Will a powerless Church recover its God-given soul?
The Protestant Church in our day does not lack numbers. It does not lack programs. It does not lack money. It lacks power for a great spiritual offensive. And the lack of power is becoming increasingly evident to large numbers of ecclesiastical and secular observers.
Writing for the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Review in 1963, just before the second session of the Second Vatican Council, Karl Barth asked ominously in reference to Pope John XXIII’s Easter encyclical on race, disarmament, colonialism, and the United Nations: “Why is it that the voice of Rome made such a far greater impression than the voice of Geneva on the world?” And he answered, pointing to the lack of dynamic within the Protestant fold, “Is the reason not … the fact that in the encyclical the same things were not only talked about but also proclaimed, that Christianity and the world were not only taught but also summoned unreservedly and bindingly with an appeal to the highest authority?” Other observers see the weaknesses of the Protestant Church in different terms. Some term the Church irrelevant. Soon they may speak of its demise.
All is not well in the churches. Ecumenical advances capture headlines, but denominational officials have not yet stirred grass-roots support for their endeavors. Ecclesiastical activism demands a change in social structures; yet the churches themselves often remain bastions of social conformity and emasculated liberal theologizing. Church renewal is loudly praised in print, but forms change slowly, sometimes for the worse, and on a broad front the internal renewal of the churches cannot claim much vitality. The evangelical world lays stress on foreign missions; yet the evangelism of America by the rank and file is often more a wish than a reality, and denominational allegiances all too often hinder trans-denominational advance.
Where is the vitality? If the churches continue merely to maintain the form of godliness, or even new forms of godliness so-called, while denying the power thereof, they may anticipate indifference on the part of the world and a full-orbed fin-de-siècle mentality in the Church within the decade.
In many ways the Church today resembles the Christian community in the fifty days that followed Easter. This was a different community than the one that had existed before the resurrection. These men knew that Christ was risen. They understood the Scriptures. They had received the Great Commission. But there was no power, and there was no outreach. Instead of expanding vigorously, they were gathered together in an upper room. Then came Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. What had before been only a doctrine now became a living reality. Fear gave way to boldness, weakness to strength, and inertia to the dynamic of evangelism. As God’s divine breath swept through the Church, Christ was exalted and many turned to him.
All three of the leading ancient words for spirit mean “breath” (ruach, pneuma, and spiritus), and the churches certainly need God’s reviving breath today. Without the power of the Holy Spirit, nothing of value was accomplished in the primitive Church. And it is certain that without the illumination, renewal, and liberation made possible by the Holy Spirit, nothing of spiritual value will be accomplished in the Church of Jesus Christ in our time.
To many in the churches, a concern for spiritual vitality on the part of Christians suggests the subjectivity and excessive enthusiasm characteristic of many Pentecostal-like movements. Others do not understand the biblical teaching, a fact that may have historical precedent in the relative neglect of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in many of the most important creeds—from the Apostles’ Creed, which mentions the Holy Spirit only as an item of belief, to the Westminster Confession, which had no article on the Holy Spirit until 1901.
All this is unfortunate. Distortions of a truth do not diminish the value of the truth itself, and the biblical doctrine of the Spirit is deeper than either the subjective or objective distortions. New Testament references to the Holy Spirit never encourage mere emotion or unrestrained subjectivity. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit is closely linked to Christ himself, as the remembrancer who will guide believers into the truth concerning Christ (John 14:26; 16:13). There is no reference to any operation of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament apart from the objective work of Christ. The Spirit does not supersede Christ’s presence; he continues it, as Christ himself is exalted in the preaching of the Word and the meaning of his life and death is interpreted to men by the Spirit.
Princeton’s George S. Hendry writes, “In the Protestant understanding the Spirit does truly indwell the Church; only he makes his indwelling presence known, not by inflating the Church with a sense of its own privilege and power, but by directing its attention to its living and exalted Lord and by exposing it to his grace” (The Holy Spirit in Christian Theology, p. 66).
At the same time, however, the work of the Holy Spirit is a subjective work. It is of primary importance that the Christian faith is a historical faith, anchored in the objective events of Christ’s earthly ministry. The oldest heresy was an attempt to sever Christianity from its roots by a shift to Gnostic speculation. But this history must be more than past events. It must have an immediate relation to those who live today, and the work of applying it to the individual is the task of the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit marks the difference between a dead and a living faith. He brings vitality. It was this reality that Luther discovered when he learned that God spoke to him directly through the Scriptures despite the barnacles of tradition that had been added to them in the Church by the time of the Lutheran reformation.
In our day, as in all periods of the Christian Church, a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit would result in a renewed and effective proclamation of Jesus Christ—his life and teaching, his sacrificial death, and his bodily resurrection. It is to be added, however, that because the Holy Spirit is actually the Spirit of Christ, a fresh outpouring of the Spirit would also mean the exaltation of Christ by the realization of his life in the lives of Christians.
It would mean an outpouring of the Holy Spirit of truth, as the Spirit of him who claimed to be the Truth incarnate. Such a moving of God upon the dark waters of our personal and national life would mean a revival in thought and action of the force of biblical imperatives.
It would mean an outpouring of the Holy Spirit of knowledge, particularly within the churches. Periods of great spiritual advance in history have often been accompanied by a powerful revival of learning, as in Reformation days and among the American Puritans. Undoubtedly, the intensive study of Scripture in the original languages by hundreds of semi-religious societies in the days before the Reformation was a contributing factor in—if not evidence of—Europe’s spiritual awakening.
An outpouring of the Holy Spirit would also mean a pouring forth of wisdom. Our technological age needs to learn that the accumulation of data is not knowledge, nor is the accumulation of knowledge wisdom. Wisdom is the rare ability to make sound judgments. And wisdom, on the part of the secular and religious leaders, is greatly needed in our day, the more so as the complexities of international relations and the achievements of science increase.
A fresh awareness of the Holy Spirit in the churches would also mean a revival of the Spirit of personal holiness. Sagging ethical standards would rise and situational immorality decline as biblical principles took root in the lives of thousands. The “credibility gap” in the churches could close. Moral integrity could characterize the national and international postures of the government.
Finally, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the churches in this decade would mean a revival of the Spirit of compassion—compassion for the poor, the unhappy, the suffering, and the lost in our cities and in our suburbs. It would mean an incarnation in Christians of the Spirit of him who had contact with the upper classes but who moved among the lowly, who spoke to the healthy but who also healed the sick, who sought to lift men up in soul and in body but who descended to them in their misery that he might do so. If the Spirit of Christ would manifest himself in the Church in this one thing alone, the power of Pentecost would revitalize missionary outreach at home and abroad in a way barely dreamed of by the mass of Christians.
Seventy years ago in the encyclical Satis cognitum, Leo XIII perceptively termed the Holy Spirit the soul of the Church. Will the churches continue to pay for material prosperity with a poverty of soul? Or will there yet be vigorous revival? If the Church is stricken today, it is not the soul that is dying. The Spirit is alive. There may yet be healing. There may yet be resurrection. It will all depend on whether the churches really want this outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our day. Do we? Or do we merely want to get along as we have always done?
The War On Crime
The spiraling rate of crime that has spawned what President Johnson calls “a climate of fear” across the land demands a crash program of stricter law enforcement, greater coordination of police efforts, and more effective crime prevention. The administration’s “Safe Streets and Crime Control Act of 1967” is now being considered in Congress as an immediate means of mounting a stronger nationwide war on crime.
Recent statistics released by Attorney General Ramsey Clark show that in 1966 serious crime increased by 11 per cent over 1965. While the rate of increase in cities of more than 100,000 people was a startling 10 per cent, the increase in cities of under 10,000 was even greater: 14 per cent! Crime in suburbs also rose 14 per cent. While poverty and slums contribute greatly to crime, these figures suggest that such conditions in themselves do not account for the startling upsurge in lawlessness. The problem goes much deeper. It points to a widespread disrespect for law and order that knows no social and economic bounds. These symptoms could suggest that our society is moving swiftly toward decadence.
• Americans should support governmental efforts to restrict unauthorized use of firearms, help police apprehend criminals, reduce log-jams in court calendars, and improve rehabilitation of convicts. Citizens, too, should attack social conditions that give rise to crime.
But as we work to improve external controls, we must never lose sight of the fact that the basic cause of crime lies in the inner life of the individual. The surest solution to the problem is for men to come to experience the law of God written in their hearts. This can occur only as Christians faithfully proclaim the Gospel, which can transform sinners into saints.
The ABC should reverse the direction of its National Evangelistic Team
The Christian Church has in recent months become increasingly aware that it must intensify its efforts to win the world for Jesus Christ. Evangelism has become a prime topic of discussion in local church conversations, denominational meetings, and international conferences. But as one views the new evangelistic programs emerging from the bureaucratic offices of certain major Protestant denominations, one must ask whether these action programs constitute an accelerated advancement of biblical evangelism or a veiled de-escalation of it.
A striking example of the new “contextual evangelism,” which plays down gospel proclamation and emphasizes social action, is the program developed by the National Evangelistic Team of the American Baptist Convention. Last November the ABC General Council rejected an invitation to join with other Baptist groups in a hemispheric Crusade of the Americas in 1969. The secretary of the ABC Division of Evangelism, Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa, whose universalistic theological emphases have distressed many of his fellow churchmen, criticized the crusade plans as old-style evangelism. In February the National Evangelistic Team, made up of national, state, and city directors of evangelism and presided over by Dr. Morikawa, came up with its own new program to mobilize the ABC for greater impact on society. The new approach, reports Frank A. Sharp, the ABC’s director of press relations, “is the reverse of the traditional conception, namely, that one is converted first and then as a consequence the person becomes involved in social action. While not rejecting the older conception, the new thrust in evangelism says that it is possible to come to a deeper understanding of the Christian faith by first engaging in action.”
The ABC evangelistic plan proceeds from the current existential, secularistic theological concept that the Church must determine its mission not primarily by following the admonitions and patterns of the New Testament but by becoming involved in the outside world “where God is acting” and thereby discovering in each situation its evangelistic task. Its role as the servant church is to devote itself principally to social change. It seeks greater participation in the decision-making power structure of society and struggles with the problem, says Morikawa, of finding continuing styles of procedure to discern the relation between the world and the Church.
To disseminate its “action-reflection” evangelistic strategy, the Evangelistic Team is promoting in all ABC churches the use of a new book, The Converted Church, by staff member Paul L. Stagg. Stagg claims that the real question before Christians is not whether the Church can convert the world but whether God can convert his Church. He asks, “Can the church be converted for its mission in the world or is it so concerned with its survival and growth, so wedded as a culture-religion to the established and accepted way of life that nothing can change it?” He also stresses that the Church must remember that God’s action is primarily not in the Church but in the world. We are told that the Church most surely makes known God’s action “not by manifesting it in its own life but by pointing to the new thing God is doing in the world, by seeing where the new is appearing, often in unexpected places and surprising ways.” And where do we know God is at work? Stagg tells us: “We discern his presence in the Freedom movement for racial justice; in the antipoverty crusade of the nations; in the new openness between men of all sorts, Christian and Jew, white and black, outsider and insider.”
Stagg grants that “preaching missions are one form of proclamation, and in the heritage of the church they have been used in a mighty way.” But he dismisses as spurious the revivalism that has continued from the last half of the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth. He quotes with approval Franklin H. Littell’s statement that this kind of revivalism, “like Dwight L. Moody’s avoidance of all reference to social issues, was a betrayal of the great tradition of revivalism and mass evangelism.” In his ambitious attempt to convert evangelism into a mechanism for promoting such social improvements as slum clearance and integrated housing as the center of his concern for God’s uniting of all things in Christ, Stagg gives only scant attention to what has for centuries been the heart of biblical evangelism: calling individual men to repent before a holy God, to receive forgiveness and salvation by faith in Jesus Christ and his finished work on Calvary, and to walk in the new life of the risen Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The new ABC portfolio on evangelism has not met with resounding acclamation throughout the denomination. ABC spokesman Frank Sharp admitted that at a recent meeting of the Pennsylvania Baptist Convention “the emphasis upon the pietistic [italics ours] and personal was evident at every turn. There was a resistance to the newer theological leaders such as Harvey Cox and Colin Williams.” Yet the new “existential evangelism” package continues to be promoted as the ABC’s response to its evangelistic obligations.
Admirable and necessary as programs of social reform are, Christians must never allow them to become substitutes for the proclamation of the Gospel that can free men from the bondage of sin and offer them eternal life in Christ. The evangelistic task of the Church is still to go into all the world and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, manifesting the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. Christians must never relinquish this primary responsibility.
If American Baptists are to fulfill their evangelistic mission, would it not be appropriate for their convention to remove from key evangelistic posts leaders whose theology denies that all men are lost and whose evangelistic strategies are a disguised program of social and political action? If such men are allowed to continue to direct ABC policies and programs, the evangelistic ministry of the denomination will decline even more drastically than it has during the past decade. (President Carl W. Tiller reports that the number of ABC baptisms, “which are probably higher than first decisions for Christ,” dropped from 63,332 in 1955 to 43,749 in 1965.) And would it not be gratifying if the ABC also took action in May to reverse the decision of its General Council and wholeheartedly join hands with other Baptist bodies to reach the Western hemisphere for Christ in 1969? By removing leaders and rejecting policies and programs that would de-escalate biblical evangelism and by demonstrating a new zeal to win men to Christ, the ABC could set an example that would challenge the entire Christian Church to step up its evangelistic efforts. Such action could mean the eternal salvation of thousands in our generation, the consequent improvement of the societies in which redeemed men live, and the offering of greater praise and glory to the Triune God.
Decline Of Public Morality
When Canada’s Justice Landreville of the Ontario Supreme Court admitted before a Senate-Commons investigating committee that “I often lie on minor matters,” many Canadians were shocked. A man who is vested with the responsibility for handing out justice, and who had often commanded those before the bar to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God,” had himself handled the truth loosely. Canadians were also stunned when, as a result of the investigations and for the first time in the nation’s history, a judge was ruled unfit to judge. For Christians the case of Justice Landreville should occasion no surprise. Widespread refusal to accept Scripture as supremely authoritative over life can lead only to an era in which every man does what is right in his own eyes. Beyond that is anarchy, the outcroppings of which are visible in many areas of contemporary life.
Should Charity Begin At Rome?
Pope Paul erred badly in claiming that “the church has never failed to foster the human progress of the nations to which she brings faith in Christ.” Church history refutes him.
This lack of candor weakens the Pope’s otherwise moving appeal for social justice in his Easter encyclical, Populorum Progressio. By conceding the church’s failures, and its sometimes deliberate thwarting of governmental processes and humanitarian gestures, Pope Paul would have avoided a credibility gap.
The current Exhibit A, which should be brought to the Pope’s attention, is the violent Catholic antagonism encountered by Protestants who want to build an orphanage near Saigon (see News, pp. 40, 45).
In his indictment of the rich, Pope Paul also overlooked the Roman Catholic Church’s own position as the wealthiest of the world’s institutions. Much of the encyclical’s arguments for compassion should prick the conscience of evangelicals. But Populorum Progressio would have carried infinitely more weight had it been backed by vigorous example.
