Transcript
The local unity and the universal unity are kept together. There is no comma even between them in that statement. But the first emphasis is laid on the local unity, the totally committed fellowship in each place. Now, of course, the question of McGavran comes. Does that obliterate the distinctions, for example, in a city like Madras, between the people of different cultural backgrounds in the same city? McGavran would say that by holding fast to that definition, you, in
fact, will exclude the possibility of real missionary advance into the communities in that place which are not already represented in the church. That you will, in fact, be asking people to emigrate out of the community and to the communities in that place and to the members of their community in order to become members of this community. Now, New Delhi recognized that problem but didn't try to deal with it. The last attempt to say something concrete about
that was the report of a group that met in Geneva in December of last year on the theme of what is a local church truly united. And this is a 12-page report which I... I can't read, but let me read one crucial sentence. After recognizing that there is an obligation to provide a particular kind of grouping into which people of different cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and other backgrounds can meet. It says, as a provisional measure, there
must be room for the formation of a congregation within the church. Within that receiving culture, within that little block of the mosaic. Speaking its language, sharing its style of life, through which the full riches of that culture may be brought into the life of the universal church. The pluriformity that comes into being, and in fact has come into being in the course of the history of the church, has its assets and liabilities. The strictly provisional character
of any separation that is involved will be the one that is going to be the main thing that is going to be the main thing. It will be made manifest if at the level of the larger pastoral unit, the diocese, the presbytery, the larger pastoral unit, there is a form of church life which enables communities marked by distinct linguistic, racial, and cultural styles to share together in full Eucharistic fellowship with one another, just as the churches
of all regions share in the Eucharistic fellowship of a universal council. True conciliar fellowship will provide opportunities for mutual openness and mutual correction so that the provisional character of these separations may not be allowed to harden into permanent separation. So what is being said is that along the line of McGavran, we agree that a provisional separation, for example, a separate Spanish-speaking congregation, separate congregation in the factory, a special separate congregation in the university, is right.
But that this can never be absolutized, it can never be hardened into something permanent. There must be a church structure at the higher level, at the level of the diocese or the presbytery or what have you, which draws together these separate groups into one Eucharistic fellowship. The gospel does not... The gospel accepts... The gospel accepts the varieties of culture, as McGavran says. But the gospel does not absolutize these varieties, does not confirm the separateness. It both
accepts and challenges the separateness of different cultures. It calls the culture to open itself to what God has to teach through other cultures. And therefore, there is a need for different levels of structure. Then, which must be within the total structure of the church, the local congregation, the neighborhood, the larger area, which is sometimes called by sociologists the zone humane, the human zone, the area which includes both the place of residence, the place of work, the
place of recreation, and so forth. If one may take an illustration from my own city where I now live, where there are large numbers of black Christians, Pentecostal, and others, it would be a false solution to insist that all the congregations must be integrated, that there must be no separate black congregations, because in fact that would mean that the black members would become second-class members of the large white churches. Therefore, it is right that there
are separate black congregations in Birmingham. But it would be wrong if there was a total absolutization of these separations. If these congregations remained isolated from each other. Because that would mean that we were prevented from learning from each other. There must be church structures in which the separate cultural forms can be developed in their authenticity, and yet in which they are opened to one another, challenged in their separateness. In which the white congregation... has to face
the things which it could learn from the blacks, and the black congregation has to face the things which it could learn from the whites, and so forth. So that... the crucial issue, the crucial necessities for a just solution, I think will avoid the two extremes. The one is the extreme of assimilation, where it is insisted that everyone, must be part of a single uniform group. And the other is the solution of apartheid, as practiced in South
Africa, where each group is, so to speak, absolutized, and required to remain within its own boundaries. Both of these solutions have to be rejected. The true solution will include, a the freedom of the individual to remain within his own group, or to move out of it as he wishes. The freedom of distinct groups to develop their own styles. Freedom of particular cultural groups to develop their own style of Christian discipleship, congregational life. And thirdly, structures through
which these distinct groups can manifest their unity, and be opened to one another for mutual correction. This seems to me to be the... the line along which we have to answer the question, or rather to find the way between McGavran, on the one hand, with his exclusive emphasis on the separateness of each of these cultural blocks in the mosaic, and on the other hand, the orthodox, which absolutizes, the unity of the Eucharistic fellowship in each place,
and thereby, in fact, develops, as orthodox churches do everywhere, separate ethnic groups which are closed to other people. Here in North America, Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Cypriot Orthodox, and so forth, which become in fact separated entirely from other people. But now, there is a second problem which is more difficult. I have talked about the separate cultural groups. And I have suggested what seems to me to be the right answer to that problem. But then there is
a much more difficult problem which we've touched upon when we talked about liberation theology. The question of groups which are separated from each other, not by a difference of culture or language, or economic situation, but by ethical political issues. Issues of right and wrong. Typically, the separation of, in Marxist language, the oppressor and the oppressed. The question arises, which the Latin American theologians will ask in the following terms, can there be a pastoral of the bourgeoisie?
As I have heard Latin American theologians say. Can there be a pastoral of the bourgeoisie? Can there be a Christian ministry to the mine owners and the land owners? The answer that they would give would be, only if they cease to be mine owners and land owners and identify themselves with the proletariat. Otherwise, no. Or to put the question in another way, is the Eucharist a place where the mine owner and the miner, the land owner
and the peasant, can really meet together and share the same loaf? The answer would be no. There cannot be a Eucharistic fellowship between Pharaoh and Moses. God is on the side of Moses and there is no place for Pharaoh at the Eucharist. And that is a much more difficult question to tackle. I referred earlier to those great texts in 2 Corinthians about the ministry of reconciliation. We are ambassadors of Christ beseeching you be reconciled to God.
And this has been a classic way of understanding the mission of the church. But today, the emphasis is not so much on reconciliation as on conflict. The mission of the church is to conscientize the oppressed and galvanize them into the kind of courage which will enable them to challenge their oppressors and to win their freedom. Therefore, we cannot talk about a unity of the oppressor and the oppressed within one Eucharistic fellowship. Well, we've touched on this
earlier, but I want to try to tackle it in a more fundamental way. In the first place, I think I have four points here, just lest you lose count. In the first place, I believe that to attempt to interpret the whole human reality by one single categorization oppressor and oppressed necessarily falsifies the perspectives. It is true oppression is a reality. There are oppressors and there are oppressed. And in many situations it is the great reality. And
I would not deny that there are many situations in Latin America today where it is the overwhelmingly significant reality that a small minority of powerful landowners and mine owners and so forth are oppressing and exploiting in an absolutely shameless way the great mass of peasants and workers. But that single categorization cannot be developed into a total framework for understanding the human situation. Because all of us are in some contexts oppressors and in some contexts oppressed. The
invitation to view all reality through this single frame is one that I think has to be rejected. Because it means that the only two possible positions for us is that either we have a guilty conscience or we have resentment and hatred. If I am an oppressor the only proper response to me for the gospel is a guilty conscience. If I am the oppressed the only proper response is resentment and hatred against the oppressor. Secondly, one must
surely look at the long history of the church in which over and over again a particular cause has been identified with the kingdom of God and another cause with the kingdom of the devil. One thinks of the days when Christianity meant the defense of feudalism against the rise of capitalism. When Christianity meant the defense of oligarchy against the rise of democracy. When Christianity meant the defense of capitalism against the rise of Marxism and so forth. I
vividly remember in the days when Jabha Halal Nehru was struggling to develop this concept of non-alignment. He did not want India to be in the pockets either of Russia or of the United States. And he thought that a country of 500 million people could have its own policy. And there was the famous reply of John Foster Dulles, neutrality is immorality. Neutrality is immorality. Which one could put also onto the lips of the liberation theologians today.
Or one thinks it is sometimes helpful to look at a situation at a distance. One thinks of the Biafra War in Nigeria, the so-called Biafra War when the Igbos revolted against the Yorubas and sought to develop a separate state. Now those of you if there are any of you who were in close touch with people there will know the intensity of the passions that that war aroused. And I have missionary friends who at that time
were so closely associated with the Igbo people that they felt that unless one was fighting for the Igbos against the Yorubas one was simply betraying the kingdom of God. And I don't know whether this happened in the United States but all over Europe there were collections being taken in the churches for the Biafran people. Nobody raised any objections about it or against the collections for the program to combat racism because in that case it was blacks
against blacks in this case it is blacks against whites and so one's feelings are quite different. But it's just another illustration of the way in which we are constantly tempted to take a particular issue and identify the cause of the kingdom of God with that particular issue. In fact we are always in the midst of a multitude of choices and in the concrete situation of any particular moment there are always choices to be made not between
the absolutely good and the absolutely evil but between relatively better and worse solutions. One thinks today for example of the way that some of the South American theologians use the words reform and revolution. To be in favor of reform means to be a traitor. To be a Christian must mean to be in favor of revolution. But here is not a difference of opinion about the wickedness of the regime which one is facing about the evils of
exploitation under the capitalist system and so forth. That is not the question. The question is what are the movements or actions which are most likely to bring about a more humane regime? Is that more likely to come about by the violent overthrow of the existing regime or by methods of persuasion of agitation of non-violent resistance and so forth which can in certain circumstances bring about a significant modification of the regime. These are issues on which
it is possible for good people to differ in their judgments and they must not be absolutized into the ultimate conflict between God and the devil. Thirdly, the preaching of the gospel is the proclamation of what God has done once and for all in Jesus Christ, in the unique event of the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to deal with sin. What God has done, I emphasize this point, because in a great deal of contemporary
liberation theology and contextual theology, the emphasis is always upon what God is doing. And what God is doing can very easily be identified with a particular analysis of the political developments which may be important. I do not deny that we must ask the question, what is God doing now? But I insist that we must put into first place what God has done in Jesus Christ. Because if you begin the other way, and I think that liberation
theologians tend to do is to of the situation which is drawn from some other perspective than the perspective of the gospel, so-called scientific analysis in Miguel Bonino's phrase. And then, at a second stage, you bring in the gospel into the situation. And the effect of that is that what results is not the preaching of the gospel, but the preaching of the law. You begin with an analysis of the situation, such and such needs to be
done, and then the preaching of the gospel is simply a summons to action, to fight, to resist, to do this or that thing. Now, obviously, the preaching of the gospel does involve a summons to action, but the preaching of the gospel is not, first of all, a summons to action. It is, first of all, an announcement of what God has already done, of that liberation which he has already accomplished. Now, there is a danger here, too.
There is a danger of reacting into a kind of gospel of cheap grace, what Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace. We can be saved now. We can live a better life and we need not worry about what's going on in the world. We need not involve ourselves in the agonies of the human struggle, in the battle with sin, in the fight against evil, both in personal life and in public life. That would be a betrayal of the gospel
in another way. The preaching of Christ must always lead us into engagement in the battle with evil. I find that inescapable. We cannot separate the call to believe and the call to follow. Repent and believe, follow me. And follow me means following Jesus along the way of the cross, which is the way of conflict with the power of evil. But, the preaching of Christ and the preaching of the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ has,
if I may put it so, its own independent majesty. It can never be made an addendum to the This is the point that I want to insist upon. The preaching of the cross is itself an event in which God in his majesty intervenes in a situation. And God speaks to man as man, not just as oppressor or as oppressed, but to man as man, to woman of sovereign freedom. And the preacher cannot lay down in advance
what the response to that preaching will be. The preacher may have his own interpretation of the situation. He may see it in a certain way. He cannot help seeing it in a certain way. But it is not part of the preacher's task to lay down in advance what is to be the response of this man or this woman to the preaching of the gospel i do want to emphasize this point there is a there
is a kind of majestic autonomy about the gospel over and over again in history the preaching of the gospel has led to consequences which could not have been foreseen which were not what was expected to be and therefore if we begin by talking about a scientific analysis of the situation and then go on to talking about christian action we we subordinate the gospel to an analysis of the situation which is based upon another perspective and then
we destroy the um the the integrity of the gospel i come back to my story about the first converts in uganda which i think is a very significant example of what happened the missionaries were quite sure that the first thing the gospel meant was that they must give up polygamy the converts who were shortly to give their lives as martyrs were quite sure that the first requirement of the gospel was that they should break the system
of slavery the missionaries said slavery is a thing which can take time for slavery is against the will of god but you can't tackle it immediately you've got to take time over that but polygamy you must deal with now and the african said polygamy is a very complex issue deeply entrenched in our culture it cannot be just cut off at a spot stroke, but slavery is something which can be dealt with now. And so there was
this split. Now, I think that we have to recognize the fact that the gospel has its own authority and that we cannot lay down in advance by means of some analysis of the situation what are the ethical consequences that are going to flow from the acceptance of the gospel. We have to accept that when the gospel is preached, the Holy Spirit will do his own work in his own way, and it may not be the way
that we expect. The gospel, the preaching of the gospel, is a message which both liberates and summons to the struggle of liberation. It is both a gift and a command. It is an announcement of a liberation which is already accomplished. So that a man can say, even the man under the most appalling oppression can say, I am set free. But at the same time, it is a call to action for freedom, to action for justice. The
man cannot just sit back and say, I'm okay, the rest of the world can go to hell. He is called to follow Christ. So there is a transcendence of the gospel. The gospel over specific ethical issues. That on the one side. The gospel is not to be identified with a particular ethical choice. But on the other hand, the gospel can never be detached from obedience. I may not be able to tell you what is the thing
you have to do as the result of believing in the gospel, but I do know that there is something that to me is the gospel. And that is to believe in the gospel must involve your following Jesus along the way of the cross. Now, fourthly and finally, is this transcendence of the gospel over specific ethical issues, is this expressed in the life of the church? Does the church transcend these ethical issues? Does the church include the
oppressor and the oppressor? I would say yes. I would want to affirm that the church, for all its sinfulness, for all its brokenness, for all its compromise with the evil of the world, is, nevertheless, a church. A divinely given reality, which precedes and outlasts the particular conflicts of this and every other period of human history. As has often been said before, the church is an anvil that has outlasted many hammers and will outlast many more. The
church takes its rise from the unique and abject evil of the world. decisive acts of God in Jesus Christ which concern the whole of mankind and every human person and every element in man's ethical and political world and the church as I say for all its evil for all its compromise with the world nevertheless and this is part of our Creed credo unum ecclesiam catholicum I believe one holy Catholic Church it is part of our Creed
that in spite of the sinfulness of the church which has been there from the very beginning from the very first apostle this is the place in history where concretely and actually God is present to do his redeeming and reconciling work that this reality is centered in the Eucharistic action by which even in our sinfulness we are bound to Christ we do not come to the Eucharist as those who are on the right side of the Eucharist
as those who are on the right side of the Eucharist as in the battle between right and wrong however that battle may be at this moment in world history we come to the Eucharist as those who are on the wrong side I must absolutely reject the view which identifies the church with one side in the battle that is an error which the church has fallen into again and again and which surely we cannot accept in fact
that error comes from a blotting out of the ultimate horizon of faith which is God's judgment and God's kingdom beyond history James Cone in his book black theology and black power says the idea of heaven is the idea of heaven is irrelevant for black theology. Well, one understands what he means, and one is bound to accept the kind of protest against a cheap form of grace which he is expressing. But nevertheless, if you take that sentence
as it stands, the idea of heaven is irrelevant for black theology. What it is saying is that the only horizon for this theology is justice here and now. And that means that the day of judgment is now, and now exclusively and finally. The issue between me and my oppressor cannot be left to the final judgment of God. It must be settled now. And that means that there can be no place for mercy. And therefore, that leads
me... It leads us into the fanaticism of total war in which there is no solution except the unconditional surrender of the enemy. And surely we learned from the last world war that the formula unconditional surrender is the way to disaster. The only... The true way, surely, is to recognize that in all man's human and political life there are necessary compromises and adjustments which are the whole stuff of politics. There are no absolute solutions. There is no
absolute distinction between revolution and reform. There is an unbroken spectrum between the smallest adjustments which have been made simply through verbal persuasion through the changes that come through various forms of pressure, pressure of public opinion, pressure of withdrawal of labor, pressure of public demonstration, pressure of civil disobedience, right through the whole spectrum to the ultimate limit of violence involving the taking of life. There is no sharp break anywhere in that spectrum. The whole of man's public
life is a mixture of coercion and persuasion in which there are no absolute solutions. There are no absolute rights and wrongs. And a sentence like that of James Cone falls into the error of identifying the ultimate and final judgment of God with a particular situation within the relativities of our human politics. The absoluteness and finality which belong to God's judgment are applied, applied to the provisional judgments that we have to make between right and wrong in
our ordinary, the give and take of political life. And against that, I think the church must witness to the reality of an atonement of a mercy seat which is given to us here on earth where those who are forced to resist and to fight and even to kill one another, in what they see to be the cause of justice, can yet kneel side by side in the same place to receive the body and blood of the
mediator, of the Lord. I know that many people will reject this as ridiculous, but I do not think it is. I think that it is, um, it has been shown over and over again in history, um, it has been shown over and over again in history, that men who understand what the gospel is have been able actually to accept the fact that we can receive Holy Communion together and yet be called upon to the ultimate resistance
of one another in the name of right. And if that is rejected, it seems to me that we have to think through what is involved in that rejection. It means that we are ultimately, we are identifying the particular ethical or political choice which I take at this moment with the ultimate judgment of God. And that is a very terrible thing to do. But, if I were to stop there, I think I would be wrong. Because there
is also something on the other side to be said. And that is, and this is the point where I think Reinhold Niebuhr was such a very good guide. Because no one more than he, emphasized the point that we, all of us, oppressor and oppressed, equally meet God as those who are on the wrong side. We come to the Eucharist as those who are on the wrong side. But, that does not alter the fact that there are
oppressors, there are oppressed. There are those who are more wrong, and those who are more doing wrong. And we cannot allow the ultimate horizon of grace, which is given to us in the Gospel, to obliterate the immediate choices that we have to make between right and wrong, between justice and injustice, between an exploitative social order and a just social order. And the unity which is given to us in the Eucharist does not wipe out the necessities
for moral judgment. The Church has always understood the Eucharistic fellowship as being one which is a fellowship for sinners, for forgiven sinners, but it has also understood it as a place where we are under discipline. Where we are called upon to discipline one another. And in extreme cases, the Church has exercised the right to excommunicate. For certain types, for certain kinds of things, the Church has exercised the right to refuse communion. Now, ought the Church to
excommunicate the mine owner in Chile? Or the landowner in Guatemala? Ought the Church to exercise the right of excommunication for the ruthless exploiter of the labor of the poor? I think I mentioned before the struggle that we had at the Nairobi Assembly to try to meet this issue. And the final statement that we came up with has three sections to it. And I think that this is about as far as I can go in my thinking
today. First section emphasizes the fact that we meet at the Eucharist as those who are sinners needing forgiveness. That we are all on the wrong side in relation to God's justice. Oppressor and oppressed equally. Secondly, that the Eucharistic fellowship is a disciplined fellowship and that we are called upon to correct one another in Christ. Called upon to rebuke wrong. Called upon to recognize evil where it appears. To expose it and to rebuke it. To call our
brother to repentance. To call the ruthless oppressor to cease his oppression. That is the second point. The third point is that we have to recognize that evil may go to the point where it has to be called not just evil but apostasy. To the point which is in fact the refusal of forgiveness. To the point where it is not merely an offense against justice which can be recognized and repented of but a determined systematic refusal of
the grace of God. A hardening of the heart which makes forgiveness impossible. That we have to recognize that there can be the possibility of apostasy. Now, beyond that I don't think we can go. Because surely there cannot be any rules laid down. Surely one would simply have to pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit to recognize when that point has come. But to recognize that there is such a point. And that it could be that
it has come. For example where you have the doctrine of apartheid developed almost into a dogma of the Church. Now I don't say that any of the Dutch Reformed Churches has actually done that although surely they have come perilously near it. And one would have to ask the question then whether we were dealing not with just a moral deviation but with a kind of apostasy which puts one outside of the possibility of forgiveness. But and here
I finish this all brings us back to the fact that it is the living Church which must make that decision. And that means that there must be a Church. There must be this place given to us on earth where in the words of John 17 the world can know that Jesus is the Apostle of God and that the Church is the place where His love is known. The place where both the mercy and the judgment of
God are known. The place where the mercy seat is provided for us at which we may receive correction and forgiveness. Above all the place where the bread is broken and the cup is shared. And the business of missions is not first of all to to espouse this or that cause in the changing and relative rights and wrongs of the political world. The business of missions is to plant the living Church in every place so that there
may be in every place a place where Christ is confessed and where His death and resurrection are celebrated. And therefore I think that those are right who define the goal of missions in that way. I'm remembering I'm making the distinction between mission and missions. Mission as the total all-embracing commitment of the Church which is identical with the whole purpose of God for His universe. The great broad all-embracing thing. I'm distinguishing between that and missions.
The things that are done by missionaries which are done by specific actions of the Church across the frontier into another culture. And I think that they are right who define the goal of missions as being the creation of the Church. In each place. The plantatio ecclesiae. The planting of the Church so that there is in each place a place where the mercy seat is set up and where God's mercy and judgment are known. Well, I think that's about all. We agreed that...