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Theological Table-Talk
By David Willis

NAIROBI CONFERENCE

IN Nairobi last August the General Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the International Congregational Council met together in a uniting session to form the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (Presbyterian and Congregational), one body which represents nearly all of the churches of the Reformed tradition. The theme of the General Council was "God Reconciles and Makes Free." The theme of the theological consultation which preceded it was "Theological Education in the Life of the Church." The contributions of Jürgen Moltmann, a participant in the consultation and a keynote speaker of the General Council, and of Eduard Schweizer, the leader of the Bible study, were particularly helpful in providing the general theological framework within which the deliberations were pursued.

At the consultation, presided over by Samuel Moffett, practically every shade on the theological spectrum on practically every issue of major importance was represented. This plurality of views produced some disjointed discussions but was a real strength of both the General Council and the consultation. Boiling down the results a little, we can say that in its final reports the consultation addressed itself to the relation between the church and theological education (theological faculties must be responsible to the ecumenical church and must have enough autonomy to remain academic institutions); to the relation between commitment and critical inquiry (theology must have both and must maintain them in tension); to the training of clergy and laity (these are misnomers for differently equipped portions of the total people of God and theological education must take this more into account than it has so far); and to the factor of culture in theological education (the church everywhere has its theology

As a member of the Theological Commission, David Willis attended the Nairobi conference on which he reports. Professor of Theology at the San Francisco Theological Seminary, he is the author of Calvin's Catholic Christology (1966).

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shaped by its culture and must be alert to ways that the gospel judges all cultures at the same time that it comes clothed in them).

It is the last item which, of the many significant topics, touches most directly on the question of what kind of confessionalism, if any, was operative in these meetings. Considering that the composition of the meetings was generically Reformed, it was notable that the overt confessionalism fell somewhere between non-existent and low-keyed. It was surely not of the aggressively self-conscious kind unfortunately all too prevalent in some other world confessional bodies. Most of the Reformed churches and Reformed theologians these days are related to their heritage, and to present tasks, through a functional confessionalism. This, in fact, may prove to be at the heart of the complex movement we call the Reformed tradition, that is, confessional stances are taken contextually when the churches confront crises of varying degrees of local specificity and urgency in relation to which they feel they must declare the implications of their faith. In this respect the former International Congregational Council's contribution to the larger Reformed family is not just one of polity. It is one which reinforces the Reformed theological effort to do justice to the localness which is essential to catholicity. The creative tension in any confessionalism is between theologies claiming a certain universal significance and the way the gospel actually addresses people in different local settings. It may be remarked that the various Reformed confessions and ecumenical creeds formulated to be the center of aspirations for catholic relevance have been superseded on our continental and American scenes by theologies making even more ambitious claims of universal applicability. The current hard sell is for theologies of humanization, secularization, and revolution which are supposed to be tailor-made for the universal situation of rapid social change. Ironically enough, these theologies were indifferently received by the most articulate of the African and Asian thinkers at Nairobi who are less than delighted with the prospect of exchanging one form of theological imperialism for another. These theologies provided useful formulations on several matters, but typical of a rather different set of priorities are the following items to which the discussions repeatedly turned.

(1) There was a good deal of talk about the need for more and better Bible study and about the role of indigenous religions in that study. A discussion of hermeneutics never really got off the ground;

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most of the theologians were ready to recognize the obvious fact and not push much further-that we have to take into account the way different cultural viewpoints influenced the composition of the biblical messages and influence the way we retranslate them. When it came to assessing the role of religion in the gospel's reception, the western theologians were constantly slipping off from talking about indigenous religions to talking about indigenous religiosity. All were agreed that indigenous religion and religiosity were not restricted to the African settings, and the western theologians were quick to applaud the familiar and essential caveat sounded by Professor Mbiti of Ghana that "the gospel should come into our rich African religiosity to turn it upside down, and if it fails in doing so, it will have failed Africa." But the other note which Mbiti struck, and which was actually the main point of his paper, is one which has been most neglected by western theologians of late, namely, the positive function which indigenous religion must play in the gospel's transforming relationship to any culture. Here the African church is really altering the agenda of ecumenical theology, and we cannot ignore it just because it seems too hurried and ambitious. In Mbiti's words, "Research is beginning to show that a great deal of light can be thrown on biblical studies through the study of African religions and vice versa. In the context of the church in Africa today we are witnessing three worlds: the Old Testament world, the New Testament world, and the world of the church in the world. Dozens of biblical centuries and church history are in fact being repeated and exposed before our very eyes in Africa this very day. It is a great pity if these times are allowed to elapse without making full academic use of them."

(2) This affirmation of the positive role of culture in Christian life is based (as it was in a similar fashion by the early Christian apologists) on the universal presence of Christ and the Spirit in the world even prior to the church's bringing the gospel to bear in a particular culture. For the African situation Mbiti put it in these terms: "We must swallow the bitter truth that before missionaries set foot on the African soil, whether in apostolic times or in the last century, Jesus Christ had preceded them here, preparing the heart of Africa, wooing the peoples of this continent to become the children of God…. Jesus Christ goes first and then he calls his messengers to follow, whether they are missionaries, evangelists, teachers,

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preachers, or lay-workers." Though for a different setting and applied to the relation between the Christian's work for social justice and similar efforts of non-Christians, C. S. Song of Taiwan pointed to the reality of the spiritual dimension in the modern world, but objected that too often Christians seek to experience the Spirit in individual conversion of men to Christianity rather than in the transformation of society where the Spirit works through non-Christians and often precedes and judges the best efforts of the church.

(3) There is in the African setting such an affirmation of the wholeness of life and such a rejection of any theology which would separate the world into secular and holy that it appears another topic is up for re-examination, namely, the ambiguity of Caesar's relation to the church and to a just society. Some of the positions would appear to a non-African as if the church there were willing to replay, if given the opportunity, certain patterns of Christendom. just when we of the "enlightened" west are glad to be "coming of age" and getting rid of piety's mixture with politics, there is pride among African Christians over the political leadership given directly by Christians in the newly independent nations. It is important for African Christians to put up buildings with tall spires and good bells on newly-acquired church property as a visible sign that they too are sharing and investing in their respective nations' new futures. They are also pushing for including the study of religions, among them Christianity, in public school education. One of the obnoxious features, for Africans, of the government of South Africa is that a government which oppresses other Africans and includes Christians threatens to discredit Christianity's positive role for just government elsewhere in Africa.

(4) Not content to berate the perfidious errors of institutionalism the subsection on Reconciliation and the Church recognized that if people are to be effective witnesses in the world, they need to belong to a sustaining community of the faithful. In its report, adopted by the General Council, it stated: "We are particularly impressed by the scarcity of structures enabling groups of dedicated Christians to act in the world boldly and freely as small fellowships of reconciliation. Dispersed individuals are more likely to conform to their surroundings than if they were organized into small fellow-

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ships. Ad hoc groups for special actions, fellowships of men and women from different races and backgrounds, institutes of various kinds have sprung up. Not all of these understand themselves as part of the church. We recommend that the church find new ways of understanding and helping such groups."

(5) The effort to be locally catholic appeared not only in the doctrinal challenges of Africans but in the way the General Council sought to address itself to the main ethical problems of the day. It would have been easy to come to the General Council and use this world forum, exploiting the African setting again, to work out American guilt feelings and say the expected things about Southeast Asia, racism, and economic exploitation. Some of this was present, but what dominated was different, namely, a genuine effort to state the theological bases for the ethical judgments issuing from such a conference and to make them in such a way that liberation and reconciliation might likely be the end results. Thus, a large number of the North American delegation signed a strong statement condemning racism in America and South Africa and calling for the use of American economic pressure to support movements of liberation rather than of oppression. To put it mildly, it is doubtful that such pronouncements have much impact on the governments of South Africa or America. But this particular one, because it set its specific recommendations in a positive theological framework (largely the work of Donald Shriver and Charles West), could have a morally persuasive influence on American churchmen and through them on the uses made especially of financial investment in South Africa.

The Theological Commission of the Alliance, with Jan Lochman as the new chairman succeeding James 1. McCord, and with Richmond Smith continuing as theological secretary, has its work cut out for it to stimulate and guide the reassertion of cultural plurality without which any confessional tradition ceases to be truly catholic. Part of this task will be carried on by carefully prepared studies and consultations. But part of it will be done by deciding where we in the west, who have the resources and formally-trained manpower of a sort, encourage the theological leadership of Africa, Asia, and Latin America to study. Right now theological education in America and Europe is in such disarray and so permeated with heavy disillusionment that we probably do young theologians of other continents a

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disservice by imposing on them our theological impasses. We should try to provide the resources for them to do their theological study in situ.

We do not need another series of nationalistic theologies, each claiming to be catholic, but it is just possible that the African, Asian, and Latin American churches can have a better record on this score than the Greeks, Romans, Europeans, and Americans. We are to hope that, as has happened before, the revival of the universal church will come from the way the gospel has been freshly appropriated, in modes which may seem unorthodox to us right now, by churchmen in those bodies which have grown out of and beyond the missionary societies which in many cases first articulated the gospel for them.