his foreword describes Roy Clements as a particularly gifted preacher and teacher.
There is sorrow in re-reading, because of what happened some years after 1994, and puzzlement when he mentions marriage, but that prompts prayer for him.
Also valued, by Roy Clements, is Songs of Experience (1993), ten sermons on selected psalms.
Am I wrong to think that God gave those sermons for his church, even though the preacher later went astray in his life?
Yours sincerely,
Richard Atherton Whitby
Dear Editor,
Chris Sinkinson raises important issues in his article. However, there is a wider issue raised, that touches on Mark Murthen’s article opposite it.
Sinkinson says: ‘We now know the Swiss theologian Karl Barth kept a mistress while a married man.’ Whether or not it is accurate to call her his ‘mistress’, it was common knowledge, even then, that Barth had an exceptionally close relationship with Charlotte (‘Lollo’) von Kirschbaum, his personal assistant. It appeared that, everywhere that Barth went, ‘Lollo’ went with him. He eventually moved her into the family home, against the wishes of his wife and the advice of his best friend. This was surely a bad idea, whatever the actual nature of their relationship. So why did his fellow pastors not hold him to account? Why do Protestant historians continue to avoid criticising such unwise behaviour? We rightly respect Barth for giving theological teeth to the Confessing Church’s resistance to the Nazis, but was he not endangering that very witness by his lack of pastoral wisdom? Has the blind spot for Barth’s pastoral folly set a precedent for the failure to challenge such lack in our modern evangelical heroes?
Yours sincerely,
R.H. Allaway North London
