The Church must hold to God’s truth but explain it in today’s language
God is dead,” we are told. The proclamation of Nietzsche’s old battle cry within churches and seminaries is startling, and that it is now held to express pastoral concern should lead to solemn reflection. Is there a sense in which the Christian Church must update what it has to say? Can we distinguish between the truth once delivered unto the saints and the verbal or intellectual expression of that truth?
The attempt to update and to restate old truth is not without peril. The Church appears to be in a predicament. Some contend that if it is to be heard, it must change the content of what it has always taught. But if it does that, the Church abandons the truth committed to it.
Both the desire of the conservative to preserve the truth and the desire of the progressive to introduce change can be fulfilled, but only if proper distinctions are drawn. To speak to those who live in the 1960s, the Church must be a part of the 1960s and therefore undergo some change. But to speak as the Church, and not as a radically new institution bearing a familiar name, the Church must retain continuity with the past. The secret of progress is a balance between continuity and change. But what is to be kept intact, and what is to be preserved? And at what level can change be properly introduced?
There are three levels where the introduction of change is tantamount to a radical break with the Christian faith. First, it is impossible for man to introduce change in the nature of God. God is what he is. No amount of human speculation can alter the reality and perfection of the living God, who said to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM.”
There is a second level that admits no variation, and it is the level of divine action. What God has done is irrevocable. What has been done cannot be undone. The facts of creation and of the history of redemption belong to the past. No one can change what has already happened.
The level of God’s being, what he is, and the level of God’s action, what he has done, must be distinguished from a third level, that of revelation. Here God has disclosed what we need to know about his nature and his acts. What God has revealed does not change, for it is about himself and what he has done for us. Although we no longer encounter God as we walk in the garden in the cool of the day, we do encounter him in the Scriptures. What God has revealed does not change, for he has told us what he is—that he is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, whose being is holy, just, and good. He has also told us what he has done; and it is from the Scriptures that we learn of our sin and misery, of our alienation, of our separation, and of the way back to God through the person and work of the Word who became flesh.
The Scriptures cannot be broken. They do not change and they must be preserved, because without them our knowledge of what God is, and of what he has done, would at best be inadequate for our salvation. To believe in the Scriptures is to believe that they are the self-disclosure of God to man. To believe in the revelation of God is not just to believe in the religious experience of the Israelites or of those who belonged to the early Church. Rather, to believe in the Scriptures is to share the faith of the Israelites and to share the faith of the early Church—the faith that God has spoken of himself and of what he has done. The very existence of the Scriptures is a result of an act of God. They came into being through the dynamic working of the Holy Spirit. For this reason they do not change, nor do they lie.
The Church cannot hope to communicate the Christian message if it denies the unchangeable elements of that message. To deny that God is, to distort his nature, to deny what he has done, to repudiate the source from which we learn about what he has done, leaves the Church speechless. Such a denial constitutes a revolution, a radical transformation; what emerges is not the Church but a new institution, devoted perhaps to worthwhile enterprises, but empty of all specifically Christian content.
And yet what of our original admission that it is proper and even necessary to introduce change? If God’s nature and acts do not change, and if his revelation concerning his nature and acts does not change, where, then, is change permissible?
To be heard as the Church, the Church can never change the basic content of what it has always taught. What is subject to change is our understanding of that content, and the way we express the unchangeable elements of our faith. Change is permissible and even desirable on this level of understanding and expression.
Often we see through a glass darkly. Progress is made, not by discarding what has been revealed, but by gaining a fuller and deeper comprehension of what has been revealed. Many of our theological and religious concepts are the means whereby we gain greater insight into the meaning of God’s revelation. As tools, they enable us to know what God would have us believe concerning himself and what he requires of us. By the continuing study of Scripture, the Christian is able to gain a more precise understanding of what the Holy Spirit intended to reveal. The work of the biblical theologian, of the exegete, at times reflects extrabiblical material. Something that is not in a text may be read in. The formulation of a doctrine may reflect elements that are foreign to the Scriptures. Each successive generation needs to take a fresh look at Scripture, preserving the timeless work of the Spirit while correcting false apprehensions that are due to the errors of the exegete.
Christians of all ages have accepted the biblical injunction to love our neighbors as ourselves. But who are our neighbors? The Viet Cong? What does it mean to love? Surely the vagueness of such concepts requires that we struggle further in our attempt to understand what God requires of us. Or again, that God created all that is belongs to the unchangeable data of revelation. But how are we to understand the meaning of the word “day” in Genesis?
God’s triune nature has not changed throughout the course of the centuries; but the Church’s understanding of that nature, its concepts of the Trinity, were clarified and made more precise by the early theological discussions and creedal formulations.
To increase our understanding, to clarify our concepts of what God has revealed, is not to abandon the Scriptures but rather to enrich our spiritual legacy. The witness of the Holy Spirit continues to lead us into all truth.
There is another area where change is legitimate. To be heard, the Church must express itself in the words of the day. It must constantly revise its vocabulary. Words are not to be identified with our theological concepts. The word “revelation” in English is a sign of our concept of revelation; a person who knows German has the same concept brought to mind by the word Offenbarung. Words are not concepts. Words are plastic means of communication—i.e., a single word serves many purposes, has many meanings, none of which is fixed or unchanging. Words are an indispensable means of communication; and yet in a sense they are arbitrary and artificial, since there is no necessary connection between the word we use and the thing we would describe, between the sound we make, the lines we draw, and the meaning we would convey, the idea we would impart. Words are simply artificial signs, constructed spontaneously or with painstaking care, invented to meet a new situation or to describe what is old. Words are transformed consciously or unconsciously; they are subject to gradual or sudden change and shifts in meaning, initiated by people at different times and places.
What the Church has to say is unchangeable, but the words it uses must change if the Church is to be understood. The need for change is recognized in connection with biblical translation; yet we are in danger of forgetting that the vocabulary of the pulpit, and of witnessing, is also in constant danger of becoming obsolete.
It is impossible to make a list of archaic words or pulpit clichés, of words that no longer communicate. To those brought up within the Church the old vocabulary may still be serviceable. But to an increasing number of people, the old words, at best, are simply sounds without sense or, at worst, evoke almost blasphemous caricatures of biblical truth.
There is no formula for eradicating clichés. We must develop an ear for language. If we feel that a word or expression is not conveying the biblical concept we wish to communicate, we must try to find a new word or expression that will—but do so prayerfully and thoughtfully.
Although most words are arbitrarily constructed and mean what we want them to mean, once they are chosen they acquire a conventional meaning. Over a period of time, however, some words take on new meanings and lose older ones. It is these shifts in sense that we must try to hear. Few people covet their neighbor’s ox; indeed, few have ever seen an ox. But people still “covet.” They want things they should not have, and they will sometimes do what is wrong to get them. What they want is a new car, someone else’s job, a color TV. There is nothing wrong with such things per se; it is people’s desire that is out of line. Their first concern should be what God wants for them, not what they want. Few people are afraid of swords, but most people are afraid of missiles. We know little of chariots but much of spacecraft. How many really know the meaning of “justification by faith,” “sanctification,” “atonement,” “accepting Christ as your personal Saviour,” “alienation,” “encounter,” “love,” “justice,” “faith,” “hope,” “concern,” “covenant,” “sacrament”? I am suggesting, not that we should dispense with such terms, but that we must constantly define them in words that are intelligible, words drawn from the lived experience of our hearers and readers and not from the experience of hearers and readers of yesteryear.
The truth once given to the saints is unchangeable. What God is, what he has done, what he has revealed is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Our understanding of what is unchanging changes as we increase in knowledge and grow in wisdom. The mode and manner of expressing the timeless content of revelation requires constant revision. The Christian Church cannot change what it has to say without ceasing to be the Christian Church. Yet it must ever be open to new ways of expressing the same old story. God has given us the enduring message. Our task is to find new ways of telling it to all men.
Let’S Give Chastity A Fighting Chance
Premarital pregnancy is a major problem of our times. The greatness of the problem cannot be shown with statistics, because all the cases cannot be known. But from cases that are recorded, we know that each year in the United States approximately one in every twelve births is illegitimate and about one million illegal abortions are performed, many on teen-age girls.
High on the list of causes of this problem is the sex obsession with which our culture constantly confronts young people. Yet the problem is ultimately a personal one, and “buck-passing” cannot be used to evade the real issue of personal responsibility.
The critical point of weakness is the inability of vast numbers of our teen-agers to say no and to stand up and be counted. Those who lack strong convictions of their own go along with the crowd. Although most of them do not intend to go beyond “petting,” “necking,” or, in more current terminology, playing “huggy-bear” or “smash-mouth,” they soon find that crossing their weakly drawn line is all too easy.
Magazine and newspaper writers are offering all sorts of advice on this vital subject. In general they play up the motives of respectability, self-esteem, and fear of future complications. But these motives, important as they are, are usually not strong enough to overcome the deeper emotions involved when a young person nears the point of no return in the petting game. Our teen-agers urgently need to develop a spiritual understanding of sex, strong convictions about the spiritual value of chastity, and the courage to stand up in defense of chastity.
Often premarital sex relations are defended as an expression of love; but true love does not take advantage of the other person and run the risk of bringing that person shame and heartache. Personality is both physical and spiritual, and whenever sexual intercourse involves only one phase of the personality, participants are always the losers. Thus premarital sex relations always leave their effect on the personality, because the spiritual aspect of the personality is violated. It is playing with the impossible to think that one can separate the physical from the spiritual in sex, or for that matter in any other part of life. Sex involves the entire life and personality, and to misuse sex is to abuse onself as well as one’s partner.
There are no easy formulas to follow in seeking an answer to the problem; yet some things are plain. Sex, a divine gift from our Heavenly Father, was never intended as a means of excitement or adventure, or as a tool for gaining favor or popularity. Neither was it meant to be a remedy for personal insecurity or an emotional escape mechanism.
God gave sex as a means for the production of new life and the complete expression of love, the total giving of self to another. When performed outside wedlock, the sexual act cannot fulfill its purpose and thus becomes debased. Instead of being the complete fulfillment of love, it causes the participants to feel unloving toward each other. Sexual intercourse between married partners is a continued source of mutual strength. Outside marriage, it becomes little more than a roulette wheel of emotional impulse.
Sex is too good to squander. Channeled and disciplined, it is a vital part of the divine plan for our lives. May our young people—with all their energy and desires, with their sense of adventure, their impulse to try anything once—think twice in this most important matter and give chastity a fighting chance.—HAROLD P. WELLS, chaplain (major), United States Army, Mannheim, Germany.
