On Social Action Committees

On Social Action Committees

Throughout the churches there are many signs of dissatisfaction with the social action committees of various major denominations. There is a growing feeling that these committees are used to promote the ideological views of those who head them.

The argument for their existence is that such committees are needed to prod the social conscience of the Church. Without them, it is said, the Church would fail to penetrate the society of which it is a part, and would stagnate.

What is the primary responsibility of the Church? To preach the Gospel of God’s redemption and renewal of the individual through Jesus Christ, or to reform society? According to the Bible, the Church is basically and inescapably committed to the proclamation of the Gospel. Yet it must not only sow the divine seed but also, when the seed takes root and grows into eternal life, nurture it. Along with its proclamation of the gospel message, the Church is through its redeemed members obligated to be the salt of the earth.

The Church must look thoughtfully at its entire program of evangelism, missions, and education. The basic philosophy of the Christian mission must be clearly understood if the Church is to fulfill its legitimate role in the world. Disturbed by a growing lack of influence on the twentieth century, the Church is in grave peril of an increasing deviation from its divinely assigned task. It is in danger of fanning the flames of futility when it should and could be fighting Satan’s fires by faithful preaching of the Word. And this includes both the evangelistic and prophetic aspects of the inspired Word—in short, the whole counsel of God.

A study of the sources of social, political, and economic pronouncements made by church courts will disclose that they almost invariably originate in social action committees and are presented in a “report” that is frequently passed without adequate study or debate.

More is at stake in the issuance of such politico-economic edicts than is usually acknowledged. Whether these edicts truly represent the member churches for which the social action committees profess to speak and whether these committees have the necessary knowledge and competence to decide secular issues are not the only concerns, important as they are. The Church of Christ has no jurisdiction in the realm of politico-economic legislation; it has no mandate for commitments that fall outside the Church’s spiritual and moral responsibility, no authority to become involved in controversial secular issues. The fundamental issue is one of the Church’s jurisdiction—whether there is a Word of God in such pronouncements.

When the Church commits itself, or is committed to, debatable politico-economic positions, its authority and competence in ecclesiastical matters will soon be questioned also. Not only do secular pronouncements introduce a divisive influence among Christians, but in the minds of people generally they tend to break down respect for the Church and promote doubt about its qualification to speak authoritatively on spiritual and moral subjects.

The social conscience of Christians does indeed need prodding. But surely there are many methods of achieving this result without perpetuating the errors and risks of present procedures.

Questions need to be answered about the areas covered by social action reports. Why is social concern confined chiefly to certain areas? Why is a word so seldom spoken against the dangers of alcohol, against the liquor industry’s subtly misleading advertisements and its seeming stranglehold on sports promotion? Complacency about alcohol reaches into the official leadership of many local congregations, where social drinking is accepted as a desirable way of life. Why the silence of many social action committees?

Why so little word against the pornography found in stores and theaters in every hamlet, town, and city? Why so little comment about the view of sex that is debasing our national life, leading young people astray, and affecting the older generation as well?

The Surgeon General’s report gives evidence that excessive cigarette smoking predisposes to lung cancer. But this hazard is largely disregarded while many church sociologists set an example of chain smoking. Why are social action committees silent?

We are not advocating that either corporate churches or our pulpits become platforms of “Do this” and “Don’t do that.” Legalistic Christianity has little to commend it. But we are asking why social action committees frequently neglect certain critical social issues that obviously involve questions of morality and indulge in legislative matters mainly involving politico-economic choices.

A Challenge Not A Spectacle

The 1963 Demographic Yearbook of the United Nations shows that the world’s population is growing even more rapidly than the rate of 1.7 (46 million annually) which caused such consternation when it was announced in 1961. Last year the rate had risen to 2.1, a global increase of 63 million. Moreover, countries with the fewest natural resources, lowest food production, and minimal medical and sanitary services are growing fastest.

What do these facts say to evangelical Christians who in this country enjoy an abundance of material and spiritual sustenance? Surely they speak eloquently to the obligation of stewardship. We who feed our dogs a better diet than that on which millions barely survive and who are nourished spiritually to the point of surfeit through the preaching of the Word and through the printed page need to awake to the realization that the population explosion is not a spectacle to be watched in impassive unconcern but a call to more prayerful giving.

The New Testament speaks repeatedly and incisively about disregard of human need. “If anyone has this world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” John asks. The collection for the poor in Jerusalem was close to the heart of Paul. By parable and by action our Lord taught the obligation of helping the needy.

But the tragedy of the world’s millions transcends hunger and disease. Its deepest aspect is spiritual. Multitudes who lack adequate food and shelter are starving for the bread of life; as world population mounts, the number of human beings who have never even heard of Christ is soaring far beyond the number who have been evangelized.

Demographic statistics are not just for U. N. researchers. They compel Christians in this affluent land to rethink their stewardship. In a lost, suffering, and sinful world none of us has the right to hug to himself his material prosperity and to enjoy only within his immediate fellowship the unsearchable riches of Christ. Insensitivity to the command to share in healing the sick and feeding the hungry, disobedience of the Great Commission—these are an affront to the God who gave his only Son for the lost world. The unanswerable argument for Christians to give for the amelioration of physical and spiritual need is found in Paul’s words: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.

A Specter In Contemporary Theology

A question that New Testament critics can no longer evade haunts European theology today. In Hugh Anderson’s words, it is this: “What bearing or relevance for Christian faith or theology has historical knowledge that is gained from historico-scientific research?” (Jesus and Christian Origins, Oxford University Press, 1964, p. 93).

Ever since John the Baptist’s clarion call, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” the relation of the historical Jesus to the preached Christ has been of vital concern. In the nineteenth century, naturalistic historicism rejected the apostolic Christ as a speculative invention and professed to discover an original non-miraculous Jesus. In the twentieth century, naturalistic scientism, reflected in the imaginative religious mood of Bultmann, commended the “apostolically proclaimed Christ” but dismissed the life, deeds, and words of Jesus of Nazareth as irrelevant to Christian faith. Whereas the old rationalistic liberalism championed the historical Jesus at the expense of the “kerygmatic Christ,” its dialectical-existential successor championed the “kerygmatic Christ” to the neglect of the historical Jesus. The “witness of faith” thus replaced interest in the “facts of history”; existential experience rather than objective history became the pivot of divine revelation.

At first the new theology’s description of revelation in wholly transcendent categories, independent of historical correlation, was welcomed. It seemed a necessary corrective to rationalistic liberalism’s derivation of Christian realities from the socio-cultural environment. But theological neglect of the historical foundation of Christian belief proved costly. Preserving only an oblique reference to the bare fact of Jesus’ life and crucifixion, Bultmann’s existentialism ran the risk of dissolving the Christian kerygma into a Christ-myth and the Gospel into a speculative theory of existence. In defining faith as a frontier moment of repeated existential decision, Bultmann rejected the evangelical view that Jesus of Nazareth is the ground of Christian faith. And Barth, despite his tardy repudiation of existentialism and his firmer connection of kerygma with divine deeds, by distinguishing Geschichte from Historie obscured Christianity’s historical foundations also. For Barth and Bultmann alike, historical exegesis is no valid avenue of knowledge concerning Jesus Christ but a faithless clinging to this-worldly props.

But the debate over the significance of the historical Jesus for Christian theology has now become a central issue in contemporary theology. By suppressing historical interest in Jesus Christ, the kerygma-theology encouraged a Docetic Christology; that is to say, it tended to reduce the Christ’s presence in history to a phantom appearance. While the kerygmatic repetition that Christ is Lord held sole importance, the historical facets of the life and ministry of Jesus became irrelevant.

Present-day Christian theology can be rescued from this costly development only by a full rehabilitation of the historical realities of the Gospel. Because biblical Christianity demands an open interest in the historical Jesus, both post-Barthian and post-Bultmannian scholars now insistently raise the question of the connection or unity of the historical Jesus with the kerygmatic Christ, and the link between the teaching of Jesus and the apostolic proclamation. In their “new quest” for the historical Jesus, Bultmann’s successors struggle to establish the continuity of the kerygma with the mission and message of Jesus of Nazareth. But their use of lingering existential categories such as “the immediacy of Jesus for me” and “encounter with the selfhood of Jesus” precludes a definitive contribution to a historical investigation of the relation between the historic Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ. The “new questers” know that to dehistorize the kerygma is theologically illegitimate. But their assertion that historical aspects of the life and work of Jesus are inseparably related to the Christ of faith hangs in mid-air. Even some of the critics who advance beyond the Marburg mythology and the post-Bultmann reconstructions as well do no justice to the realities of historical revelation.

Is it really true, as Hugh Anderson would have us believe, that Christ’s incarnation, resurrection, and ascension are events “concerning which the historian qua historian can really say nothing, save that a number of people came to hold belief in these things at a certain time in the course of human history” (ibid., p. 60)? Did the evangelists suppress their instinct for historical reality when they testified to these great events? That historical science cannot fully plumb the realities of the biblical kerygma is no reason for succumbing to negative historical criticism, or for demeaning what historical investigation can establish. To be sure, the historico-scientific method of research about Jesus cannot fully explain the psychological processes by which he was recognized as the Christ; faith-response is not open to historical study. Nor does the historical fact of the empty tomb of itself give assurance of a Risen Lord. But the sensitive historian is not so bound to an intra-worldly nexus of causes and effects that he must ascribe New Testament realities to subjective factors at the great cost of discrediting competent eyewitnesses.

Anderson endorses Bultmann’s call to rid the apostolic message of “the false scandal of the obsolete mythological world view, ideas and language, in which it has been clothed in the New Testament” (p. 53). He insists that “the Bible’s language about God, the world, and history is permeated with mythological traits,” so that “there is no escape from the task of demythologizing” (p. 75). He ignores the contributions of conservative scholars like Machen and Warfield to the history-and-faith controversy, while he disparages the “uncritical evangelicals” (p. 76) and speaks of biblical authoritarianism as uncritical (p. 78). He approves the liberal theology taught in American Protestant seminaries by Bushnell, Clarke, and Brown as “deeply evangelical” (p. 62). He prizes the socio-historical method above a strictly historical approach to the New Testament (p. 70) because it stresses historical-human factors in the reception and interpretation of revelation and the kerygma (p. 75).

The merit of Anderson’s book lies in its full reflection of influential theological currents, in its recognition of the crucial importance of the history-faith problem for contemporary Christianity, in its analysis of certain weaknesses of existential exegesis, and in its awareness of significant recent biblical studies by New Testament scholars. But at the central point of commentary on faith-history tensions, Anderson fails to provide either an adequate solution or a clear alternative. Despite emphasis on the importance of history for the kerygma, he reduces that history to relative importance and, in fact, leaves its range and character in doubt. Indeed, he limits the role of the historical method. The historian, he says, “may constantly protect the Church’s theology from relapsing into a historical speculation … he can preserve … the truth that our faith and our religion are rooted and grounded in a particular history and person and life; he can … throw some light on how Jesus’ contemporaries understood him and even, to some extent, on how he may have wished to be understood” (p. 316). But if the historian cannot, as Anderson insists he cannot, grant legitimacy to any historical grounding of faith; if he cannot authenticate any sure words or deeds of Jesus; if the records upon which he depends transform the basic historical facts of the life of Jesus; and if, moreover, faith is wholly dependent upon encounter by the Risen Christ, as Anderson also contends—then the historian’s inquiry is foredoomed to irrelevance. The modern theological road often follows many welcome detours around peril-fraught landscapes. Anderson steers a non-Bultmannian course for a large part of his journey. But his observance of historical markers is hurried, and he is mainly concerned with the vision of the kerygmatic Christ. In the last analysis, Bultmann’s existentialism still remains the shortest route between Spirit-faith and historical skepticism.

In Search Of An Identity

The greensward of Chicago’s Midway divides the gray Gothic of the University of Chicago’s inner campus from the sharply contrasting modern architecture of its new Center for Continuing Education. No less striking were the contrasts within this conference center last month when the Faculty Christian Fellowship, related to the National Council of Churches, met there for six days to consider “Faith and Learning in the University.”

No single theological view pretended to hegemony at the start of the conference or was awarded it during the course of the conference. While one speaker would champion Luther and Calvin, another would claim that Johann Sebastian Bach was “just as significant to the study of theology” as the two great Reformers. Claims were pressed by a Roman Catholic observer and a Unitarian speaker. There were calls for theological revision, but no guidelines for such revision were agreed on.

Assembling for its first national meeting since its founding conference eleven years ago (regional meetings are held annually), the FCF was confessedly at a crossroads. This conference highlighted its continuing search for an identity. Formed originally for college and university teachers, the FCF was to give “inclusive expression to the concerns and life of a community of Christian teachers dedicated to an exploration of the meaning of faith and its implications for higher learning and the teaching vocation.” No doctrinal basis was established, although study groups turned often to the thought of men like Tillich and the Niebuhrs.

There were various attempts to make FCF an organization with a definite membership, but these failed. A major continuing problem has been the inability of the leadership to arrive at a clear understanding of just what the FCF is, what it should do, and who should compose it. Financial help from several foundations has consequently ceased, able professors have dropped out, and some of its leaders now speak of the “failure of the FCF.”

Early this year the members of the governing FCF general committee asked the NCC Commission on Higher Education to replace them with an NCC faculty committee, which would cooperate with denominational board personnel.

The Chicago conference, thus faced with an accomplished fact, reflected a common uncertainty as to where this new development will lead. Missouri Synod Lutheran and Southern Baptist voices expressed uneasiness over NCC control. Interest was shown in a non-competing indigenous order of Christian scholars, in which prayer and theological study would hold a prominent place.

Daily lecturer for the Chicago conference was theologian Joseph Haroutunian of the university’s Divinity School. Witty and ebullient, he proved a popular choice, while striking a more biblical note than was reflected in most of the conference speeches and seminar discussions. He pleaded for the centrality of the Cross by which Christ effected restoration of communion of man with God and man with man. He was disturbed by the extent of popular acceptance of Bishop John Robinson’s Honest to God.

But many at the conference were not. One suggested that perhaps terms like “God” and “theology” should be abandoned. Another said: “We are not as far from certain atheistic professors as we thought.” But evangelicals were also heard from, even if the weight of opinion was decidedly not on their side.

The conference was well organized and gave large opportunity for a stimulating exchange of ideas on a competent level. But the theological mood was aptly described by one conferee: “We are like Abraham, who ‘went out, not knowing whither he went.’ ” And in the current organizational transition, this also seemed to describe quite well the Faculty Christian Fellowship.

Three Little Words

Had the Reformation been only a debate whether priority of authority belongs to the Pope, it might have been just another recorded and all but forgotten medieval scholastic controversy that might have left history unchanged. But the Reformation was much more. It was also the joyous spiritual dynamic that flowed from Luther to others on his discovery that a man can find his peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ. The excitement and power of this truth turned the Reformation into a historic movement that continues today and still shapes Protestantism, providing joy and peace men find nowhere else.

Justification by faith alone—this is theological shorthand for the heart of the Protestant message. It has always been the one truth about which Lutherans in particular were confident.

At least it was. Even on this point, things seem to be changing. Not that something new has been added—though it has; rather, something old seems, if not disappearing, at least obscured.

Last year the Lutheran World Federation met in Helsinki. The assembly theme was “Christ Today,” and the chief task of the assembly was to show the meaning and relevance of “justification by faith” to modern man. Delegates asked how this cardinal truth can be shown to have significance for the many today who no longer believe in God, or at least have little sense of sin and guilt.

The assembly drew up a statement of the meaning of justification by faith; yet it could not muster enough agreement to issue the statement as an approved assembly pronouncement.

On the first day of September of this year the federation’s Executive Committee met in Iceland. It was informed that “Assembly Document 75,” as the section on justification by faith is called, will, with slight revisions by the federation’s Commission on Theology, be distributed by Lutheran World Federation headquarters to member and non-member churches, and also be published in book form. It was emphasized, however, that this statement on justification by faith “should not be viewed as a systematic presentation of the common opinion of the LWF.”

What was wrong? Why could not a world gathering of Lutheranism, whose baptized membership is more than 56 million, issue a commonly accepted statement about the meaning of justification by faith to its own membership and to the modern unbelieving men of our times? A truth about which Luther was confident, a truth that not only Lutherans but Protestants in general have long regarded as a cardinal, central, clear tenet of the Gospel—has this truth now become so obscure and uncertain that a world gathering of Lutherans, even with the help of a theological commission, cannot with one voice speak to modern men?

Some delegates at Helsinki opposed the issuance of any LWF statement on justification because this might be regarded by some people as having “quasi-confessional authority.” If the assembly’s intention had been to formulate a creed, one could understand such reluctance. But Helsinki was not engaged in creed-writing; it was trying to proclaim the heart of the Gospel to modern men. Even in this limited attempt, the delegates could not find one voice.

Other Helsinki delegates questioned whether such words as “sin,” “grace,” and “justification” should still be used to explain the Gospel, or whether these should be dropped and new definitive concepts adopted. Here we seem to come closer to what muted the voice of Lutheranism at Helsinki and reduced it to the position where it now issues a document—and a book—telling modern man what justification by faith means and at the same time explaining in effect, “We are not all agreed that this is the meaning that justification by faith has for the modern man of the twentieth century.”

If the Church of Christ cannot issue a statement telling its contemporaries how to be justified through faith and what it means to be so justified, and if it cannot declare that “sin” is the kind of reality from which a man can be “justified” through “grace,” then something is woefully wrong and the trumpet no longer sends out a certain sound.

The Neglected Treasure

Reports stemming from recent Christian Booksellers’ Conventions show that the Bible is still far and away the world’s best seller. Moreover, the circulation of religious literature in general is increasing, and even the largest book publishers have found a fertile field in Christian devotional material representing the conservative tradition.

Books about the Bible, devotional and theological works, must never supersede the devotional use of the Word of God itself. Even in some seminary circles one hears more about Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann than about the Bible.

The abiding attraction of the Bible as represented by the number of copies Americans buy each year contrasts ironically with the fact that biblical norms are so little practiced in government, in business and labor, in home and personal life. Surely no greater tragedy can befall a nation than that of paying homage to a book that is left unread, and giving lip service to a way of life that is not followed. For by this attitude men pass judgment upon the Book, and they will awaken to discover some day that the Book, in turn, has passed judgment upon them.

The dismaying discrepancy between Bible buying and Bible reading on the part of American people should be a call to repentance. At a time when the Bible cannot be used in public school devotions and when the gap between the Christian faith and the American state is widening, there is need for a greater use of the Bible by the individual.

If the American people would use with mind and heart the spiritual treasure their money has bought, our nation might experience a radical awakening.

Nobody Goes Scot Free

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith has now learned from an interview of Roman Catholics that 61 per cent believe that Jews are “most responsible for crucifying Christ.” An earlier report showed 69 per cent of the Protestants interviewed gave the same answer. According to the study the Roman Catholic respondents “were inclined to attribute evil motives to the Jews for rejecting Christ as the Messiah.” All this, the league feels, creates an unnecessary anti-Semitism.

Is it perhaps also true that the very questions asked create an unnecessary anti-Semitism? Is not the question about who is “most responsible” itself prejudicial?

But the difficulty lies deeper. Too often such questions are asked on the presupposition of total Jewish innocence of the death of Christ, so that any answer from either a Protestant or a Catholic that implies (in any degree) Jewish involvement and guilt is labeled as anti-Semitic. When the league’s president, Dore Schary, says “the issue is in Christian hands,” he speaks only half of the truth. He says, “Jews will not pay the price of conversion.” But he should also recognize that Christians cannot concede their Christian faith to establish Jewish innocence. This is also a source of anti-Semitism, and it is not “in Christian hands.”

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