The Criterion of Validity
The loves we had were far too small.
— Stephen Vincent Benét
The best way to understand what the Church ought to do is to try to understand what the Church is. The partially realized or even unrealized dream is our most precious possession because it shows us where we fail and helps us, accordingly, to see the direction in which we ought to be moving. In the preceding chapters we have sought to depict important features of the essential Church, but something of even greater importance has been omitted. We have stressed the idea of a witnessing society which generates great propulsive power, and this the Church has always been in its periods of health, but the idea so stated is manifestly incomplete. After all, the Communist religion involves a fellowship, elicits unquestioning dedication, upholds its position by enduring martyrdom, and is remarkably successful in penetrating many parts of the social order. Why, then, from the Christian point of view, is it not adequate? Any attempt to answer this question takes us to the very center of the Christian faith, including the redemptive society which we call the Church.
The marks of a true Church, as against spurious versions,
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have attracted the attention of Christian thinkers from the beginning. The necessity of such consideration is obvious to us when we think how easy it is to let a religion become debased. All students of the history of religion are conscious of developments which amount to genuine perversion. The New Testament Epistles refer to early deviations, and even Christ Himself predicted that many would fall away (Matthew 24:10). Though the attempts to draw a line of authenticity have been numerous in Christian history, there are, today, six major efforts to present a single criterion of validity for a true Church of Christ. In each case, all who fail to meet the particular criterion are ruled out as not meeting the full conditions of membership.
One familiar answer to the question of the criterion of validity is communion with, or subservience to, the Bishop of Rome. By this arbitrary standard, if a Church has this human connection it is a valid Church, and if it does not it is heretical or lacking in genuineness. This answer is fundamentally simple, and easily understood, but suffers from the vital defect that it has no support whatever from the known words of Christ or from His earliest followers. The idea of a pope is simply not a New Testament idea at all.1 The notion that one group has a spiritual monopoly represents a fundamental break with the spirit of Christ, insofar as that is known by His recorded words. We may, therefore, dismiss it.
In like manner we must reject the test of Apostolic Succession, in the sense that an unbroken laying on of hands from bishop to bishop through the years is some sort of guarantee. The fact that one man touches the body of another man is obviously trivial and one which gives no guarantee whatever of the continuation of a spirit. When people
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depart from Christ it is not difficult to depart farther and farther, while priding themselves on a supposed continuity. Each step may be small, but the accumulated divergence may be tremendous. What is far more important than organizational continuity is the integrity which can come from drinking again at the Source. We know that men can be true ministers of Christ without sacerdotal ordination because they actually do minister, and they demonstrate their genuineness by their fruits.
A third test is that of Biblical literalism, according to which acceptance of every word of our present Bible is seen as the criterion of a true Church. We can see the falsity of this test at once when we realize that it was not even a possible one in the early Church because many of the books, to which adherence is now required, had not yet been written. Absolute Biblical literalism, while upheld as a dogma by some, is in fact impossible and is never seen in practice. Subjective interpretations are always added to force consistency. Even an appearance of consistency is not possible except by virtue of ingenious dodging, which some denominations have made into an art. Some of the churches in which this test is upheld actually have women speakers. They try to avoid the embarrassment of Paul's admonition that women should keep silence in the churches, by saying that the Apostle referred only to a local situation, but when they adopt this facile solution of their problem, they have to forget the fact that Paul plainly universalized his injunction (1 Corinthians 14:33 ff.).
A fourth familiar test of a true Church is freedom from certain personal habits such as dancing or theatergoing. Though the emphasis on this criterion is well intentioned, it means a return to a pre-Christian or Pharisaic position. We ought to make our lives as virtuous as we can make them, but it is perfectly clear that the Church, as Christ envisaged
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it, is not limited to those who are primarily concerned with keeping their own skirts clean. The author of the book of James could write about the ideal of keeping oneself "unstained from the world" (1:27), but there is no counterpart of this Puritan ideal in the recorded teachings of Jesus or in the reputation which Jesus gained. We are told that He deliberately risked what looked like stain by His association with such people as prostitutes. Christ understood the danger, for He knew that the popular gossip was "Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!" (Luke 7:34). In the light of this evidence we conclude that the true Church of Jesus Christ can never be limited to the righteous; it is for those who are broken and who know that they are broken. "I came," He said, "not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:32).
A fifth proposal concerning the criterion of validity in the Church is that of a creedal formulation. Adherence to a particular creed, whether the Apostle's Creed or the Nicene Creed or some other, is frequently proposed as the crucial test, with the consequent exclusion of many. No serious Christian can consider these great creeds without reverent respect, and only the confused suppose that belief is unimportant, but when we make the creedal test the crucial one we distort the Christian picture completely. It is not enough — nor even necessary — to say "Lord, Lord." Every human creed is inadequate, not only because it tends to harden what ought to be fluid and living, but, what is worse, because it fails to catch the full significance of commitment.2
A sixth proposal of a criterion is ceremonial. Strange as it may appear, there are Christians who hold that a person is not really a member of Christ's Church unless he has submitted to some particular ceremony. There is only one
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true Church and theirs is it! That such arrogance is possible among persons who claim to be loyal followers of Christ is almost unbelievable, but it occurs, and it seems to be able to elicit remarkable zeal. If this phenomenon were to appear in some other faith we should not be so surprised, but it actually appears in the supposed effort to follow Christ who said that what is outside a man is insignificant (Mark 7:15). Christ clearly broke with every emphasis on holiness by means of foods or anything of an external nature. He welcomed to His eternal fellowship one of the thieves on the cross, when there was not even the possibility of any kind of ceremonial performance. Christ was concerned with reality and with nothing else, but there are always people who cannot rise to this level. They are still pre-Christian in their assumption that membership in Christ's true Church is limited by external performance. It is strange that they are not profoundly disturbed by the fact that Christ did not baptize and that some of His references to baptism, far from indicating an inflexible mode, seem to be highly spiritual. How else can they understand His haunting words, "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!" (Luke 12:50). Whatever He meant, He did not mean His baptism by John in the Jordan River, for that was already accomplished.
Loyalty to Christ does not mean that we reject those who still participate in ceremonial rites. Rites do not hurt people, and they may even help. Furthermore, mere absence of rites is no guarantee of spirituality or of Christian validity. It is neither circumcision nor lack of circumcision that counts, but a new creation in Christ (Galatians 6:15). What we must always oppose is the position of one who makes his own understanding of a rite the necessary door for all other men. He is adopting a means of exclusion for which there is no rational defense.
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In the light of all of these insupportable criteria, we must beware at all points of the heresy of simplification, which is common to all of the six efforts to uphold a single criterion. Though they seem very different, they really have much in common. The failure of each is the failure to see the richness and the variety of the fellowship which the Church of Jesus Christ always exhibits when it stays close to its Source. The central error of each of the six marks is that each one is really too easy. There is no hope for the contemporary Church unless it is able to resist the temptation to oversimplification which makes a small and easily distinguishable mark the crucial one. The true Church is bigger and deeper than we know.
It is paradoxical, indeed, that each of the criteria which is popularly supported is concerned with something which Christ did not propose, while the criterion which He did propose seems not to have become the battle cry of any organized group. His own piercing words are: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). This sentence must not be taken alone, for Christ gave other commandments, such as the injunction to witness, but no sincere Christian can fail to take it seriously. It may not indicate the sufficiency of love, but it at least indicates the necessity of love. We know, then, whatever else we know, that the unloving fellowship is an heretical fellowship, so far as Christianity is concerned. How strange, in the light of the Biblical insistence on love as the principal thing, that we have emphasized it so little in comparison with other elements. We ask what Presbyterians believe, but we seldom ask how Presbyterians love. Heresy trials do not seem to be conducted with 1 Corinthians 13:13 in mind. Two of the Christian thinkers who have helped most, in the present century, to restore the balance
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of thought about the nature of the true Church are W.A. Visser't Hooft and J.H. Oldham, both of whom had much to do with the formation of the World Council of Churches. They were especially helpful when they combined their insights by writing as joint authors. Their conclusion, as seen in the following sentences, ought to have the respectful attention of all who care about this crucial subject:
The Church has rightly laid stress on faith, since it is only by our personal response to God's personal call that we can be redeemed to a new life. But it has in a far less degree emphasized the other truth, that the new life into which we are called and admitted is a life of community and love. The impression which the Church has too often conveyed to the world is that to be a Christian means primarily to hold certain doctrinal beliefs. Only through the lives of some of its saints and a relatively small proportion of its humbler and unknown members has it given to the outside world occasion to suppose that to be a Christian is to be redeemed into a new sphere of being in which love and freedom reign.3
The nature of a true Christian society or Church is so rich that it cannot be fully expressed in a single idea. Love is not the only mark — it is merely the final mark. Though the marks of the true Church are many, a particular mark may, with logical consistency, be recognized as more important than the others. When we truly become a Company of Christ's Committed Ones we exhibit a number of features which fit together into a total complex of greater and lesser features. In such a society there is commitment, and enlistment, and witness, and penetration of common life, and caring, but the greatest of these is caring. The Church of Jesus Christ is not merely a society of love, for love is conceivable
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in any historical tradition, but if the Church is genuine, it must always involve love as the most important single attribute.
Commitment, then, is not sufficient; we must be committed in a particular way. Our commitment is outside the spirit of Christ if it involves an effort to ride over other men, to use them for our cause, or to see anything else as more important than the individual welfare of individual persons. For the Christian faith, when it understands itself, there is only one absolute, and that absolute is the genuine caring which is expressed in the Greek word agape.
We know something when we know that, whatever the problem, we must always be truly loving. We do not know, in our finitude, which of various possible pathways is the really loving one, but the effort to discover it is an immense help. While the demand of love is always the major premise, we must use our common sense and reason and experience to know what the minor premise may be. I know I must be loving to the beggar who approaches me, but only reason can help me to know whether it is more loving to give him money or to withhold it and to help in some other way. In short, the recognition of the Christian absolute, while it gives us a firm base in principle, does not relieve us of the necessity of hard thinking.
In many ways the recognition that love is the final test of orthodoxy is shocking. It means that we may be outside the true fellowship of Christ even when we are ardent workers for some social improvement, if our crusade is carried on in an unloving way. Thus it is possible to have a burning zeal for race equality or for world peace that is really alien to Christ, provided the zeal allows us to be unloving or unfair to those who happen to differ from us on these particular issues. The paradox of the unloving pacifist, who condemns all of those in the armed forces and maligns
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his opponents, is one which we sometimes see in contemporary experience. It may be no worse than many other features of our religious life, but it stands out because the inconsistency of the position is so glaring. Christian pacifism is a great and needed witness, but whenever it is separated from the love of Christ it seems inevitably to become cruel and bitter. The crusade for racial justice, with absolute insistence upon equality of opportunity and equal justice, is one of the most urgent matters in the life of modern man, but if it is separated from love, even the demand for justice is debased. A Negro's hatred of white people, while understandable, is really no better than a white man's contempt for black people. The task of the Church is to be a continual reminder of what the central matter is. The need of this is particularly clear in the current crusade of militant anticommunism. The leaders of this movement are right in opposing the spread of the Communist conspiracy, but the Church must refuse to be their protective front when they press their crusade in unloving ways, including the maligning of those with excellent reputations.
There is no reason to suppose that there was a single pattern of organization in the life of the early Church or a single way of worship, but, whatever the variety, there was a recurring emphasis upon the mutual love of the brethren. The glorious poem on love, in the sense of caring, which is imbedded in 1 Corinthians 13 is indeed the highest point, but it stands as one part of a mountain range and not as a single isolated peak. The first Christians were sometimes divisive, sometimes snobbish, sometimes deceitful, but they had no doubt concerning the nature of the standard from which they were departing. It was the standard of a loving concern for one another and for all men, in the sense of a burning desire for the welfare of the other person. Though most of the early Christians were glaringly imperfect, the affectionate
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quality of their fellowship was actually noted by the outside world.
We know that the early Christians were sinful men and women, because the New Testament provides much evidence concerning the details of their sin, but we also know the almost miraculous effect of their concern for one another. The combinations of the term "fellow" are really very impressive, especially in the Epistles. In the one short book of Philemon we find "fellow worker," "fellow soldier," and "fellow prisoner." In Philippians there is the potent term "yokefellow," as well as numerous expressions of affection and thankfulness for "partnership in the gospel" (1:5). The glorious fellowship, so vividly described in Acts, seems actually to have been infectious and to have carried over from the Jerusalem group to those who lived in Asia Minor and in Greece. We are today almost envious when we read how our spiritual ancestors "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers" (2:42). The word "fellowship" may be somewhat debased now, but then it was not.
The most remarkable single feature of the mutual concern of the New Testament fellowship — its financial aspect — led to what has been rightly termed "unlimited liability among the members." The affection did not find its chief expression in words, though words here as elsewhere were important, but carried over to the extent that the members of the redemptive fellowship distributed to all, "as any had need" (Acts 2:45). One of the reasons for some of the abundant travel of the early Christian leaders was the collection, transfer, and delivery of financial help from one little group to an even more needy group.4 What was called a "contribution for the saints" was the original form of subsequent Christian giving. It arose, almost spontaneously, as a direct result of the potent
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concern for one another which the Christian fellowship involved.
If our only evidence of the early Christian concern for one another were that found in the New Testament it would be very impressive, but it is supplemented by many other sources. Few experiences would be more helpful to the contemporary Christian who sincerely wants to know what a Church might be, than a reading or a rereading of Harnack's great chapter "The Gospel of Love and Charity" in his The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries. "The new language on the lips of Christians," he writes, "was the language of love." Then he goes on to say, "But it was more than a language, it was a thing of power and action. The Christians really considered themselves brothers and sisters and their actions corresponded to this belief."5
The evidence of love as the ultimate mark and test of the Christian community comes from many post-Biblical sources. One of the most moving of all testimonies is Tertullian's:
It is our care for the helpless, our practice of lovingkindness, that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. "Only look," they say, "look how they love one another . . . Look how they are prepared to die for one another."6
Justin Martyr supplements this witness, in the conclusion of his description of Christian worship, as follows:
Those who are well-to-do and willing, give as they choose, each as he himself purposes; the collection is then deposited with the president, who succours orphans, widows, those who are in want owing to sickness or any other cause, those who are in prison, and strangers who are on a journey.7
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As we look at the record, we see that the Christians of the early centuries of our era admitted both their failure and their standard. They accepted at its face value the declaration that the crucial, though not the sole, mark of the new society Christ founded — and the one which most clearly differentiated it from all others — was that its members were not masters, but servants. Though they were themselves inadequate and sinful men and women, they freely recognized that the Church exists in order to witness, and that the witness is meant to be a demonstration of the right relation of men with one another.
It must never be supposed that in a true Church the acceptance of responsibility is limited to fellow members. Indeed, in all of the great periods of vitality, the Church has been deeply concerned for the welfare of those who are not adherents at all. Love of the brethren is not inconsistent with love of the others, and a remarkable degree of outgoing affection is sometimes demonstrated. The worst cynic could hardly fail to be moved if he could go to one of the contemporary Christian fellowships, which he affects to despise, and watch a collection for people on another continent, not one of whom has ever been seen by the givers and whose only appeal to the givers is that they are children of a common Father, made equally in His image. Even where the fires of Christian commitment seem to have burned very low, there is still enough of a remaining emphasis on "inasmuch as ye did it to the least of these, my brethren" that the appeal for the needy has powerful unseen backing in even the most modest Christian congregation.
Part of our study of Christian history ought to be devoted not to doctrinal disputes, creedal formulations, heresies, and schisms, but to the finest examples of Christian love. By contemplating these we may be able to see
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what the standard from which we deviate really is, and we may have encouragement to go deeper. Thus, as we study the medieval Church and its doctrines, we must be sure to study The Little Flowers of St. Francis, because in these naive and delightful stories we can catch some vision of what love of the brethren can be. Since there is no fixed limit to human ability, the only way in which we can know what is possible is to see what has been. Christianity has survived miraculously, in the midst of terrible dangers, chiefly because it has found concrete embodiment in human lives of persuasive quality, and the most persuasive of all qualities is that of genuine affection. One demonstration is worth a hundred arguments, for though doctrines may be impressive, it is experience that is convincing.
Among the great demonstrations one that is very convincing, though little known or studied, is that reported by Robert Barclay of Scotland. In his book Truth Triumphant Barclay describes the really exciting fellowship of imprisoned Christians in Aberdeen throughout the winter of 1677. Since the prison, or "Tolbooth," is still standing, we can picture the horror of the setting as the men and women sat in rooms lit only by narrow slits in heavy stone, their chains imbedded in the walls. What is wonderful is that the quality of affection which the imprisoned persons experienced in that dreadful winter had nothing whatever in common with the physical setting. We can still read with admiration and wonder the words Barclay wrote in March 1677 in Aberdeen Prison and to which he gave the inspiring title "Universal Love Considered."8
Once we reject the easier tests of validity we are better prepared to seek the changes necessary to make the contemporary Church a genuine one. As we look humbly for help in seeing the vision, we soon learn that it can come from
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unexpected and unconventional quarters. For example, we can receive valuable assistance from Alcoholics Anonymous. This association, which has exhibited undiminished vitality for more than a quarter of a century, is really a living witness to what loving fellowship can be and, unintentionally, a judgment upon the Church as a whole. How strange that it took those who were struggling with compulsive drinking to remind us of something which most of the existent Church had forgotten!
The many groups called A.A. teach us that the deepest fellowship can be based upon a sense of tragic need, and that the vitality of the fellowship is maintained by unending service to one another. Every member is constantly on call, day and night; a new member is telephoned and visited every day for a long period because the danger of slipping is always present, particularly in the trial period. Each member who feels the approach of danger in his own life immediately tries to aid another and, in his concern for the other person, his own problem is solved. In his effort to help, he tends to forget his own gnawing urge; his problem is solved by a glorious application of the principle of indirection. All who are in Alcoholics Anonymous set great store by the Twelve Steps, but they emphasize the final step which reads: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs." Here is something very close to the kingdom, for it combines both witness and missionary zeal and redemptive love. It must be noted that all of the Twelve Steps are listed not as admonitions of what men ought to do, but rather as factual accounts of what has been done. This group of principles is not a counsel of perfection but a record of achievement.
While the main contribution to the idea of the Church which Alcoholics Anonymous provides is that of the fellowship
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of mutual caring, this is not its only contribution. Another, of only slightly less importance, is the insistence on anonymity. Individual notoriety and fame are simply no part of the movement. Here the contrast with the existent Church is sharp and terrible, for almost every branch of the contemporary Church has its dignitaries. The Church in general sets great store by titles, and clergymen are perhaps more open to the dangers of egocentric pride than are members of other professions. Clergymen are one professional group in which the existence of the receiving line of complimentary fans is an accepted practice. One can hardly look at the church page of a metropolitan newspaper on any Saturday without embarrassment and shame, because one is forced to face the fact that the contemporary Church often exhibits the opposite of the true humility which is anonymity. In nearly every city the cult of personal leadership seems to be as blatant in Christian circles as in any others. We are like the worldly societies against which Christ warned specifically. "You know," He said, "that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you" (Matthew 20:25-26). These trenchant words can apply just as much to the authority of a local pastor concerned with his own prestige as to papal authority.
Nothing could be more effective, in the effort to rediscover the true pattern of the Church as a loving community, than a serious acceptance of the lesson of the washing of the feet of the disciples. It is hard to understand why nearly all kinds of Christians have tried to be very careful to keep up a perpetual observance of the Last Supper, while only a few groups have been equally concerned with foot washing. The paradox is the greater when we reflect upon the fact that the command of Christ about foot washing is far less equivocal than is any supposed command about the Eucharist.
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Some modern Christians are shocked when they first realize that the Four Gospels do not, at any point, represent Christ as commanding a perpetual performance of the Last Supper. The one supposed command (Luke 22:20) does not appear in the best texts. The Revised Standard Version prints the rejected sentence only in a footnote. The Fourth Gospel represents Christ as making no emphasis at all upon the acted parable of bread and wine but, instead, places the entire stress on the washing of the feet.
The present necessity is not that of the establishment of the practice of ceremonial foot washing, though we may be glad that the Brethren and a few others make this particular witness; the point now is the attempt to recover in our Christian fellowship the reality of which the foot washing is a powerful symbol. We need to contemplate the present applicability of an act which combines humility and loving service, which renounces unequivocally all struggles for prestige and pre-eminence, and which indicates the radical nature of the break that must be exhibited between the standards of the Church and the standards of the world.
All through our nearly two thousand years of Christian experience there have been recurrent attempts of men and women, who have caught a glimpse of the radical nature of the Christian demand, to answer it by separation from the world. The easiest way to accept the principle of unlimited liability for one another in a Christian society is to retire from the world and to create a little isolated community where all belongs to all. Herein lies the current appeal of semimonastic communities such as the Bruderhof. While it is not hard to see the appeal of these experiments to those who feel the pull of the Christian dream, we must also understand the dangers involved in them. Indeed, the dangers are so great that they seem to outweigh any possible advantages of such experiments in community living. Their
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basic evil, from the Christian point of view, is that such societies deliberately take their leaven out of the very lump where it is so sorely needed. It is far better to make the Church a society which is in the world, demonstrating principles of mutual liability which are in marked contrast to the world.
How far should a Church go in the direction of acceptance of mutual responsibility? Should a gifted youth of the Church, whose family is in poverty, be sent to college at the expense of his fellow members? Should the Church match modern business corporations in providing for old age when there is no other provision? Should a Christian couple be able to face the possibility of their sudden death with the calm assurance that the Church of which they are a part will support their orphaned children up to maturity? Unless we know answers to questions as specific as these we do not know very much about the quality of love which the Christian society is meant to exhibit in concrete practice. General statements about love are not adequate.
It has been by a fine instinct, on the part of Christians in various generations, that we have adopted so many names in which the stress has been on love rather than on mere doctrine. Among the names known to all are "Brethren of the Common Life," "Brethren in Christ," "United Brethren," "Society of Brothers," and "Religious Society of Friends." It is thrilling to know that some of the finest fellowships have been formed on the basis of common need, such as those of divorced persons, of ex-prisoners, of released mental patients, and of parents of subnormal children. Wherever there is human tragedy there is a chance for real koinonia, the New Testament word for the fellowship of caring. If the Church understands its character, and therefore its business, it will always watch for ways in which affection based upon common need can become redemptive. It is obvious that we
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have merely scratched the surface in such undertakings. We have around us many new frontiers, but the most unexplored of all frontiers is that of loving fellowship. Too often the existent Church seems only to be a caricature of what a truly caring society would be. But when we have even a brief glimpse of this largely unexplored land we are touched at the deepest point and recognize that this is where true life is to be found.
What the contemporary Church must consider carefully is not that it must be a loving fellowship, but how it can be such a fellowship. We know that if we are to be worthy of our calling we must go beyond the stiff formality of Sunday morning worship, however valuable that may be, and also beyond the rather thin cordiality of the secular luncheon club or its churchly counterparts. One solution is the formation of small groups — though they, like any human effort, can fail. It is sometimes forgotten that the Sunday School, which is still a potent factor, particularly in certain regions, provides a structure for innumerable small fellowships which are sometimes genuine. Thus the young adult class can become an actual Christian unit, not only engaging in a careful study of the Prophets of Israel or some similar topic, but also performing in the fellowship of caring. A unit of this kind may perform untold acts of mercy of which the cautious critic tends to be wholly ignorant.
At no point is the need of redemptive fellowship more pressing than in connection with the problem of race. In countless towns and cities white people and colored people, though often sharing a common Lord, live in worlds as far apart as if they were on different continents. They have different social groups, different clubs, different places for vacations, different places of worship. They must be brought together so that they can know each other, not merely in the already accepted pattern of employer and employee, where
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the ground rules are well known, but in situations in which the chief consideration is personal rather than occupational. There ought to be relations in which, instead of a sharp distinction between benefactor and recipient, there is a mutual sharing. Where is this to be found?
The poor maligned society, the Church, really offers our best hope for the kind of "meeting" without which the race question will not be solved at all. It cannot be solved merely on a political basis. It may, eventually, be solved merely on a political basis. It may, eventually, be solved on a religious basis, provided we truly accept the Judeo-Christian affirmation that God is the Father of all and accepts all with equal love and care. We do not need to assert that all people have equal powers or capabilities; all that we need to assert is that, in the light of Christ, all people are equally valued by the Living God. Our ultimate fellowship is therefore derivative.
Too often people suppose, when we talk about a Christian approach to the race problem, that we refer primarily to Negro people attending "white" church services. The fact that this always comes up in discussion is only one more indication of our tendency to think of Sunday morning religion as the heart of Christianity, which it emphatically is not. Indeed, it is one of the major emphases of this book that our present satisfaction with churchgoing is a sign of weakness rather than of strength. Naturally we must hold that all places of worship, in Christ's name, must be open to all seekers, but many Negroes may not want to attend public worship with a predominantly white congregation. Why should they? Even if they do attend, this does not necessarily deepen the fellowship. Fellowship does not arise primarily from the fact that people happen to sit on the same benches.
Something far more important than interracial worship is the formation of interracial fellowship groups. These can
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be formed anywhere, even in the deepest South, and they can be revolutionary in their effect. They should not be organized for the discussion of the race question but for human "meeting." A group composed equally of Americans of African ancestry and Americans of European ancestry can gather to pray, to study, to witness, to share their problems, to plan for the betterment of the world around them. In this way people who have lived for years in the same city as strangers, even though employed in the same places, may become actual friends. Their motto may be the words of Christ when He said, "No longer do I call you servants . . .; but I have called you friends" (John 15:15).
One of the most redemptive of all moves is that in which we make a real effort to see persons as persons — and not as our servants or masters or teachers or students or steppingstones for our own progress. The real world is the personal world, and this is where all of the major problems are to be found. It is not really very hard to deal with mere things — partly because they stay put, partly because they are not free, but chiefly because they do not sin. Things are not complicated by pride and struggle for power and the desire to impress, but persons are; and they are, regardless of skin pigmentation. The real world of our human experience is the complex world of salesmen, waiters, lawyers, doctors, newscasters, advertisers, writers, laborers, bus riders, all trying to get along, all trying to get ahead, and all concerned, by necessity, with one another, whether they like it that way or not. Each makes a difference to every other person in his orbit. In a sense, each is a physician to somebody; each is a salesman; each is a pastor and teacher. This complex world of human relations is the world in which the life of the Church is tested. If it does not win here, what it does anywhere else is of little significance.
The reason for the crucial importance of love is the importance
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of persons. They provide us with our major joys as well as our major frustrations and our major problems. The world of matter is intrinsically passive, but in a world of persons there are always surprises. The laboratory experiment will work if the conditions are carefully established, but it is not so with persons. We must love, but we are never certain of love in return, for we can never know in advance how the other person will respond. But however difficult the problems of personality may be, it is in the network of personal relations that reality is most fully revealed to us. This is why love, rightly understood as unconditional caring, is truly the greatest thing in the world. We try to be brilliant, but in our best moments we know that there is something better than brilliance, and we know what it is.
There are millions of people waiting for the demonstration of love in action, if only they can find where it is. This is where we need to place the emphasis today, and this is where we need a new theology. The now old-fashioned neoorthodoxy was needed once, but it has played its role. Whatever antidote to liberal naivete about human nature was required has been provided. All of us now believe in the universality of human sin; that point no longer needs to be made. Now, in order to keep the balance which loyalty to truth requires, it is wise to recognize that in the human heart, in addition to greed and pride, there is a vast yearning to give ourselves to what is really worthy. The best contemporary spokesman for this new antidote is that continually vital man, Albert Schweitzer:
Our humanity is by no means so materialistic as foolish talk is continually asserting it to be. Judging by what I have learnt about men and women, I am convinced that there is far more in them of idealist will-power than ever comes to the surface of the world. Just as the water of the streams we see is small in amount compared to that which flows underground, so the
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idealism which becomes visible is small in amount compared with what men and women bear locked in their hearts, unreleased or scarcely released. To unbind what is bound, to bring the underground waters to the surface: mankind is waiting and longing for such as can do that.9
It is conceivable that if the Church declines in influence there may still be some philanthropy. Indeed, it existed in the classic pre-Christian society, and it might continue to exist for a while if the Christian roots of philanthropy should wither, but the chance of the emphasis on love and charity being as great without the inspiration of the Church is truly slight. Often, people in the modern world forget the spiritual origin of their own compassion or that of others. Many, for example, greatly admire the medical work of Albert Schweitzer without fully recognizing the Christian character of his motivation. Schweitzer is in Africa because he is in the Company of the Committed and for no other reason. He has told us in his autobiographical books, particularly in On the Edge of the Primeval Forest, exactly what the nature of his motivation was and is. He is in Africa because he is an emissary of Jesus Christ and a member of Christ's task force. He might have gone for some other reason, but the truth is that he did not.
Many who know by heart the words of John Donne beginning "no man is an island" and reaching a climax with "send not to ask for whom the bell tolls" fail to realize that these powerful words are part of a sermon, but they thereby miss much of the point. The truncated form of the expression, which is the title of Hemingway's novel, is arresting, but it is not wholly meaningful except in the full Christian setting which the gifted Donne knew how to provide. In any case, it is true that the kind of human concern Donne's words
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express is more likely to arise from the ongoing life of the Church than from any other source. It is from within the life of the Church that the idea of the fellowship of those who bear the mark of pain has arisen.
We have, today, a great deal of philanthropy which is financed and directed by states or cities, but that does not make the continuing witness of the Christian company unnecessary. There are at least two things which members of Christian congregations should do about works of compassion. In the first place, members should move, whenever possible, into public philanthropic work in order to help keep it from becoming increasingly less personal and more bureaucratic. In the second place, Christians, who know what the criterion of validity is, must always be working on the growing edge, starting new experiments. Later the state or city may take over, but often the Church must do the pioneer work, and then let go.
Somewhere in the world there should be a society consciously and deliberately devoted to the task of seeing how love can be made real and demonstrating love in practice. Unfortunately, there is really only one candidate for this task. If God, as we believe, is truly revealed in the life of Christ, the most important thing to Him is the creation of centers of loving fellowship, which in turn infect the world. Whether the world can be redeemed in this way we do not know, but it is at least clear that there is no other way.
1. The frequent attempts to base it upon Matthew 16:18 cannot survive careful examination or logical analysis.
2. The Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed both involve a partial element of commitment by the use of "I believe in."
3. W. A. Visser't Hooft and J.H. Oldham, The Church and Its Function in Society (Chicago: Willett-Clark, 1937), pp. 146-47.
4. See 1 Corinthians 16:1-4 and Acts 24:17
5. Adolf Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2nd ed., 1908), Vol. I, p. 149.
6. Tertullian, Apolog. xxxix.
7. Justin, Apolog. c. lxvii.
8. Robert Barclay, Truth Triumphant, Vol. III, pp. 183 ff.
9. Out of My Life and Thought (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1933), p. 114.
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