by Steve | Jun 20, 1983 | archive - 1983
Rebuilding the Tower of Babel
By Helmet Thielicke (1908-1986)
July/August 1983
Originally the world “had one language” (Genesis 11:1). What bound people together was once stronger than what separated them. And this is what God intended the world to be when he created it. When we hear those words “one language,” it is as if for a few seconds the harmony of the original creation salutes our sundered world and tries to tell it how it was when men and beasts and clouds and stars still possessed a binding center and were still turned in common praise, in the music of the spheres, to him who called them into being.
But now, suddenly, a new and alien note is struck in God’s creation. Now man proposes to be his own master. Did not God himself summon him to dominion?
”I am not going to go on stumbling over the prohibitions of this allegedly higher being,” says man. “I am free, and therefore I can do what I will, and therefore I can experiment and see how far I can go. I have reason and intellect and therefore I’m not going to be tied to standards and stipulations which I can’t verify for myself and accept in freedom. With my intellectual equipment, it is utterly impossible to expect me to believe in something that is invisible and commit myself to these alleged commands of God. Am I not autonomous, am I not Homo sapiens?”
God’s judgment today. And immediately we ask, Does not God finally intervene like a thunderbolt and confuse their tongues, disperse and scatter them to the four quarters of the earth? (Genesis 11:9). Where do we see any such spectacular judgments taking place today? This, after all, seems to be our trouble; we are expected to believe contrary to all appearances and contrary to our experience.
Nevertheless, it would be wrong to think of God’s judgment upon Babel as something like a miraculous thunderbolt from the Beyond. … The judgments of God are very often quite different in style: He just lets men go on as they are in order that they may see where it brings them. He let experiment of the Third Reich run its course to the bitter end and not one of the seven or eleven attempts on Hitler’s life was able to interrupt the experiment; nobody was permitted to prevent or anticipate His coming judgments. And so it is here.
How then are we to envisage this dispersion, this explosion of rebellious mankind?
Perhaps some of you have already noted a passage that crops up, somewhat hiddenly and enigmatically, at the very beginning of our story: “Let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens … lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” Hence, long before the judgment of dispersion fell upon them, men already had a premonition, a dim fear that they might break apart and that even their languages might be confused. They sensed the hidden presence of centrifugal, dispersive forces.
This arises from the fact that they have suffered something that might be called the “loss of a center” and that now that they have banished God from their midst they no longer have anything that binds them to each other. Always the trend is the same: wherever God has been deposed, some substitute point has to be created to bind men together in some fashion or other.
You start a war, perhaps, in order to divert attention from internal political dissensions and thus create a new solidarity by making people feel that they are facing a common threat. Or you build a tower of Babel in order to concentrate people’s attention upon a new center by rallying them to united and enthusiastic effort and this way pull together the dispersive elements. Or you whip together by terror those who will not stay together voluntarily. Or you utilize the powers of suggestion, “propaganda” and “ideology,” in order to generate the feeling of community by means of psychological tricks and thus make people want precisely what you want them to want.
Now, what has gone wrong here? And to answer this, we need to make clear the following. Suppose I have a colleague or a business partner who believes in nothing, for whom there is no authority whatsoever, to say nothing of commandments of God, a man in whom I cannot find anything that looks like an inner sanction. I would be on guard against such a man. I would distrust him. Perhaps I would even be afraid of him.
Why? Simply because he is completely unpredictable and probably capable of doing almost anything. On the other hand, when I know that someone is bound to God and that his conscience has a secure orientation, then I can “predict,” as it were, how he will act in such and such a situation: ‘that he will feel bound, for example, to keep contracts and promises, that he will not perpetrate crooked acts or that at least he will have a bad conscience if he does.
Of someone else, who does not have these ties, I do not know this. In other words, if he is no longer subject to God, then he is under the domination of his instincts, his opportunism, his ambition, his will to power. The day may come when he will stick at nothing if it seems opportune to him. For every one of us has some kind of a lord, we are all driven by something – if not God, then an idol, if not from above, then from below. That’s why I am afraid of a man who has no ties and am on my guard against him.
Mortal enemies. And that’s the way it is. When a man stands in humbleness before God and his conscience is firmly bound to the promises and commandments of the Lord, he radiates confidence, he becomes a neighbor to his brother, and then his brother knows what his intentions toward him are. Then bridges are built from person to person and the security of community comes into being.
But the opposite is equally true. When I know that a person has lost the center of his life I must reckon with the fact that he will be aimlessly and arbitrarily carried away by his instinct and by his own egoism.
For a time I may get along fine with him, that is, as long as common economic interests or political expediencies bind us together. But the moment this specific interest ceases to bind us together he loses his interest in me. Then he doesn’t give a hang for me; it is as if he never knew me. Or it may be even worse: he regards me as his mortal enemy because I am his competitor or because he wants my job.
In a society which has lost its center and consists of not much more than interest groups, employers’ associations and labor unions, tenants’ and home-owners’ associations – we call it a “pluralistic society,” without realizing the fateful Babylonian curse that lies behind this pluralism! – in such a society fear and distrust prevail, precisely the centrifugal forces which exploded with a vengeance at the tower of Babel.
A tiny oasis. When the first words which come to a man are no longer those which he speaks to his God, when there is no more prayer, language itself ultimately breaks down. How, for example, can one have any common understanding of what freedom means without God, without Him who makes us free?
When the center, when God the Lord disappears from our circle, language too sinks into the grave; we begin to talk at cross purposes with one another and the result is a real Babylonian confusion of tongues. Indeed, the result is that perverse state of affairs in which language becomes an instrument of cloaking and veiling, rather than of communication and confession ….
The counterpart of the story of the tower of Babel is the event of Pentecost which is recounted in the New Testament. Here the common language is suddenly present again, and Parthians, Medes, and Elamites understand one another. Here the spell is broken and all the confusion banished. When Jesus Christ becomes the Lord of our life, then there is healing of hearts, of bodies, and even of language.
God’s kingdom begins with tiny seeds and little particles of leaven. When my heart and your heart find their way home to the peace of the Father’s house a little light is kindled in the great world’s night and there is a tiny oasis in the desert.
He who allows this to be bestowed upon him finds that the evil virus has no power over him. And not only the bad, but also the good is infectious! Because this salt is present, the earth cannot go utterly bad. Only ten righteous men in Sodom and Gomorrah stay the judgment. For their sake all the promises remain in force. The question is whether you and I are among these ten. All our destiny lies in this question.
Reprinted by permission from How the World Began (1961) by Helmut Thielicke (1908-1986), with permission from Fortress Press, Philadelphia, PA, and James Clarke & Co. Ltd., Cambridge, England.
by Steve | May 2, 1983 | archive - 1983
Archive: The Wesleyan Quadrilateral—Not Equilateral
Putting Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience into focus
by Robert G. Tuttle, Jr.
Associate Professor, Historical Theology, Oral Roberts University School of Theology
Contributing editor, Good News Board of Directors
United Methodists for many years have appealed to Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience. We have called this the Wesley quadrilateral, the source of “our present existing and established standards of doctrine.”[1] In 1972 the Wesley quadrilateral first appeared, along with considerable definition, in the doctrinal statement in our Book of Discipline. United Methodists refer to it regularly to support a broad swath of Christian teaching.
Unfortunately, we have too frequently understood quadrilateral to mean equilateral, as though there is no principal source on which faith depends. The results have been conflict and inconsistency.
At some points, however, our people deserve a United Methodist response to our troubled times to provide direction for the church. We have the right to expect enough compatibility in the understanding of our doctrinal essentials that we do not raise more questions than we answer. If we are ever to be United Methodist, we must realize that quadrilateral does not mean equilateral.
Wesley appealed to Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience when attempting to document and support his own position.[2] But his quadrilateral had a dominant side—Scripture. He fully intended that Scripture take precedent. He wrote in the preface to his standard sermons: “God himself has condescended to teach the way: For this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book.” He then exclaims, “O, give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri” (a man of one book).[3]
The Primacy of Scripture
If Wesley was truly a man of one Book (which some have difficulty believing since he used so many different sources), the place to begin is with his view of Scripture.
Wesley insisted that Scripture is the principal authority—the only measure whereby all other truth is tested. In his reply to a Roman catechism he writes: “The Scripture, therefore, is a rule sufficient in itself, and was by men divinely inspired at once delivered to the world; and so neither needs, nor is capable of, any further addition” (Works, Vol. X, p. 90).
In 1755 he writes to a friend, Samuel Furly, a general rule for interpreting Scripture: “The literal sense of every text is to be taken, if it be not contrary to some other texts; but in that case, the obscured text is to be interpreted by those which speak more plainly” (Letters, Telford ed., Vol. III, p. 129). Here we see not only a reverence for the Word of God, but a healthy guideline for interpretation as well.
The point should be well taken. Any measure for truth must begin with Scripture. Without this focus it is every man for himself; there is no unity of the faith. We are “tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine” (Ephesians 4:14). We can reach only so high. If we are to know the truth, then God must stoop to reveal it to us. This brings us to the rest of the quadrilateral. Although Scripture takes precedence, Wesley also clearly appeals to reason, tradition, and experience in support of Scripture.
Reason, Tradition, Experience
Though Scripture is sufficient unto itself and is the foundation of true religion, Wesley writes: “Now, of what excellent use is reason, if we would either understand ourselves, or explain to others, those living oracles!” (Works, Vol. VI, p. 354). He states quite clearly that without reason we cannot understand the essential truths of Scripture. Reason, in this instance however, is not mere human intelligence. It must be assisted by the Holy Spirit if we are to understand the mysteries of God.
Wesley’s appreciation for reason not only preceded but extended far beyond Aldersgate. In 1741 he writes of Luther: “How does he decry reason, right or wrong, as an irreconcilable enemy to the Gospel of Christ! Whereas, what is reason (the faculty so called) but the power of apprehending, judging, and discoursing? Which power is no more to be condemned in the gross than seeing, hearing, or feeling” (Works, Vol. 1, p. 3 15).
Yet, in spite of Wesley’s profound respect for reason, he was clear as to what reason could and could not do. He knew, for example, that if people were left to themselves they would not reason their way to Heaven, but to hell. Ultimately, reason in and of itself falls short; it is a rope of sand.
In his sermon, “The Case of Reason Impartially Considered,” Wesley sought to demonstrate the complete inability of reason to produce faith. He stated: “Although it is always consistent with reason, yet reason cannot produce faith, in the scriptural sense of the word. Faith, according to Scripture, is ‘an evidence,’ or conviction, ‘of things not seen.’ It is a divine evidence bringing a full conviction of an invisible, eternal world” (Works, Vol. VI, p. 355). Reason, even in its highest state of improvement, could never produce a firm conviction in anyone’s mind.
Although Wesley persisted in his own appreciation for reason throughout his life, he insisted that God be on the throne of grace as the one who takes the initiative in the drama of rescue. Reason can do much with regard to both the foundation and the superstructure of religion. Ultimately, however, reason can produce neither faith, hope, nor love. These are gifts of God.
As for tradition, Wesley writes that it is generally supposed that traditional evidence is weakened by length of time. Of necessity it passes through many hands in a continued succession of ages. Although other evidence is perhaps stronger, he insists: “I do not undervalue traditional evidence. Let it have its place and its due honour. It is highly serviceable in its kind, and in its degree” (Works, Vol. X, p. 75).
Wesley objected to the Catholic view that tradition is absolute truth. However, he does admit that men of strong and clear understanding should be aware of the full force of tradition. Like reason, tradition must not be given equal weight with Scripture. Wesley does emphasize the link tradition supplies through 1700 years of history with Jesus and the Apostles. It is an unbroken chain drawing us into fellowship with those who have finished the race, fought the fight, and who now reign with God in His glory and might.
Experience (apart from Scripture) is the strongest proof of Christianity. Wesley quotes, “‘What the Scripture promises, I enjoy. Come and see what Christianity has done here …’ ” (Works, Vol. X, p. 79). He insisted that we cannot have reasonable assurance of something unless we have experienced it personally. John Wesley was assured of both justification and sanctification because he had experienced them in his own life. “What Christianity (considered as a doctrine) promised, is accomplished in my soul. And Christianity, considered as an inward principle, is the completion of all these promises” (Works, Vol. X, p. 75).
Although traditional proof is complex, experience is simple: “One thing I do know, that whereas I was blind, now I see” (John 9:25). Tradition establishes the evidence a long way off; experience makes it present to all persons. As for the proof of Christian doctrine, Wesley states that Christianity is an experience of “holiness and happiness, the image of God impressed on a created spirit; a fountain of peace and love springing up into everlasting life” (Works, Vol. X, p. 75).
The Proper Perspective
We either begin with Scripture which is then served by reason, tradition, and experience; or we begin with reason, tradition, and experience as served by Scripture. Can we reach God out of our own humanity or, ultimately, must He stoop to reveal Himself to us? Wesley believed that God must stoop to reveal Himself to us.
If our United Methodist interpretation of the Wesley quadrilateral is to be true to Wesley then we, too, must begin with Scripture. Again, quadrilateral does not imply equal emphasis even in a pluralistic church. A clear understanding of just how we arrive at doctrine is most important.
Of course, we will not agree on all things. But concerning matters which strike at the root of Christianity we must have some agreement lest we scatter our United Methodist constituents abroad without the common cord to keep them in fellowship one with another. Sometimes there is not a great distance between grinding the ax and burying the hatchet. I hope that this is interpreted as the latter. Surely we owe United Methodists (if not Wesley himself) that much and more.
[1] The Book of Discipline, 1980. Page 78.
[2] John Wesley, Works. 3rd edition. Volume X, pages 75-79.
[3] Works, Vol. V, p. 3.
by Steve | May 1, 1983 | archive - 1983
Archive: Martin Boehm: One of the Brethren
By Joanne Wilson, McClure, Pennsylvania
A short, bearded man reined his horse at the end of the furrow. He knelt to pray. At the end of every furrow he knelt to pray.
“Lost! Lost!” were the words that haunted him.
Finally in the middle of the field he sank to his knees behind the plow. “Lord, save me. I’m lost!”
He ran from the field and into the kitchen where his wife was churning butter. “Eve, a stream of joy was poured over me!” he shouted.
He could hardly wait to tell the folks on Sunday. In times past he had never looked forward to Sunday. Martin Boehm was a Mennonite preacher, yet he had nothing to preach. Now he had something!
As he stood in the little Mennonite church that Sunday morning he told of his experience in the field.
“Oh Martin, we are indeed lost,” a man cried. “Yes, man is lost,” Martin agreed. “Christ will never find us till we know we are lost.”
The preacher’s wife, Eve, was the next person to find the joy and peace of salvation.
This was the beginning of Martin Boehm’s evangelical preaching. He could not keep quiet about his conversion, which would later become a source of contention between him and his church.
Martin Boehm was born seven miles south of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on November 30, 1725. At the age of 31 he became a preacher. But it was not until his experience in the field that his ministry began to have any results.
He held “great meetings,” as they were called, in many German-speaking towns, traveling as far south as the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. His words seemed to come directly from God. People were made to feel they needed a Savior.
Boots and spurs
On one occasion Boehm was preaching, “Sinners are going to hell with boots and spurs.”
In the crowd sat Dr. Peter Senseny who looked down at his large pair of riding boots and spurs. The words echoed in his heart. He found no rest until he made his peace with God. He became an honored preacher of the Gospel.
Some people became very disturbed with the effects of Martin Boehm’s ministry. Such was the case of B. Carper while Rev. Boehm was preaching in Conewago, Pennsylvania.
“I will kill him,” Carper threatened. “He is a false prophet and a deceiver. He bewitching power over the people.”
Carper went to the meeting and waited at the door for the service to close. As he listened he felt sure Martin Boehm was preaching directly at him and he began to tremble and shake. The more he heard the more he shook. Finally he ran home. Wherever he went he saw in his mind a little man with a large beard. He had no rest until he became a new creature in Christ Jesus.
Those who did not serve Christ hated and feared Martin Boehm. Those who served God were moved to praise the Lord.
On Pentecost Day, 1767, Boehm was scheduled to preach a service in Isaac Long’s 180-foot barn. The crowd was so large that they moved to the orchard.
After Boehm’s sermon Philip William Otterbein, a Dutch Reformed minister, ran up to him and threw his arms around Boehm. “Wir sind brüder,” he cried. (We are brethren.)
The EUB Church
From that first meeting they became close friends. They preached and worked together and ultimately formed the United Brethren in Christ. In 1946 this church joined with the Evangelical Church making the Evangelical United Brethren Church.
Boehm kept his ties with the Mennonite Church until 1777, when a formal break occurred. The church censured him on three counts: doctrine, manner of preaching, and associating with men of other denominations. Francis Asbury was among his preaching associates. They frequently shared in each other’s services. Boehm’s son, Henry, became an itinerant preacher with the Methodist Episcopal Church, covering circuits in Maryland and Virginia, as well as Pennsylvania. At the request of Asbury, Henry supervised the German translation of the 1805 Methodist Discipline.
A group of Methodists formed a class in Martin Boehm’s home around 1775, and his wife was one of the first to join. About seven years later Martin himself joined the M.E. Church. The particular local church was established on land donated by the Boehm family. When Martin decided to devote full time to traveling and preaching he turned over his farm to his son, Jacob, who, in turn, gave a portion of ground “to a Society of Christians calling themselves Methodists.” On this land, Boehm’s Chapel, the first Methodist Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was built in 1791.
Boehm’s Chapel is a landmark in American Methodism. Long before the merger of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church in 1968, ties between these two churches and their founders were close.
Martin Boehm faithfully preached the Gospel for 55 years. He died at his home on March 23, 1812, at the age of 87. A few days after the burial in the cemetery at Boehm’s Chapel, Henry Boehm and Bishop Asbury arrived at Martin’s home. The following Sunday, Asbury preached a fitting sermon in tribute to his friend who was “greatly beloved in life, and deeply lamented in death.”
by Steve | Mar 20, 1983 | archive - 1983
Drifted Astray
Ira Gallaway (1923-2015)
March/April 1983
The Confusion of Pluralism. One of the real confusions of our denomination today is a misunderstanding and a misapplication of the concept of “theological pluralism” as both an acceptable and desirable characteristic of what it means to be a Christian within the Methodist tradition. This concept has been fostered as a doctrine – serving as an umbrella – which is purported in spirit at least to allow a United Methodist Christian to believe almost anything about God or Jesus Christ, while remaining true to the faith …. The very term “theological pluralism” is used to allow or condone almost any theological or ethical position – provided that position is within the psychological framework of a liberal and humanistic interpretation of faith and life.
It is apparent that John Wesley believed both in a “catholic spirit” and in the “essential doctrines” of the Christian faith. When it comes to matters of faith which have to do with our salvation, let us not talk about any silly and dangerous doctrine of pluralism. Using the Scripture as primary within our tradition and applying our reason along with our own Christian experience, let us be hesitant indeed to tamper with Christian orthodoxy – in doctrine or practice.
What About Homosexuality? It is the clear teaching of both the Old and the New Testaments that the practice of homosexuality is forbidden in the Judea-Christian tradition.
One of the clearest teachings against homosexual practice is to be found in Romans. Paul speaks plainly about homosexuality as a sin that naturally follows when the creature or humanity is put at the center of things, and God is not obeyed and worshiped as God.
While Jesus did not specifically condemn homosexuality, He clearly affirmed marriage as the divinely directed relationship between man and woman. A man is not directed to leave his father and mother to be joined to another man, but to be joined “to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. Consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh” (Matthew 19:5-6).
Some would counter with the theology that Jesus Christ accepts us just as we are and affirms our humanity …. Jesus Christ does accept us as we are when we turn to him; but, in that acceptance, if we accept it, we find ourselves changed.
He never leaves us where we are, and he does not approve of aberrations in our behavior whether they be social, racial, or sexual in nature. Surely homosexuality is an aberration of God’s intended order of things, is opposed by the teaching of Scripture, and is therefore, not to be sanctioned by the Christian church.
What About Abortion? Yes, abortion is legal; but, is it morally right and ethically responsible in the light of the teaching of the Scripture and the providence of God for our lives? … Obviously, from a genetic standpoint that which is conceived is potentially complete toward humanness from the point of conception …
Ultimately, what “abortion on demand” signifies is the lessening of reverence for all life. It is but a short step from a permissive and affirming attitude toward abortion – the taking of an unborn life – to the elimination of the handicapped or retarded, and to euthanasia – the killing of the senile and “unproductive” aged.
In all of our rightful concern today about human rights, especially of the poor and oppressed, who is to speak to the defenseless unborn child?
Surely our culture and church, insofar as we have given approval to the aborting of the unborn, come under the judgment of God.
Self-Centered Living. It has been relatively easy for Christians to agree with condemnation of sexual sins, such as adultery and homosexuality as recorded in Scripture. It has not been so easy though, to accept the fact that the same Scripture lists greed and self-centered pleasure-seeking as sins equally condemned by God. It should not be that difficult, however, for any of us to understand that when we put self and our own desires at the center of our lives, the result will inevitably be sin, in both a personal and social sense.
It is my deep conviction that the affluence and ease-centered mode of most of our lives in the established church today is one of the greatest barriers to liberation for witness and ministry. We are so busy taking care of our “wants,” not just our “needs,” that we do not have the time even the inclination to be more than casually concerned about other people and their needs. Least of all do we evidence our concern for the poor and the oppressed.
Need for Leadership. We do not need more liberal bishops or more conservative bishops. We need bishops who radically committed as servant-leaders of our Lord Jesus Christ. We do not need leaders will protect the institution or try to save the church. We do not leaders who are always in the middle of the road, or sitting on the fence.
Heresy of Institutional Loyalty. If I were to list the prerequisites for approval and success in the United Methodist Church today, I would list loyalty to the system and obedience to the hierarchy. It is almost as if the number-one sin of a United Methodist pastor is to question something the church as a whole is doing.
This attitude toward institutional loyalty, as if the institution were God, is in itself a heresy, and is a negative influence on ministry in the church. It has caused many pastors to give in to the system, to settle into a lackluster career and forget the high calling of God which brought them into the ordained ministry.
Political Bias of GBGM. Does the basic leadership of the General Board of Global Ministries, and including especially the Women’s Division, have a holistic approach to the Gospel which enables a balanced witness and ministry inclusive of personal salvation as well as social change and witness?
I for one do not believe that the boards and agencies referred to above have promoted a balanced and whole Gospel and have not, therefore, been authentically representative of the Biblical faith. I am also convinced that there is a political and economic bias, represented in staff and program. which is basically in support of the collectivist state as the answer to the betterment society.
The real question is, Do the national and staff leaders of our church have the right to hold and foster a view favoring some form of collectist economic order as being the Christian answer? Further, it an act of disloyalty for member of the church to raise questions, particularly when the view held has no specific sanction in Scripture and is probably in contradiction to the view and will of a sisal majority of the church? There is some indication that national church leadership looks on all questions raised and on alternative directions in policy or mission program as be subversive, disloyal, and counterproductive to the life mission of the church.
Reflection on the Future. For over 25 years now have had the privilege to as a minister of the Gospel Jesus Christ within the United Methodist Church. It is here that I hope to serve my Lord so long as I am physically spiritually able to be an effective pastor-teacher within faith. It is my conviction the wind of the Spirit is blowing across the church these days, and there has never a time of greater opportunity to reach others for Jesus and build up the church witness and ministry.
Dr. Ira Gallaway is in his ninth year as senior pastor of First UM Church in Peoria, Illinois. He is a former general secretary of the General Board of Evangelism, and he now serves as a member of the executive committee of the World Methodist Council.
Interview with Ira Gallaway
GN: Dr. Galloway, why did you write the book Drifted Astray?
The purpose of the book to help bring renewal to United Methodist Church which I love very much. The book is intended to be in the Reformation tradition. I write as a member of the family, and my concerns have to do with bringing healing and reconciliation – that the church might truly be liberated for witness and ministry
GN: Is our church open to a prophetic word?
Laymen are hungry for it. Yet there is a real question if our church leadership is open to the prophetic word. At the same time I say this, I am encouraged that the Southeastern Jurisdictional College of Bishops has recently been quite prophetic in their opposition to the ordination and appointment of homosexuals.
GN: Does the UM Church need a stronger statement on abortion in our Book of Discipline?
IG: It’s my opinion that the stance of the UM Church on abortion is basically wrong. Abortion is a very difficult problem, especially in areas of rape and incest. But for the church to take a position that that indicates support of abortion on demand under the guise of a woman’s body belongs to herself is to misunderstand Scripture and creation.
A woman’s body belongs to God and not to herself alone.
Somehow, we must stop the abortion holocaust and the permissive sexual revolution which it encourages.
GN: Why is the church preoccupied with structure and process?
IG: Sociologists tell us that any institution that spends more time on structure and process than on purpose is seeing the evidence of decay and death. In my opinion, we are spending time on administration and structure while avoiding the time on witness and ministry. That is true of clergy and laity.
Many administrative personnel on the conference and general church level are more like church structure mechanics than ministers in mission. They thrive on going to meetings to talk about the church and to reshuffle the structure rather than on giving their lives to ministry
GN: What kind of leadership do we need from our bishops today?
IG: I agree with Dr. Albert Outler that we have a constitutional crisis in the church:
“One of the causes of this creeping malaise is the generally unrecognized (or unacknowledged) fact that our current Book of Discipline is cross-eyed and has been since 1972. Part I, The Constitution looks toward an episcopal polity, organized around our historic conference system. Part IV, Chapter Seven, Administrative Order reflects and looks toward a curial polity, conglomerated as a complex bureaucracy” (“Facing UMC’s Accountability Crisis” by Albert C. Outler, The Circuit Rider, Nov/Dec 79).
Our bishops, it seems to me, need to take the risk and challenge the structure where they feel it is wrong. Not to do so under the guise of hurting the church is to misunderstand the prophetic word.
GN: Why does our system tend to neutralize leadership ability and conviction among pastors?
IG: Alan Waltz has said we are one of the last patronage systems left in the world. Uniformly, patronage systems are efficient to a point. But they lack vision-the willingness to dare to be true to the faith at the risk of the future. Many ministers have settled for a career to the detriment of their calling.
GN: Has the UM Church been suffering in the past from a lack of Biblical authority?
IG: The church has suffered from a lack of Biblical authority because we have been Biblically illiterate. Seminaries don’t significantly train and teach Scripture. Therefore, most pastors are not Biblical preachers. Why? We have so demythologized the Scripture that we have taken away the cutting edge of the faith. The result is a watered down expression of the faith. Laypersons and ministers are not about to risk their lives in discipleship because they have not understood the radical, risking love of God.
GN: In your book, you add the bias of GBGM toward collectivist or socialist state systems. What can we do about this bias?
IG: I give credit to the staff of GBGM for their concern for the poor and oppressed. Second, I give credit to the staff of the board who hold the position with integrity.
Having said that, I am convinced that they are, without question, wrong. They have and still advocate, in many cases, forms of state collectivism as the answer for the poor and oppressed in Third World countries. This has to be changed. Ultimately the only resource that will stand the test and bring long-range social change is the Biblical faith.
GN: What signs of hope today encourage you about renewal within the UM Church?
IG: In many local churches, renewal is happening. It’s happening in my own congregation and in many others. Keeping in mind the historical perspective, renewal has never started at the top. For those who are discouraged and don’t see any hope, the alternatives are not all that good. The future of the independent church or the narrow denominations are not appealing to me. I plan to stay in the UM Church-to be loyal to the Lord of the Church and to work for renewal.
by Steve | Mar 20, 1983 | archive - 1983
Carl F.H. Henry: Leader of the Evangelical Renaissance
by Beth Spring
Good News
March/April 1983
What could an eminent theologian and a gray-haired Methodist widow have in common? The theologian – now a leading spokesman for evangelical Christianity – is Dr. Carl F.H. Henry (1913-2003). In the early 1920s, however, his only credential was: sports reporter, the Islip Press, Long Island, New York.
The widow, Mother [Mildred] Christy, was a proofreader for the same newspaper. Her spiritual credentials included a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and she was eager to share this experience with the young sports reporter.
“I remember Mother Christy,” Henry now recalls. “She took a personal interest in me while I was working toward a fulltime position with the newspaper. After I got the job she talked to me about Christ. Occasionally I would drive her home after work, and she always spoke to me of Christ who was so precious to her.” The widow never dreamed her words would help propel Carl Henry toward a lifetime of distinguished Christian service. He is perhaps most widely known as the founding editor of Christianity Today magazine, a position he held from 1956 to 1968.
Scholarly impact. Respected as an intellectual spokesman for evangelical Christianity and a strategist for evangelism, Henry has authored nearly 30 books. Frequently he lectures for World Vision International, and has served as president of both the Evangelical Theological Society and the American Theological Society.
His scholarly impact on behalf of evangelical thought is often likened to Billy Graham’s evangelistic impact. Currently he is writing a six-volume treatise on God, Revelation and Authority, scheduled for completion this year – 50 years after Henry accepted Christ as his Savior.
He had heard little about Christ before the Methodist widow gave her witness even though his mother was a Roman Catholic and his father Lutheran. “I was born at the juncture of the Protestant Reformation,” he says with a smile, “yet in our home we had nothing – no Bible, no grace at table, no prayers.” His only religious instruction came from an Episcopal Sunday school, where his teacher rewarded him for courtesy in the classroom by escorting him to a Jackie Coogan movie.
By the time he left school and joined the newspaper staff, he viewed Christianity as “something one inevitably outgrows in the teens and wisely forgets in the twenties.” Regarding salvation, Henry remembers that “I thought I had everything churchianity had to offer – the rites of baptism and confirmation.” But the good news about personal rebirth in Christ came unexpectedly from Mother Christy and from a former classmate.
In 1933, the classmate [Gene Bedford] made an appointment to see Henry. “I did not at first surmise his purpose: to share with me what Jesus Christ can do for one who personally trusts Him. When I sensed what was in the air, I broke that appointment three times in a row. But finally I kept it.”
Henry and his university friend knelt by an automobile that June day. “I really didn’t know how to pray, so my friend prayed and I repeated the words. When we finished, I knew that God as my friend, that my sins were forgiven, that Christ as my Savior, and that the Spirit, of God was a new source of moral strength.”
He recalls that he “would have gone to China for Christ the very next day.” Instead, he joined a neighborhood prayer group that met at Mother Christy’s home. Eventually Henry was divinely led to attend Wheaton College, in Illinois, in preparation for Christian service. He published his first book during his graduate seminary years and dedicated it “to Long Island’s Mother Christy, who first pleaded with the author to receive Christ as Savior.”
At Wheaton, Henry earned college expenses by working as a newspaper reporter at the Chicago Tribune and other papers, and by teaching classes. More than once he dragged himself to an eight o’clock class after an all-night assignment that would show up on the front page of the Wheaton Daily Journal with a seven-column headline bearing his byline.
“My literature teacher would note that I had mixed figures of speech or used some barbarism,” he recalls, “while my Latin professor, despairing that I hadn’t prepared for class, would quote the principle parts of a Latin verb she invented: ‘flunko, flunkere, faculty flunctus.’”
In spite of the pressures job and studies, Henry graduated an honors student. He pursued graduate studies at Boston, Indiana, and Loyola universities, as well as post-graduate work at New College, Edinburgh, and Cambridge University, England. Henry went on to earn Ph.D.s in both theology and philosophy, and he also became an ordained American Baptist minister. He has served on the faculties of Northern Baptist, Fuller, and Eastern Baptist theological seminaries.
Carl Henry is best known in the seminary classroom not as a professor, but as an author and thinker. When he wrote The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism in 1947, Henry was a full 25 years ahead of current evangelical interest in public affairs. In this book he prodded fellow evangelicals to rethink their withdrawal from cultural and political concerns. Yet he is an outspoken critic of New Right groups which have tried to garner support for their single-issue, single-candidate approach to politics. “A litmus test that puts one’s attitude toward the Panama Canal treaty on the same level with morality on the abortion issue is ethically confusing,” he said.
Radical inversion. Apart from his efforts to keep evangelicals on an even keel, Henry is deeply concerned about society’s “pervasive assumption that if ingenious modern man tries hard enough, he can forestall any crisis that threatens human destiny.”
Popular belief in western society has shifted steadily away from the view that God is the source of truth, good, and justice, Henry believes. He calls this shift “the most sudden, radical, sweeping inversion of ideas and ideals in the history of human thought.” It is also “the most costly,” he adds.
The outcome of humanism, in Henry’s words, will be “sheer skepticism and an assured collapse of human civilization into moral and theoretical relativism.” His answer? “The recovery of the living God of the Bible, the self-revealing God who makes known His will and purpose for mankind, and who offers forgiveness of sins and new moral life in Jesus Christ.”
This alternative is what Henry expounds in his multivolume literary effort called God, Revelation and Authority. He elaborates upon one of evangelical Christianity’s most basic tenets: God reveals himself to man through the Bible, in words that mean what they say. The four volumes which are currently in print have been hailed by The New York Times as “the most important work of evangelical theology in recent years,” and they are being translated into Korean, German, and Mandarin.
Henry regularly interrupts his writing schedule for global lecture tours on behalf of World Vision International. At the 1980 World Evangelization Crusade in Seoul, Korea, he addressed 12,000 university students.
He and his wife, Helga, spent the 1980 Christmas season lecturing, preaching, and teaching in Hawaii, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan. Henry also chaired the 1966 World Congress of Evangelism in Berlin and was program chairman of the 1971 Jerusalem Conference on Biblical Prophecy.
Top priority
But Henry’s top priority remains his writing, which proceeds from the basement of his Arlington, Virginia, home where built-in bookshelves break under the weight of a 10,000-volume library. In the evening after the dinner dishes are put away, Helga often lends a critical eye to her husband’s ongoing work. She holds two master’s degrees and taught Christian education and literature.
When they celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary, Henry commented, “We’re still in love.” They met at Wheaton, where Carl proposed by asking her to pair her word skills with his in a writing ministry. As Helga puts it today, “But how was I to know he meant 27 or more books?”
She was born in the African Cameroons, the youngest daughter of missionary parents whose memoirs she is currently compiling. She also wrote Mission on Main Street and translated from the German a book on the history of evangelism.
The Henrys have a son, Paul, a daughter, Carol. Paul is his third term with the Michigan State Legislature and served as a congressional aide to former Illinois congressman John B. Anderson. Carol teaches in the music department of the University of South Carolina.
Henry has come a long way from his days in Mother Christy’s prayer group, but he and his wife are still involved in a neighborhood Bible study. The group has been meeting since 1973, when a newly converted young man expressed concern to the Henrys about his unsaved parents.
Whether it’s in a neighbor’s living room or before multitudes in Korea, Henry’s clear communication of the Gospel remains the same:
“The world has tried everything else. It’s time for the living God to have His day. Many of the things we prize will vanish under His inscrutable judgment. But a life built on the grace of God is forever.”
