by Steve | Apr 1, 1968 | Archive - 1968
Archive: Eschatology
April 1968
By J.B. Phillips
“Eschatology” is the doctrine or teaching about “the last things” – death, judgement, heaven and hell. Much of today’s Christianity is almost completely earthbound, and the words of Jesus about what follows this life are scarcely studied at all.
This, I believe, is partly due to man’s enormous technical successes, which make him feel master of the human situation. But it is also partly due to our scholars and experts. By the time they have finished with their dissection of the New Testament and with their explaining away as “myth” all that they find disquieting or unacceptable to the modern mind, the Christian way of life is little more than humanism with a slight tinge of religion.
It is not only advertisers who attempt to deaden our critical faculties by clever words. There are New Testament scholars who, whether consciously or not, do the same thing. Thus, if you are to be thought up-to-date and “with it,” you are expected to believe in current phrases. One of these is “realized eschatology,” which means that all those things which Jesus foretold have happened, either at the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 or in the persecutions of the Church. In other words, the prophetic element in the teaching of Jesus is of no value at all to us in the twentieth century. Such a judgement makes Jesus less of a prophet than Amos, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, and the rest.
I find myself quite unable to accept this. There is an element of the prophecy of Jerusalem’s terrible downfall and of the desecration of the Temple – the horror of which we who are not Jews find hard to appreciate. But the prophetic vision goes far beyond this. It envisages the end of the life of humanity on this planet, when, so to speak, eternity irrupts into time. There is no time scale: there is rarely such an earthbound factor in prophetic vision. The prophet sees the truth in compelling terms, but he cannot tell the day or the hour of any event, still less the time of the end of the whole human affair.
We are ourselves somewhere in the vast worldwide vision which Jesus foresaw. And for all we know, we may be near the end of all things.
You simply cannot read the New Testament fairly and come to the conclusion that the world is going to become better and better, happier and happier, until at last God congratulates mankind on the splendid job they have made of it! Quite the contrary is true; not only Jesus but Paul, Peter, John, and the rest never seriously considered human perfectibility in the short span of earthly life. This is the preparation, the training ground, the place where God begins His work of making us into what He wants us to be. But it is not our home. We are warned again and again not to value this world as a permanency. Neither our security nor our true wealth are rooted in this passing life. We are strangers and pilgrims, and while we are under the pressure of love to do all that we can to help our fellows, we should not expect a world which is largely God-resisting to become some earthly paradise. All this may sound unbearably old-fashioned, but this is the view of the New Testament.
In a true and real sense the Kingdom of God was already established upon earth, but none of the New Testament writers expects the vast work of redeeming the whole world to take place either easily or quickly.
Some, at least, of the early Christians apparently expected the return of their risen Lord in power in a very short time. Both Peter and Paul had to remind their converts that the “time” was entirely a matter of God’s choosing. Meanwhile the Christian life must be led with patience and courage, the true Gospel must be proclaimed, and Christian worship continued. The light must shine in a dark and cruel world.
It might be thought that if a man’s hope and treasure lay in another, unseen world, he would have little contact with, or interest in, the world in which he is only a temporary resident. Of course there have been, and are, sects who live apart from the world. But that is not the general picture. It is not usually the atheists and agnostics who are to be found fighting disease, ignorance, and fear in the most dangerous and difficult parts of the world. And this is because the Christian faith, although inevitably rooted in “heaven,” is incurably earthly. The seeds of this paradoxical attitude are scattered throughout the New Testament. “Religion” which does not express itself in compassion is a dead and, indeed, a dangerous thing. Yet the root of the relief of disease, the removal of ignorance, and the teaching of faith lies in the love of God. We love because God first loved us.
I feel I must stress this point because we seem to live in an atmosphere of “either/or,” whereas it is really a matter of “both/ and.” Certainly it is useless to preach a Gospel of the soul’s redemption to a starving man. But it is equally valueless (and the world around is full of examples) to make man affluent in this world and at the same time deprive him of any sense of God or of any meaningful life after death. “Compassion” and “charity” are both popular words today, while faith in God is regarded as largely irrelevant. But in fact both compassion and charity can be monstrously misused unless they are informed by the love of God. Hence we get situations in which compassion goes out to the violent thug who assaults an old lady for her meagre savings, but none at all to her! Charity means instant social acceptance for the adulterer but little compassion for his deceived and deprived wife. To love God is the first and greatest commandment, said Jesus. And this is the priority insisted on throughout the New Testament.
J. B. PHILLIPS, an English pastor and student of Holy Scriptures, is world famous for his popular translation, “The New Testament in Modem English,” © 1958 Macmillan. Our article, “J.B. Phillips on Eschatology” is reprinted by permission from his latest book, “Ring of Truth” © 1967 Macmillan. -Editor
by Steve | Nov 10, 1967 | Uncategorized
Methodist Heritage: The Place of Evangelicals in the Methodist Church Today
Bishop Gerald Kennedy (1907-1980)
Good News, Winter 1967
The main difficulty in writing on this subject is finding a definition acceptable to the majority of Methodists. Finding two people who will agree precisely as to what “evangelical” means is difficult. I must therefore state in a broad way how I intend to use the term – but with the warning that it is impossible to be too precise and that any description must have uncertain borders.
What is it? Since the Reformation, the term “evangelical” has been applied to Protestant churches which based their teaching pre-eminently on the Gospel as defined in the Bible. There was usually a difference between these evangelical churches and the Calvinist bodies, although the precise difference was never very clear.
Within the broad framework of the Church of England, the evangelicals put their emphasis on personal conversion, the atoning death of Christ, and salvation by faith. They came to be a particular party within the Church of England in a day when the general condition of the clergy was low. Methodism, in the beginning, had very much in common with the evangelical group. John Fletcher of Madeley was one of the evangelical leaders and also one of Methodism’s early heroes. The evangelicals, for the most part, were marked with a deep seriousness. And sometimes they were regarded as being too religious. In the nineteenth century they took a leading part in social reform, and in missionary activity.
Theologically, evangelicals have commonly upheld the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures and have regarded the Bible as the sole authority of the Church. They have believed in preaching as of supreme importance and they have had a tendency to minimize liturgical worship. They have been suspicious of Roman Catholic and high church doctrines.
In our time, evangelicals would be regarded as more conservative in their theology than many Methodists. Very often they support a doctrine of the second coming, the virgin birth, and the conversion experience as an essential for every Christian. Some of them would shade off into the fundamentalist camp, I expect, and take a dim view of the critical study of the Bible. Their vocabulary is often archaic to some modern ears. And their insistence upon more precise definitions of the doctrines a Christian must believe to be truly a Christian, are stumbling blocks to many who have moved into the more liberal, modern atmosphere.
The Demands of the Church. But let us agree that an exact definition is impossible. I have met with some of these people who became Methodists via the Nazarene Church, and I have found them in such accredited seminaries as Fuller in Pasadena. Often they have a warmth of spirit and a conviction of belief that lifts up my heart. Sometimes their affirmations are not congenial to me now, and they take me back to my boyhood and to my father’s faith. It must be said that there is no question in my mind as to their being a legitimate part of the Methodist heritage. They are Wesleyan in their basic propositions. Their emphasis on conversion finds an echo on nearly every page of John Wesley’s Journal. The truth seems to me to be that The Methodist Church has been, broadly speaking, evangelical in its understanding and interpretation from the beginning.
In Los Angeles we have had two groups looking at each other suspiciously for a long time. One has been the evangelical churches and the other has been the so-called mainline denominations such as the Methodists, the Presbyterians, United Church of Christ, and the American Baptists. One of the reasons I was glad to become the chairman of the Billy Graham Campaign in 1963 was that it provided an opportunity to bring these two groups closer together. We never succeeded in eliminating all our differences, but we did make progress in talking to one another and trying to listen to each other with some appreciation. I was struck with the obstacle of vocabulary as well as with fundamental differences in our attitudes toward Biblical criticism, evolution, and the place of the Church in the world. But I was even more impressed with our broad base of commonly accepted doctrine. And I was hopeful for a continuing dialogue which, it seemed to me, would enrich both parties. That is the main reason I am glad to accept an invitation to write on the place of evangelicals in The Methodist Church.
For one thing, I must say that it is rather shocking that this question would be raised by anybody in The Methodist Church. It is even more shocking to observe that some of those who have been most outspoken in favor of the ecumenical movement seem to be most unsympathetic with anybody disagreeing with them in The Methodist Church. We might as well come to terms with the reality that no church is in any position to make an ecumenical contribution if it cannot find room within itself for honest men with differing beliefs.
The Right Spirit. I am convinced that the main obstacle which faces us is not our differences, but the spirit in which we hold them. I have known some fundamentalists so narrow and bitter that it was impossible to talk with them. It seemed to me that they were full of pride in their righteousness and they belonged with the Pharisees rather than with the Christians.
On the other hand, I have known any number of men whose theological positions seemed to me quite impossible, but who were my Christian brothers and dear friends. We could talk together and share with one another our convictions in a spirit of love and mutual respect.
It is true also, of course, that I have known liberals who were so dogmatic and unbending that they could put the fundamentalists to shame. Even when I agreed with most of what they had to say, I could not feel at ease with them because of this bitter, partisan spirit. It was either their interpretation or none. So I conclude that there will be room in The Methodist Church for men of very widely differing theological points of view only if their spirits are open and loving.
This, of course, is one of the most difficult things in the world to achieve. It is hard for a man with a great conviction to believe that a man who differs with him is honest. But this is one of the miracles which Christ works for us and we ought to pray that He will touch us with His grace. I know it can happen because it has transformed my relationships with other people more than once. A Christian experience goes straight to the heart. And then, although we do not find complete unity in our heads, it really does not matter too much. Methodism must remember that John Wesley said this very often. This is one of his principles upon which we stand or fall.
One of my friends is a theological professor who retired some years ago. His theological position seemed to me very far to the left and oftentimes appeared to me little more than humanism. On the other hand, my position seemed to him hopelessly far to the right. Sometimes in our conversations together I would say to him, “How in the world can such a nice fellow have such lousy theology?” His reply would be, “How can a fellow who is smart enough to fool the Church into electing him a bishop be so reactionary?” Through all these past years we have been close friends, and I would no more think of trying to put him out of the Church than I would think of attacking the saints. The greatness of Methodism has been its freedom and its discipline. My brother, if your heart is with my heart, give me your hand.
We Need Each Other. Let us look at this a little further. Instead of stopping here, let us move on to the affirmative truth which shines through this question. We need each other. Instead of merely putting up with somebody who is different than we are, let us thank God that He gives us an authentic witness from the other side of the hill. I am not very happy with some of the proposed new approaches of our day. Much of it sounds shallow, and I am sure in my own mind that much of it is of passing interest only. Yet I am on the side of any group who feel so strongly about the relevancy of the Church that they want to find ways to make it speak to the world. I will fight to the last ditch for their right to experiment. Even when they fail, their efforts have still been worthwhile, in my judgment. There is a fellow (not a Methodist) who has been putting on a night club act in San Francisco. He is trying to read from a book he wrote and bear a Christian witness. I wish him luck, although my own experience in trying to talk religion to people with four or five drinks under their belts has not been very encouraging. But I will take him any day over the Methodist preacher I dealt with some time ago who wanted to close his church and move out because there were saloons in the neighborhood.
On the other hand, I am strong for the brethren whose emphasis is on the unchanging and eternal verities of our faith. We should be in a bad way indeed if we become like the Athenians described in the Book of Acts as those who “spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new” (Acts 17:21). I believe in the Bible and I believe in conversion. I believe that Methodism made a great difference in eighteenth century England, and I believe it ought to be making a great difference in twentieth century America. The evangelicals keep the unchangeables before us and it is something which we must not forget or consider unimportant.
I am convinced that The Methodist Church cannot afford to lose the evangelicals. It would be a sad day indeed if they should feel unwelcome and go somewhere else. They are just as legitimately Methodists as are any of these brethren who look down their noses at them and consider them outmoded.
A great deal of this modern spirit is a passing thing, and after we have changed our minds a hundred times in the future, the great and fundamental truths of our religion will shine forth with continuing brilliance. With all the modern talk about the Church having to keep up to date, it is great to have clear voices proclaiming that over against all the novelties there is the unchanging truth of what God has done for us through the Incarnation.
The Ecumenical Challenge. There is a new wind blowing in the mulberry trees in our time. I doubt if any single man or single party can interpret the meaning of it completely. We have seen a miracle take place in the world with the Second Vatican Council. We can talk with each other and we can learn from each other in a way that was not possible just a few years ago. What the outcome of this is to be I do not know – and I do not think anyone else does. However, one thing does seem rather clear to me: if the ecumenical spirit means anything, it must begin to work between conflicting points of view within a single church. I welcome our evangelical brethren within Methodism not because I want to be a nice fellow, but because I need them. As a Methodist, I do not think I have any other choice. If they will put up with me, I surely will put up with them. Not only that, but I will sit at their feet that together we may learn of a new devotion and a new commitment which is much more needed in Methodism than a new method.
This is going to take more grace than most of us possess at the present time. But if we pray for this gift from God, and if we are willing to receive it, the first step will have been taken in the renewal of the Church.
As I grow older I experience increasing doubts of my ability to grasp very much of the truth or Christ. I need as many different witnesses as possible to keep me aware of my own poverty and of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Gerald Kennedy was the Bishop of the Los Angeles Area of the Methodist Church.
by Steve | Nov 9, 1967 | Uncategorized
A Death to ponder
Editorial by Charles Keysor
November/December 1976
Death often leads us to ponder, to reflect upon the earthly life and labors of one now departed. We remember what he or she has accomplished between the terminal points of birth and death. We consider how the world may be different because of this one particular life.
On July 30 this year, Rudolf Karl Bultmann died in Marburg, West Germany. He was 71 years old.
Probably Bultmann was the greatest theological giant of our times. Alongside him in the pantheon of the central 20th century theology, would be Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Neibuhr. But Bultmann’s influence was surely the greatest. There is little doubt it will be the longest-lasting, for the disciples of Rudolf Bultmann permeated theological education in the Western World. They transmitted Bultmann’s thinking to several generations of highly influential church leaders preachers, teachers in colleges and seminaries, writers, editors, bureaucrats, and bishops.
Rudolf Bultmann was deep and complex, to say the least. That he was a great mind, none can question. But what matters is not so much his massive intellect as the presuppositions he held concerning ultimate realities.
“It is no longer possible for anyone seriously to hold the New Testament view of the world,” Bultmann declared. “In fact, there is no one who does.”
Christianity Today, in an editorial commenting on his death, offered this cogent summary: “His presuppositions began with a conscious rejection of theological orthodoxy. [He] did not allow for the presence of a personal, transcendent God who acts decisively and historically to redeem His people and who speaks in an intelligible manner to reveal Himself and His ways to men and women. He excluded the supernatural by definition from his system, as also any real intervention of the living God into the affairs of the world. Therefore [for Bultmann] the concept of miracle was ruled out, including the greatest miracle of all, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ …. ”
“Wedding his theology to the existentialist philosophy of the early Martin Heidegger, Bultmann assumed the most radical tradition of Biblical criticism. He denied the historicity of all but a few basics of the life of Jesus (the “thatness”) and essentially dismissed the Old Testament and all Jewish elements in the Bible as irrelevant for Christian theology.”
This statement is accurate. It correctly describes Bultmann’s philosophical life-blood, and so it helps us to understand better his powerful influence on three generations of seminary professors and students.
“The tragedy of his influence and the painful burden it bequeathed to us stems from a good intention and a much-needed corrective gone amiss,” explains Rev. Dr. Paul Mickey, Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology, Duke Divinity School, and Chairman of the Good News Task Force on Theology. “His was a concern for the sofa fides principle, salvation by faith alone. This was nobly lifted up by Martin Luther during the Protestant reformation.”
As a Lutheran himself, Bultmann was eager to reaffirm this principle in opposition to 19th century liberalism. He correctly perceived the need to reaffirm that salvation is sofa fides, by faith alone. But he went too far. He jumped on a ‘faith bandwagon’ and rode off into existential psychologism, away from history.”
Here is where heresy enters Bultmann’s work, the Duke professor said. “For Bultmann, atonement [i.e., the death of Christ on the cross in payment for our sins] was reduced to ‘self-understanding’ and history was pushed aside. The same principles which whisked away the historicity of the Bible also made history irrelevant for the modern believer.”
What is our faith apart from its history? A cross that may have happened, if you choose to believe this. A tomb that was really empty only to those who make it so by believing that “He lives!” A record of early church growth and witness which may be only propaganda that was concocted to sell Christianity as a miracle religion.
If the Bible record of events is not reliable, then those who trust it are really fools and simpletons — as Bultmannians sometimes suggest.
Time Magazine for October 19, 1976, reported a major archaeological find at ancient Ebia in Syria — a large number of clay tablets dating between 2400 and 2250 B.C. Describing the first discovery, Time reflected the wide spread assumption that Biblical events and places are really not historical: ” … it [the discovery] also provides the best evidence to date that some of the people described in the Old Testament actually existed ….
“The Biblical connections appear to be numerous. The tablets contain accounts of the creation and the flood, which are strikingly similar to those found in both the Old Testament and Babylonian literature. They refer to a place called Urusalima, which scholars say is clearly Ebla’s name for Jerusalem. (If so, it is unquestionably the earliest known reference to the Holy City, predating others by hundreds of years.)
“We always thought of ancestors like Eber as symbolic,” says [ David Noel Freedman, a University of Michigan archaeologist who worked in the excavations], “at least until these tablets were found. Fundamentalists could have a field day with this one.”
Such is the common assumption: Biblical places, people, and events probably did not actually exist. Bultmann has done more than any other, in our time, to increase this distrust in the Bible’s historicity.
“If history is at best irrelevant theologically,” Dr. Mickey observed, “if not untrue, then the atonement, the idea of God as Creator and the notion that we have social responsibilities in obedience to God — all these are lost and gone forever! Bultmann’s heresy was not his affirmation of sola fides, but his exclusivism which rejected history and good works.”
Everything was reduced to subjectivism, or to purely personal judgment and opinion, Dr. Mickey said. Under Bultmann’s thinking, there was “no need or power for good works and a lively social witness. Without history there is no social order.
“Thus the epithet, ‘Faith without history and good works is dead heresy’ may be the final judgment of Christian history on Professor Bultmann.”
Rudolf Bultmann tore the very heart out of Biblical Christianity, and this same characteristic is widely evident in our church today. Shortly after Bultmann’s death, a tribute was given by Dr. F. Thomas Trotter, staff executive for the UM Board of Higher Education and Ministry (in charge of our colleges and seminaries). UM Communications circulated a story about this tribute. It reported that Dr. Trotter had said that the church, if it is to survive and compel the attention of modern persons, will need theologians like Bultmann. Why? To keep the church thinking about its mission and its gospel, Dr. Trotter declared. He also observed that Bultmann’s legacy to the church is his care for the authority of the Word of God, spoken in modern situations and in speech direct enough that the personal meaning will not be missed.
“Such scholar-prophets [as Bultmann] will have their detractors and they will risk our displeasure,” Trotter confessed. “But what they have to say to us is this: if our language is archaic, our response to the Gospel is merely formal, and our preaching is vacuous, then the power of God’s possibilities for men and women will be absent from the world.”
“The world does not require so much to be informed as reminded,” Hannah Smith once said. The church is reminded, upon the death of Rudolf Bultmann, that men die in a few swift years, but the truth of God survives. In Eternity, when a final accounting is made, belief will be judged more enduring than doubt. That is why Paul wrote to young Timothy: “The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching cars they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (II Timothy 4:3, 4). N
by Steve | Sep 1, 1967 | Archive - 1967
Archive: Liturgy and Evangelism Belong Together
September 1967
By Ted Griner, Pastor, First Methodist Church, Statesboro, Georgia
The conflict between liturgy and evangelism has been one of disregard and distrust. Seldom have the proponents of each engaged in communication long enough to discover whether the two did or could ever harmonize. While each has been prone to advocate worship forms which are opposite, there is no longer a necessity to insist that they cannot meet. For each has argued that his is the only proper and acceptable manner of doing exactly the same thing!
Liturgists have insisted that nothing in worship should be extemporary. Every prayer, litany, creed and sermon must be written beforehand and read before the congregation. It has been argued that God is offended by the prayers of those who use incorrect grammar; that God does not listen when one prays what is at the moment on his mind. Some people think God will listen only when one has previously prepared himself and brought his thoughts (or those of others) to the place of worship. Liturgists have held that the prayers of the Church ought to be those which have seasoned over the years of use.
Some would deny that this caricature is fair to the liturgists. The fact is, however, that many evangelists do actually look upon the liturgists in this light.
The evangelists tend to believe that God is never real to anyone who just reads prayers. To read prayers written by other people is no better than walking on your knees up the stairs of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, saying “Hail Mary!” Evangelists insist that God does hear the earnest, fervent prayer of his children – even if they are said in incorrect grammar. For the words used are not as important to God as the true feelings in a man’s heart.
Both the liturgist and the evangelist are trying to communicate with God in worship. They are trying to do the same thing, but they cannot agree on how it should be done. Is there room for evangelism and liturgy in the same worship service? To say “No!” will do great harm to the cause of Christ. For if liturgy is divorced from evangelism, the church will be dead soon.
Much is being written today about the development of liturgical worship. There is a strong trend toward the use of more and more liturgical artifacts. Candles, robes, acolytes and such are being used by ministers who never thought of so doing only a few years ago. If there is a battle between liturgy and evangelism for popularity, then liturgy is winning by a tremendous margin, across the whole Church.
This ought to alarm us. Where is the teaching in the New Testament which admonishes us to be liturgists? Where do we find teachings that show us that proper liturgy will win souls to Christ and save from sin? On the other hand, there is an endless admonition in scripture to be evangelists and do the work of evangelism. We are called to preach, not burn candles. We are called to put on the robes of righteousness, not those of a particular season of the church year. (I say this even though I preach in a collar, cassock, surplice, and stoles every Sunday morning.)
Can we discount the evidence that many ministers are using liturgy as a substitute for their inadequacies? Winning souls to Christ is the hardest, most demanding task in which a man can engage. We are all tempted to take the easy way, and liturgy is an excellent way to do something “religious” without getting personally involved in the Gospel’s evangelistic imperative.
There is not a vital, dynamic, soul-winning denomination in all the Christian faith that is strongly liturgical. Liturgy without evangelism is deadening! There is little doubt that theology is directly connected to this. Liturgists are inclined to be liberal in theological thought. Their devotion to Scripture is not absolute and their Christology is usually not based on the New Testament. Evangelists, on the other hand, are more realistic in theology. They adhere to the doctrines of the Church as established by the New Testament.
The future of the effectiveness of the Church depends upon the Church being the Church for Jesus’ sake! This is not a plea for a horse and buggy theology, practice, or liturgy. It is a cry that we remember that Jesus was concerned that sinners be saved, not that preachers wear the right vestments.
One might be a servant of Jesus as an evangelist without being a liturgist, but one cannot faithfully serve Him as a liturgist without also being an evangelist. Evangelism without liturgy may be unattractive, but liturgy with out evangelism is not Christianity.
It is generally agreed that morning worship should be about one hour long. The evangelist argues that to have much liturgy makes it impossible to have time enough for a sermon and a call to discipleship. The sermon is held to be the outstanding evangelical device within public worship, bringing persons to conversion, rededication, and commitment. So, it becomes necessary for the evangelist to dispense with anything which takes away the necessary time for conversion. The use of more and more liturgy is seen as a weak device to shun the evangelizing responsibility. While liturgy may be pleasing to the converted worshipper, it is lifeless and without challenge to the non-Christian. For he cannot truly pray any prayers until he has been saved from sin and established in God’s family of the redeemed.
A properly balanced service can satisfy both liturgists and evangelists. Allowing the first half of the service for liturgy, there is ample opportunity for use of every type litany, creeds, prayers. The liturgy does not have to be monotonous and repetitious: it can be changed often enough to be fresh, alive and spiritually invigorating.
The second half of the service provides ample opportunity for complete freedom of expression and style. It should be truly evangelical, but if the first half of the service is true to the Gospel, the sermon cannot be in opposition to it.
For the sake of Jesus Christ, there needs to be a wedding of liturgy and evangelism. Neither the liturgist nor the evangelist is doing the best job by himself. Evangelism without careful, accurate expression and some cultural refinement is not going to be effective among educated and thoughtful people. And liturgy without personal commitment to Jesus Christ will never win sinners to Christ.
by Steve | Sep 1, 1967 | Archive - 1967
Archive: The Fellowship of the Redeemed
September 1967
By Howard A. Hanke, Professor of Bible, Asbury College, Wilmore, Kentucky Member, Rocky Mountain Conference of The Methodist Church
During the pastoral period in the Old Testament, a dedicated man of God expressed the delight of fellowship among the redeemed in these words: “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity” (Psalm I3 3: I). The same writer associated this redemptive fellow ship with those whose sins are forgiven and covered by the Blood (Psalm 32: 1-2).
By definition, the Church is a group of people who have repented of and confessed their sins, and have become new creatures in Christ Jesus our Lord. St. Paul says that believers are “a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle … that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27). This is the practical realization of the divine endowment that was promised by God through the annunciating angel: “He will save his people from their sins” (Matthew I:21b).
Thus, at the time of conversion, the believer changes his pattern of life from sin to holiness. By a miraculous birth he becomes a spiritual child of God. And as a newborn babe desires milk, so the spiritually-born desire “the sincere milk of the word” – pure and unadulterated.
The Psalmist puts it this way: “I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and them that keep thy precepts” (Psalm 119:63). John the beloved says it still another way: “If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7; see also Malachi 3:16; Acts 2:42; II Corinthians 5:7). Thus, we see that people with a redemptive experience have things in common and so they have fellowship with each other. This common faith in Christ creates the fellowship of the redeemed.
It is traditional in Methodism, and so expressed in the baptismal and membership ritual, that those who come into the Church will “earnestly endeavor to keep God’s holy will and Commandments.” But this is not all. Conversion and fellowship initiates and motivates the kind of divine love that expresses itself in a passion for the lost. Thus, the Body of Christ (the Church) grows as other converts are added to its ranks.
In the days when The Methodist Church showed respect for Biblical authority and the doctrinal standards outlined in The Methodist Discipline, members in the church found great delight in class meetings, in testimony meetings and in prayer meetings. Bible study and corporate prayer were an integral part of the weekly church program. Giving was a means by which members expressed their love to Jesus Christ and their concern for getting others converted. Our church was near the top of the denominational list in per-capita giving – partly, because giving meant evangelism: the salvation of souls at home and abroad. Even today, in churches where there is great evangelistic and missionary concern, there we have a high ratio of giving per member.
As Methodists, we do not like to admit it, but it is true nevertheless: the standard for membership in many churches is now very low. Shaking the preacher’s hand and a phone call is all that is required for membership in some cases. One Methodist pastor recently made this report:
“In one church I served, most members had attained membership with little or no preparation. A couple of sessions for discussing the stewardship of resources, the institutional life and moral guidelines was the only prerequisite for old and young alike. Three families told me that with a little bluffing, they did not even have to be present on the Sunday their membership was announced, much less subscribe to our covenant” (Together, May 1967, p. 29).
Parallel to this is a laxity in following the doctrinal standards of The Discipline with regards to ministerial admission. In some conferences, psychological tests are more important than a con version experience and a call from God. There are instances where ministerial candidates with a genuine conversion experience and a passion for lost souls were forced to take psychiatric treatment. In one case, the psychiatrist finally advised the committee that the subject was perfectly normal and fit for the Methodist ministry. Imagine their consternation when the psychiatrist suggested to the committee that they should themselves submit for treatment instead!
It is interesting to note that as our church becomes more obsessed with intellectual sophistication and a lack of interest in an infallible Bible, so correspondingly our interest in giving, in missions, and in evangelism decreases. The Methodist Church now has the distinction of being almost at the bottom of the denominational list in per-capita giving – partly because a paralyzing universalism has gripped our church and our raison d’etre is no longer clearly defined. Too frequently now, Christianity is equated with marches and defying the law.
Our lack of concern for converting the lost at home and abroad is evidenced in the large number of missionary drop-outs, and in the difficulty we have in recruiting ministerial candidates for replacement, to say nothing about expansion. On the other hand, the denominational groups to which our spiritually-dedicated members go are the denominations who are at the top of the list in giving, in evangelism and in missionary outreach.
What about the faithful members remaining in our midst, those with a genuine conversion experience … those who hunger for God’s Word and have “set their affections on things above?” They find that they are being starved with a watered-down, adulterated homiletical diet, well-seasoned with Pike, Robinson, Bonhoeffer, Bultmann, Tillich and Altizer. With this existentialism as a steady diet, it is understandable why people by the score are leaving The Methodist Church for communions where there is Biblical integrity and consistency with the traditional standards set forth in the Methodist Discipline. Many faithful believers have been made to feel “tongue lashed” and unwanted in The Methodist Church. lt is common knowledge that the “new theology” crowd is anxious to purge our church of those who have a genuine conversion experience.
It is no wonder that Bishop Gerald Kennedy has sounded the alarm. (May God bless him and others of like persuasion.) In a lead article in “Good News” (Winter, 1967), he condemns efforts to exclude and discriminate against evangelicals. “I believe in the Bible, and I believe in conversion,” Kennedy declares. “Methodism cannot afford to lose the evangelicals. It would be a sad day indeed if they should feel unwelcome and go somewhere else,” so Kennedy concludes.
In today’s church environment, the truly “born again” child of God finds conflict and emptiness. He has experienced a glorious conversion in Christ Jesus. The Bible is precious to him. He is in agreement with our Methodist Articles of Religion in the Methodist Discipline. He is hungry for evangelistic meetings and has a passion for the lost. And yet he is made to feel that he is an “odd ball!” As Methodists, we may well ponder the question raised by St. Paul: “What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belia!?” (II Corinthians 6:14-15.)
Our religion journals are full of New Morality, New Ethics, New Evangelism, etc. But we need none of these. The Athenians were constantly looking for something new but they refused to accept “new life” in Jesus Christ-as many “modern Athenians” also refuse. One writer says, “There is only one thing really fresh and novel in all the annals of the human race. That is the new man in Christ Jesus. Once the shackles of sin are broken, man enters the experience of new potentials, new gifts, new capacities, etc. Yes, ‘if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.’ ” (Decision, April 1967, p. 2.)
Modern man has become obsessed with the notion that he is a “new breed” and that “new dimensions of understanding” are required to satisfy his well-being. This is ridiculous and a satanic falsehood. Man is still the sinful, rebellious brat that he always has been. He is neither better nor worse in his natural sinful state than his forefathers. His sins and lusts and vices are not new. This novel notion among the modern sophisticates is indicative of the “Biblical ignorance” that is in our midst.
This writer is a Methodist by choice. He is convinced that the Articles of Religion in the Methodist Discipline express most accurately the basic tenets of the Christian faith. There is nothing wrong with The Methodist Church – it has been and still is a great redemptive force in the world. If all the people who have left our church were still with us to help fight the “good fight of faith” we could expect a great revival through the working of God’s Spirit in the church. We have all the institutional machinery that is necessary: all we need now is for the Holy Spirit to come upon us in great power. We who remain must close the ranks and get on with our redemptive mission. God is not ready yet to write “Ichabod” on our front door. (I Samuel 4: 21).
