Response to Kenneth S. Kantzer
Ralph D. Winter
First of all, I want to thank the men who proposed this consultation. I have long had a keen appreciation for Ken Kantzer, not only because of my personal contacts with him, serving on the same board of a mission project during one period, but also vicariously, due to my younger brother's ecstatic reports of his teaching ability at Wheaton years ago.
In the case of Carl Henry, I have an even closer sense of appreciation since I myself was a student of his, more years ago than either of us cares to recall. He and his wife have been favorite people of mine for at least 40 years.
To the point here, twenty years after those classes under him, Helga Henry's translation from the German of Paulus Scharpf's History of Evangelism brought about for me a giant leap forward in my personal understanding of what might be called the evangelical phenomenon. This was at the time of the 1966 Berlin Congress on World Evangelization — another conference which Carl Henry had spurred into existence. The Scharpf book was one of the three official volumes published by the conference.
Then, secondly, I want to make clear what I have understood I am to do in my response. It appears to me that we are here presenting papers and responses and talking to ourselves, but that we hope to generate a statement which will then be directed to the general public, including both evangelicals and the on-looking world.
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Thus, what I will be saying is "in-house." I am talking to myself and to you who regard yourselves in the evangelical stream.
Finally, it is obvious that neither Ken nor I can even list much less tackle the veritable onslaught of ethical issues with which our contemporary world confronts us day by day. I have been reading the magnificent 300-page book by Gordon-Conwell's John Jefferson Davis, called simply Evangelical Ethics, and it makes clear that no generation in human history has been faced with so many crucial questions that cry out for serious theological consideration.
Unlike Professor Sloan this morning, I do not have extensive revisions to make of the material we have just heard. But I am glad I was not the presenter. Had I been, I am sure I would have felt similarly responsible to try to cover the basics, as Ken has done so well.
On the other hand, I am not at all sure I would have come up with the same list of distortions or perversions, as he calls them, namely, Pietism, Deweyism, Legalism, Antinomianism, Mysticism or Direct Immediate Revelation, Pharisaism, Conventional Morality, Imitation of Christ, and Self-Esteem.
He does not imply that these are all equally dangerous, of course. And they overlap to some extent. But, I would like to draw your attention to one theme running through several of them. Dr. Kantzer at certain points — no doubt in attempting to ward off a worse evil — introduces what itself can be terribly dangerous, namely the idea that we must above all be free. After concluding his comments on each of the nine perversions, he adds, "All of these perversions of Christian ethics represent the denial of the
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freedom of the Christian man. The believer, committed to Christ, is bound in his conscience to no man and no society."
(In other parts of his paper he refers to "instructed love", by which he evidently means "Bible informed, but self-instructed love." He speaks of people needing to be weaned from parents as soon as possible. He states that "the key to every ethical dilemma is our personal relation to Jesus Christ.")
I am quite surprised to see that kind of a summary statement. It refers to a certain undeniable truth in one sense, yet if you look back at the nine "perversions," you find that at least five of them are not so much caused by the denial of Christian freedom on conscience, as they are considerably the result of one or another form of the unrestrained heart.
I come to this subject with a certain amount of overseas perspective, as has been indicated in the introduction. My wife and I and our four children lived for ten years within a tribal society, where there exists, as in most of the non-Western world, a life-long authority pattern in the family. On return to the States I have again and again been bothered by the very gradual — and yet by now drastic — breakdown of the Christian family precisely at the very point of Christian freedom of conscience. People in traditional societies who observe the way things are going in the USA look at things very differently from the average American. To the outsider, Americans have gone stark raving mad in their pursuit of individual freedom. (I recall with chagrin how naively in my youth I accepted that famous line from the Declaration of Independence — "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What a poison for any nation to drink!) At any rate, millions of overseas Christians, drawing on the wisdom of their still-intact
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traditional societies, would, if they were aware of its true extent, say that our cultural religion of individualism has eaten its way into the very bone marrow of the evangelical cultural stream, because the result in the eyes of these overseas observers is shockingly clear: They see in this distinctively American type of personal freedom something that tears up families, dishonors parents, abandons children and old people, makes fidelity optional, and ultimately breaks apart the parents themselves. And most of this ghastly cancer in our social tradition is recent, historically speaking. Back when Dr. Henry wrote The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, very little of this family breakdown could have weighed on our consciences.
Had the whole transition come quickly, it could have been considered the gravest collapse of morality in Christian history.
Back then not one marriage in 50 broke up, where both parents regularly attended church (whether they were evangelicals or not). Now, our wonderfully elastic evangelical ethics have allowed our country to approach the world's record — and make no mistake, the U.S. now has the world record in divorce rate — in this gruesome reality of the breakdown of the family. Chuck Colson last night could have told us that by comparison with Germany we have twenty times as many people behind bars, and are still needing billions of dollars for more prisons. This is a social problem, but more specifically it is a family problem, and ultimately it falls into the category of personal ethics as all social ethics must.
The point here is, I don't believe all this is the lack of freedom! I don't believe the plummeting ethics in Evangelical circles — either in this area of the family or in the area of
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evangelical reversion to alcohol — is the result of a denial of Christian freedom.
Much of this breakdown is traced between three different periods in the last 40 years in Hunter's book on evangelicalism; but it has happened with a certain insidious gradualness, and we have not been brought up suddenly to face it.
Thus, it would seem, when we try to be objective about our ideas of personal ethics, we need the help of evangelicals in other cultures. Living overseas can give remarkable insight. On specifically this subject of what has happened to the family, let me give you a glimpse from Singapore. That wonderful little country is the only English speaking country in the world that uses chopsticks. It is young as a nation, cutting loose from Asia, but not entirely satisfied with the West either. It is fascinating to view the U.S.A. from there. It is teeming with global-level evangelical offices. Just as Wheaton is the evangelical Vatican City of the U.S., so Singapore is rapidly becoming the global-level evangelical Geneva. It comes to mind because I happen to have been there three times in a recent four-month period. In two of those visits new world-level organizations were born, serving the global evangelical movement.
I certainly did not take a 20-hour flight (each way) from Los Angeles in order to read their Sunday paper, but I did happen to be reading their Sunday paper; and I found myself immediately immersed in their own internal debate about their "national identity." It is clear that, for them, their identity is not a simple choice between, on the one hand, their traditional societies, with their outdated religions, and on the other hand, what I would describe as the boiling Western world with its raw chaos and great variety of costly open sores.
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One result is that the bright, up-beat Singaporean, whether Christian or non-Christian, is alarmed by American ethical trends.
Let me try you out. The front-page article I saw was about the dangers of Western society and specifically as those dangers were mirrored in the recent oscar Award ceremony. How did the Singaporeans look at that jolly evening of fun and games? I could not believe what I read. The paper described how the Americans receiving these awards effusively and compulsively thanked everyone for their success.... their director, their supporting actor, their dog, etc. So, what's the problem? Wasn't that nice of those award winners? Almost Asian courtesy! Not quite.
The paper pointed out something else — in good English but with a horror you could almost feel between the lines. What did they feel was wrong with this ceremony, reflecting danger for a new nation influenced by the Western world? I would have never thought of it. They watched the lengthy program, apparently with eyes getting wider every minute, listening to all these American heroes so generously grateful to others .... Their problem? No one, not a single award winner, ever mentioned his or her parents. This was the deadly problem for them.
In the same article — on the front page — they comment on the evils of U.S. school books. No, they are not worried about the absence of Creation. They are worried about what Evangelicals might call the distortion of Creation, if we could just see it. The paper describes the textbooks. It tells about the Dick and Jane stories. It does not look for subtleties evangelicals may rightly worry about. The Singapore paper points out what for us is a phenomenal blind spot — the blatant reality that in those stories are dogs, dolls, automobiles, other children ... but, you guessed it,
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no parents. They are staggered. They have a terrible fear. We should also.
Not long ago Christianity Today ran an article that complained that we are too worried about the family. The article made out that everyone's "First Family" is the church, not the natural family. Our government seems to agree that real parents don't have the right to know what is happening to their underage daughters.
Well, one fear I have for a meeting like this is that our evangelical movement, with all its merits, having achieved the unthinkable in terms of a glowing, growing world evangelical movement, would not think to draw on the wisdom resident in these diverse societies. Just in this century, mission-field evangelicals have gone from 10% of the world total to 70%. The so-called mission world is teeming with second, and third, and fourth generation evangelicals by now who could mightily contribute to our understanding here of what is or what is not an evangelical, and, what the Biblical family might look like.
So, I would challenge the promoters of this conference to look forward to the amazing contributions that would come — especially in the area of personal ethics — from overseas as people from other lands (mature, sacrificial and sensible people) could help us do something more than pool our own little monocultural perspective.
Otherwise, tragic things will happen. God did not intend for us to close our ears to our brethren overseas. Let me illustrate: I remember seeing a film recently, produced by Americans, called "The Charm." Filmed in Nairobi, it told effectively how many Christians still carry charms hidden in their clothing and
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bedding and makes clear that they should not do this. But it also seems to teach that young people who come to Christ must have enough guts to turn their parents down and say, "Look, get behind me. I'm going to be a Christian." Now, the amazing thing is that this goes over very well with Americans. In the promotion and backing of the film everyone says, "Oh, you must translate this in Swahili so it can benefit the people in Kenya and East Africa and other places where Swahili is spoken."
But, you know, I honestly believe that the people over there, the Christians overseas, are really going to be appalled by this movie. They are going to be appalled at the absence of any reference to Satan in relation to these charms. That's not even in the picture. You're not dealing with Satanic forces? Oh, yes you are! And, secondly, they will be jolted by the idea of young people just telling their parents to "shove off and let me make this decision." However they look at it, they will not look at it the way we do. We made it — we made the script, we went over there, we produced it; yet it is as un-African as you can possibly imagine.
There's something else that bothers me. This is not a criticism at all of what has been said here at the conference. Our topic is the evangelical personal ethics. The assumption that surrounds that innocent topic at our conference this year is the idea that we need to define and defend personal ethics just as we need to define and defend biblical authority. Because if we don't, what is going to happen? Well frankly, I remember the first time I looked at a capital-city newspaper in Guatemala, and noticed throughout the newspaper, three or four places every day, want ads offering jobs specifically to evangelicals. I thought, "Isn't that interesting!" Some of these ads were placed by North American
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companies which had discovered for themselves, or people in Guatemala had told them, "Hire the evangelicals." Why was this? Because the evangelicals had been taught personal ethics? Or that the Bible is true? I don't think so. The work of God in Guatemala — which is one of the most spectacular things in Latin America — is basically the impact of the Word of God and the Spirit of God, apart from any kind of formal scholarship or training. Now, none of us is especially taken by the scholasticism that followed the Reformation, but we may easily forget that it was another revolution called the "Evangelical Awakening" that made common the concept of the "evangelical experience" beyond all the rationale of all the reformers. It was that thing that happened to John Wesley. Yet some of our rationale here at this conference could just as easily describe Wesley before as after Aldersgate. I was just reading this morning in the Bible itself that Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, said: "Our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction." Now apart from that evangelical reality — which is demonstrated, not merely "affirmed" — I do not believe that any in the world would believe the Bible. I do not believe any description of ethics will produce personal ethics. It is something else. It happens. Paul goes on, ". . . just as you know what kind of men we proved to be." They proved to be something. They were not simply bringing credentials on paper; they proved to be something. Jesus was believed not because people knew his credentials, but because of the authority with which he spoke. The Bible speaks with authority.
I remember how Charles Fuller (when I was a kid in high school, we used to go down to the Long Beach Auditorium on Sunday afternoons) said,
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"Don't defend the Bible. It's a tiger; let it out!" Thus, I do not deny the truth of what has been said here; I just think this other factor should be added. Throughout the world, the actual, lived-out impact of the Bible is what authenticates it. The actual creation of demonstrated personal ethics, apart from any philosophical apparatus, is what gives credibility to the Christian movement.
The communist official interviewing a young woman in a commune in China comes to this tell-tale question: "Are you a Christian?" She looks at him and says, "Yes!" He is astonished because he cannot promote her in her job if she says "yes" to that question. She must know that. Why would she say "yes" to that question? Does she not want the job? What is wrong with this woman? And yet he talks with her for a few minutes and realizes that they need this type of person at the higher levels. And across China they say that Christians are like the jeweled-bearings in the communist movement. Even the communists need a few people they can trust! And so this woman actually gets the promotion. Later this man gets very, very sick. No one can do anything. He finally asks for this woman and her friends to come and pray for him. He is healed. He becomes a Christian. The power of God is what creates and authenticates personal ethics.
Thus, I would hope that we could affirm the fact that whatever we're doing around the world, whether people can read or not, if it is the Word of God that is being preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, that those people who are willing and able to respond to such a Gospel, will in fact discover, personally, the kind of faith of which Luther and Calvin spoke, and we will be able to see the manifestation of that new ethical reality, just as the
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evangelical awakening of the 18th century widely demonstrated. If we affirm this, then we may not have to be explaining quite so many things. When people get to the place where they insist on explanations, maybe it means that they are already trying to duck out from under the requirements of the living God! In that case no amount of reading of statements of ethics will create the missing reality.
