98 - The Church In the World

The Church In the World
By E. G. Homrighausen

REFLECTIONS ON NEW DELHI BY A NON-ATTENDANT

It is presumptuous for anyone who did not attend to write about the Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches. This is an account by one who attended the first two Assemblies, who has visited Asia on several occasions, and has read a number of reports of and on the Third Assembly.

(1) The assembling of such a large number of Christians from so many nations and cultures, representing 197 Christian Churches, in Southeast Asia, was in itself an event of unique historical importance. The fact itself was an inspiring internal and external witness to the power of Jesus Christ as a compelling and unifying reality in this turbulent world which longs for a human unity which it finds powerless to create. All of the physical inconveniences, administrative faults, Assembly failures, of which some have complained, pale into insignificance in face of New Delhi as a fact of Christ.

(2) The admission of 23 additional Churches to the Council marked an action which expanded the dimensions of the Council confessionally, geographically, theologically, and administratively, If the five official observers of the Roman Catholic Church are included, it must be admitted that the universal character and the ecumenical nature of the Church has come far towards fulfillment. The admissions include not only the Russian, Polish, Romanian, and Bulgarian Orthodox Churches, but two small Pentecostal Churches from Chile. This, indeed, is a wide spread of Christian discipleship. Many implications for the Church in the world are involved in this enlarged membership. The ecumenical family which once was dominated by homogeneous Western Protestantism is now confronted with a wide variety of relatives from other parts of the world who will have something to say about the Council. While Western representatives will continue to have a prominent place of leadership in the Council and their Churches will supply much of the funds for

99 - The Church In the World

the Council, the 30 Churches from Africa plus the growing number of Asian Churches combined with the Orthodox Churches will certainly change the character of the Council.

(3) The Council will also experience the restraining influence of traditional Orthodoxy. It will take some time for the relatives of this ecclesiastical family to know each other and to coöperate with each other. This may dull the prophetic edge of the Council for a time. New Delhi will force the Council to tarry awhile and wait for more of the brethren to catch up with the main force. The impatience of the younger sister Churches with the older Churches and of the Protestant Churches with the Orthodox Churches will be a necessary discipline at this stage of the Council's development. The inclusion into the Council of the remainder of non-Roman Christianity (except for the Southern Baptists) has now taken place formally. The process of assimilation, however, has just begun. And since the process is difficult enough in small groups, its difficulties will be multiplied in a Council of 197 member Churches.

(4) New Delhi was also an occasion to bring together two aspects of the life and work of the Church: Unity and Mission. The two Councils should be united, at least for the sake of economy and efficiency. However, the meaning of this merger is of the utmost importance to the future of the ecumenical movement. "Mission and unity are two sides of the same reality," declared Bishop Newbigin. The incorporation of the missionary thrust into the Council was regarded by W. A. Visser 't Hooft as "a widening of the horizons, an acceptance in principle and practice that all Churches-young and old-are called together to bring the Gospel to the millions in East and West, in North and South, who do not know it is the word of life and hope." Many regard the integration of Church Unity and Christian Mission as a prospect of great promise for the future of the Council. The motion to integrate the two bodies was passed by acclamation, with Archbishop Iakonos in the chair. And so long as Bishop Newbigin is the Director of the Council's 115-member Division of World Mission and Evangelism, we may be assured that the missionary thrust will not be submerged in the growing institutionalism of the Council. Surely, this action involved a new relation of the whole Church to the whole world.

Three other events in particular were of significance at New Delhi:

(1) the visit of five able official representatives of the Roman Catho-

100 - The Church In the World

lic Church; (2) the change in the wording of the theological basis of the Council; and (3) the prophetic addresses which pointed the Council far ahead of its present stage of life and thought. The first represents a welcome breakthrough in the relations between Roman Catholic and Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox Christianity on an official basis. A new climate of confidence is in evidence which is felt in the whole Christian world. The second marks a broadening of the theological basis of the Council. The old basis read: "The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of Churches which accept our Lord Jesus Christ God and Savior." The new basis reads: "The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of Churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to the Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." The Council has moved from a simple affirmation to what appears to be the beginning of a theological creed. It is meant to satisfy those who stress the Trinity as well as those who would qualify a rather high Christology by an appeal to the Scriptures. Whether this concern for finer theological definition may be the beginning of further interest in creedal exploration remains to be seen.

High points were reached in several of the addresses delivered to the Assembly. The addresses of Maseo, Takenaka, Paul Davanandan, Joseph Sittler, Nikos Nissiotis, Gottfried Noth, and Egbert de Vries, were of excellent and challenging character. Whether they played much part in the life of the Assembly is a question. But they will be resources for discussion in the years ahead. Especial note will have to be taken of the addresses of Dr. Nissiotis and Dr. Sittler. The former as a representative of Orthodoxy called upon his communion to give up its defensive, confessional-apologetic attitude, and in the glory of the Holy Spirit, become a mighty river of life, filling the gaps, and driving forward toward reunion. "In Orthodox thinking, Church Union is an absolute reality pre-established by God. It is not a spiritualized, sentimental, humanistic expression of good will. . . . Unity among men in the Church is the result, the reflection, of the event of the Father's Union with Christ by His Spirit realized in the historical Church on the day of Pentecost. . . . Unity is not an attribute of the Church, but it is its very life. It is the divine-human interpenetration realized once for all in the Communion between Word and Flesh in Christ. It includes

101 - The Church In the World

the act of creation of man by the Logos; the reality of the Incarnation of this same Logos in man; man's redemption through Him, and the participation and consummation of all history in the event of Pentecost-when the Holy Spirit accomplished the communion of mankind in Christ. Therefore, the Church does not move towards unity through the comparison of conceptions of unity, but lives out of the Union between God and man realized in the communion of the Church as union of men in the Son of Man. We are not here to create unity, but to recapture it in its vast dimensions. Unity as Union is the source of life. It is the origin and the final goal of the whole Creation in Christ represented in His Church."

Dr. Sittler's address, "Called to Unity," based upon Colossians 1: 15-20, declared that "all things" are included in the sweep of God's restorative act in Christ. Christ comes to us not as a stranger but as the first born of all creation; in him all things were created. "All is claimed for God, and all is Christic." Personal redemption is an implicate of cosmic redemption. Physical nature cannot be treated in an indifferent manner; it is brought into the scope of God's redemptive act. Irenaeus not Augustine must be our teacher in this matter. And "the cleavage between creation and redemption characteristic of Western theology must be rethought if the powers of grace and the vitalities and processes of nature are to be united." Sittler declared that this dualism between nature and grace must be left behind, for it "was never appropriate to the organic character of Biblical speech. . . . The root-pathos of our time is the struggle by the peoples of the world in many and various ways to find some principle, order, or power which shall be strong enough to contain the raging '. . . thrones, dominions, principalities' which restrict and ravage human life. . . .

"Our vocabulary of praise has become personal, pastoral, too purely spiritual, static. We have not affirmed as inherent in Christ -God's proper man for man's proper selfhood and society-the world political, the world economical, the world aesthetic, and all other commanded orderings of actuality which flow from the ancient summons to tend this garden of the Lord. . . .

"If, now we put together the threat to nature and a Christology whose scope is as endless as that threat is absolute, do we, perhaps, gain a fresh and urgent vision of the call of God to the unity of the Church, and some help towards its definition and obedience? . . .

102 - The Church In the World

"The Church has found a melancholy number of ways to express her variety. She has found fewer ways to express her unity. But if we are indeed called to unity, and we can obey that call in terms of a contemporary Christology expanded to the dimensions of the New Testament vision, we shall perhaps obey into fuller unity. For in such obedience we have the promise of the Divine blessing. This radio-active earth, so fecund and so fragile, is His creation, our sister, and the material place where we meet the brother in Christ's light. Ever since Hiroshima, the very term light has ghastly meanings. But ever since creation it has had meanings glorious; and ever since Bethlehem meanings concrete and beckoning."

IS CHRISTIANITY A FAITH FOR ONE WORLD?

The William Belden Noble Lectures, delivered by Bishop Lesslie Newbigin at Harvard University, were published just before the Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches at New Delhi under the title, A Faith for This One World. (S.C.M. Press, London.) They were certainly apropos of the theme of the Assembly-Jesus Christ, the Light of the World. The purpose of the series was to consider the claim of Christianity to be the faith for the emerging world. These lectures deal with the revolt against the West, which is found everywhere in the non-Western world and the feeling that Christian missions belong to a chapter of world history which is coming to a close.

Yet in spite of this revolt against the West, the rest of the world wants Western technics with all that they can bring in the way of a better standard of living. The world of technology belongs to the hole world. It can be taken on its own terms without reference to the myths and superstitions of religion. It holds out the promise of a better future.

However, this scientific outlook is difficult, if not impossible, to relate to the religions of the East with their cyclical concept of history and their concept of the natural world as illusory. And the West, which gave birth to the scientific outlook within the context of Christendom with its linear concept of history and its acceptance of the created world, has now "to a great extent lost belief in the validity and finality of the revelation around which his culture orig-

103 - The Church In the World

inally grew up." In short, a world civilization based upon science has come into existence in history for the first time. But the controlling principles of Western scientific civilization which were rooted in Christendom are no longer dominant. And the non-Christian cultures which have now been affected by the scientific outlook are trying to relate rather unsuccessfully their religious traditions to this outlook. A new world civilization is here, created by science, which is independent of religion. "What is the relation of Christianity, claiming to be a world faith, to this new world civilization? Can it provide a faith for this world? What is its relation to other faiths?"

It is to this crucial question which Bishop Newbigin devotes these Belden Lectures, He believes that while there is nothing Christian about a mathematical theorem, that there is a relation between science and Christianity. This is because Christianity has always affirmed this world as God's creation, It is not an illusion; it is not a "veil which covers inner reality." It is the work of God's fingers and the object of our love because Christ rose from the dead. Further, Western science is related to the Christian concept "that human life can be made better, richer than it has been in the past, and that human history ought to be understood in terms of the effort to make it so." This idea runs counter to at least one-half of the human race, which interprets the movement of events in terms of recurrent cycles. This cyclical interpretation holds that Reality is essentially timeless and changeless spirit. The linear concept of history is alien to this pattern.

Then, too, there is the Christian concept of the secular order which lies outside the direct responsibility of religion but in which the will of God is to be done. This is definitely Christian. It is rooted in the Biblical concept of the two ages. This concept rests upon the Biblical doctrine of creation, which regards creation as real but having a provisional independence over against God. And it also rests upon the doctrine of the Fall which means that this created order is charged with forces that oppose the will of the Creator. Against this background the concept of the new order in Jesus Christ is seen, whose powers are at work in the old order. There is a dialectical relation between the old and the new order which does not rob either of its respective reality.

It is for these reasons that the coming of the new world scientific

104 - The Church In the World

order is a matter of supreme importance to Christianity. "It is a part of the working out in human history of the results of the coming of Christ." This is the meaning of the coming of the Light into the world. "What we are witnessing is the process by which all peoples are being drawn into a unitary world history." It is not merely that we have one science and one technology; it is that we have increasingly one World history in which we are all inexorably involved one with another. The driving force in this new world history is the new order of the future. Tribal religions or secularized forms of Christianity cannot be the faith of this one world.

Bishop Newbigin examines the proposals for faith for this world offered by Radakrishnan, Toynbee, and Hocking. He then examines the Christian doctrines of creation, sin, election, and the basic content of Christianity's conceptions of the Incarnation, reconciliation, and history. Always he treats his subjects with clarity, charity, and a quiet passion for the Gospel. The lectures close with a delineation of the pattern of the Christian Mission to the nations in which he speaks of the missionary nature of the Church and the necessity of "older" and "younger" Churches working together as partners.

What we are seeing in the world today is "the process by which all peoples are being brought into the single universal history which is rightly counted from the birth of Christ because it is that history whose meaning and end is finally made known in him. We shall see in the events of our time the operation of the same Lord who in the pages of the Gospels inexorably leads all men to the final issues of life and death because he is himself the life and light of the world."

BELIEF IN GOD AND AMERICAN CULTURE

Two vigorous and challenging articles have appeared in The Saturday Evening Post which bring into sharp focus the relation of religious belief to American culture. One is by Robert Bendiner, former editor of The Nation, and the other is by Billy Graham, the well-known evangelist. The title of Bendiner's article is, Our Right Not to Believe; the title of Graham's article is, Our Right to Require Belief. Bendiner maintains that the basic rights of American citi-

105 - The Church In the World

zens includes not only the freedom to believe but the right to freedom from belief in God. Graham maintains that the basic rights of American citizens includes not only the freedom to believe but that it does not include freedom from belief in God.

Bendiner regards the recent election of a Roman Catholic to the Presidency as the triumph of fairmindedness over a prejudice as old as the Republic. He then quotes Richard Nixon's statement that "there is only one way that I can visualize religion being a legitimate issue in an American campaign. . . . That would be if one of the candidates for the Presidency had no religious belief." A recent incident in American life points to the emergence of this issue. Roy R. Torcaso of Maryland was denied the office of justice of the Peace in Maryland because the law of the State makes belief in God necessary to hold a public office. Mr. Torcaso could not comply. His case was appealed and lost in the Supreme Court of the State of Maryland. But the Supreme Court of the United States declared the law of Maryland unconstitutional by a unanimous decision since "Maryland's religious test for public office invades freedom of belief and religion." As a result of this decision, the constitutions of many states which require adherence to even stronger religious beliefs are in question.

Bendiner believes that Americans in the 1790's were more liberal in this regard than are Americans in the 1960's. He is concerned about the growing relation of religious belief to civic affairs. For instance, a New York couple was not allowed to adopt a child through public channels because they did not profess religious belief. And he cites the examples of many illustrious Americans such as Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Robert Ingersoll, James G. Blaine, and even the early Abraham Lincoln, whose interpretations of "religion" ranged from deism to agnosticism to atheism, to prove that religious belief was broadly interpreted in American history. He fears that agnosticism may be equated with immorality and disbelief in God with dishonesty. On the other hand, be raises the question whether a strong verbal affirmation in religious beliefs guarantees integrity of character. He concludes with the ringing statement, "It is not the avowed agnostic who threatens the health of society, nor the devout believer. It is the religious communicant who does not mean what he says, who uses religion to maintain his status or advance his career, and

106 - The Church In the World

who, having in reality little or no faith himself, demands it all the more loyally of others."

While Billy Graham would certainly agree with much that Bendiner says about the hypocrisy of the formal religionist, he contends that "there is a movement gathering momentum in America to take the traditional concept of God out of our national life." He cites the pressures to take religious practices and festivals out of the schools, to discount religious influences in our historical development, and to remove faith in God from the public conscience.

It is Graham's contention that it is impossible to understand the system upon which this nation was founded without understanding "the religious faith, fervor and zeal of those early Americans. It is no accident that the President takes his oath upon the Bible; it is no fluke of history that IN GOD WE TRUST appears upon our coins and paper money." The founding fathers were glad to be free from religious domination; they were determined to have freedom of religion but they did not advocate freedom from religion.

The "blessings" of national life were attributed to Deity. The reality of God was regarded as the basis of law, freedom, and responsible action in much of American life. It is Graham's contention that if this country and its way of life are to endure, then faith in God is a necessity not only for public officials but for every American, even though there are plenty of hypocrites who publicly affirm faith in God but deny that belief in conduct.

These two articles point up a crucial issue on the relation especially of Protestant Christianity, so dominant in the making of the United States, to American culture. There are many disillusioned Protestants today who believe that the Protestant era has passed, that Protesantism must now reconcile iself to a tame co-existence with Roman Catholicism and Judaism, and that Protestantism must assume a minority or even a sectarian existence in an indifferent and even a hostile environment. It must extricate itself from American culture which a dangerous syncretism has produced and recover again its true Biblical character.

With this analysis we are agreed, up to a point. Protestantism must recover its integrity if it is not to become just one of our national religions or lose itself by being transformed into a cultural religion. But this movement towards renewal and integrity must not lead Protestantism to a neutral attitude toward the nation and

107 - The Church In the World

American culture. One of the glories of Protestantism has been its witness to society, culture, and the state. It has been especially concerned about centers of political and economic power. Certainly we cannot approve the sentimental way in which the Gospel has been made to sanction questionable elements in the American way of life. But simply because this has been-and is being-done is no sign that now Protestantism must dig itself into the catacombs and let the world go by. Those faults in the American way of life must be judged in the pure light of prophetic truth.

Faith in God is a necessity; but it is not a necessity that can be legislated. It is not a faith that is an adjunct to nationalism. Nor is it a formula that may be used as a legal weapon to cover questionable motives and silence uncomfortable new truth.

Here is an issue which should concern Judaism, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Yes, let there be theological integrity for all religious groups. But let there be a common concern on the part of our three national religious groups for those spiritual foundations without which the genuine values in American culture would not have been born, without which they cannot survive, and without which our freedom to operate may be curtailed.