No. 45, October 2000

 

THREE IDEAS THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE

 

            There are three areas of ministry to which I have devoted considerable portions of my life: teaching philosophy to college and high school students; writing and lecturing on Restoration history; teaching the Scriptures.

 

            Philosophy, Restoration history, and the Bible, that’s it. Those areas have consumed much of my attention as teacher, writer, editor. They have indeed been my passion for a lifetime. I recently challenged myself to take one idea, and one idea only, from each of these areas as representative of the whole, particularly in terms of their influence upon my own thinking.

 

            So this becomes a piece on three ideas that have substantially impacted my own thinking and helped form my own worldview. When I was reciting these ideas at breakfast with Ouida recently, she suggested that I should share with you what I was telling her. Ideas that have made a difference!

 

            The three ideas – one from philosophy, one from Restoration history, and one from the Bible – are couched in three quotations, which not only make them easier to remember but also capture the idea in but a few words. I am persuaded that these three ideas – once mastered and integrated into one’s thinking and behavior – have life-transforming power.

 

            1. “The unexamined life is not worth living” (Socrates, 399 B.C.)

 

            The Greeks in their passion for understanding gave expression to one of the greatest insights of human thought, to know thyself is the beginning of wisdom. Socrates, who might rightly be called “the father of philosophy,” put it more in terms of self-examination in saying “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I taught my students that that one line captures the essence of what philosophy is about.

 

            Self-scrutiny is as painful as it is rare. It is much easier and far more common to be critical of others. Who wants to confront the painful reality of his own ignorance? Or his selfish pride? Who wants to face up to his own prejudices? Or his unwillingness to listen to other points of view? “To thine own self be true” calls for self-criticism that outreaches most of us.

 

            But Socrates found the “Know thyself” approach to life the only way to be truly honest. While he was insisting that “I know nothing” (in view of what is to be known), the Oracle of Delphi named him the wisest man in Athens. To show the Oracle wrong, the philosopher set out to examine all the wise men of the city, only to discover that they all presumed to know when they didn’t. The Oracle was right after all, Socrates found. He was the wisest, for the others were ignorant and didn’t know it, while he realized that he was ignorant!

 

            It was this kind of “gadflying” that eventually cost Socrates his life. But even in death he had a word for those who would be wise: It is better to suffer harm than to do harm.

 

            My students and I always concluded that the unexamined life is no more worth living these days than it was in the fourth century B.C. when Socrates lived. But self-examination is possible only when one has a passion for self-improvement. Socrates saw self-improvement as an absolute moral obligation.

 

            Those with a biblical faith have an advantage in implementing this great idea, for “He who searches the heart” is there to help one who really desires to have “a humble and contrite spirit.” That may be something far different from the modern love affair with “self-esteem.”

 

            2. “The Church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one” (Thomas Campbell, 1809)

 

            I am lost for words to describe how deeply I feel about this line from our own Restoration history. I am amazed that an immigrant Presbyterian minister, locked away in an upper room while depressed over the divisions among Christians he found on the American frontier, could come up with such an electrifying truth about the church. It is a wow!

 

            In a way that line says it all: There’s only one Church of Christ upon earth and there never was but one, and by its very nature it is united and can’t be divided – anymore than Christ can be divided. That’s it. Case closed.

 

            It really blew my mind when I realized that when Thomas Campbell wrote that line he did not yet have a single congregation of what he eventually called “Church of Christ.” He did not write of the Church of Christ he would soon begin or restore, but of “the Church of Christ upon earth” – at that moment a living reality upon earth, and that church is essentially (by its nature), intentionally (in the mind of God), and constitutionally (by its many members) one!

 

            Where was that Church of Christ upon earth? The longer quotation gives Campbell’s answer: “consisting of all those in every place that profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things according to the Scripture, and that manifest the same by their tempers and conduct, and of none else; as none else can be truly and properly called Christians.”

 

            This affirms not only the unity of the church but its catholicity or universality. The church is made up of all those who are in Christ, and they are one. There may be sects many and denominations many, but only one church. No sect can be catholic, but the Church of Christ upon earth is catholic and it is made up of all God’s true children. Wherever God has a child we have a brother or sister.

 

            This is why Alexander Campbell could insist that “We are catholics,” and he eventually based his plea for unity on “the catholic rule,” which is that unity can be realized by all believers adhering to those universal (catholic) principles that all hold in common. Non-essentials or particulars may be held as private opinions, but not imposed upon others as matters of faith.

 

            It is a transforming concept, one that would have saved the church immeasurable pain had it been heeded. And it remains the only answer to our sinful divisions: Accept the Spirit’s gift of a united community of faith. My late friend Perry Gresham, then president of Bethany College, said it well when he once told me: “Church leaders around the world should gather and proclaim that the church is one, and be done with it”

 

            Yes, and as C. C. Morrison insisted, let the churches cease being churches, and all of us be simply the Body of Christ or “the Church of Christ upon earth.”

 

            3. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (Paul, 57 A.D.)

 

            But the most majestic concept of all human thought, in my estimation, is Christlikeness. This is the end of all human history. In conforming us to the likeness of Christ, God is making us after his own image. This is why “the Word became flesh,” that human eyes might see what God is like. That is why God is ever at work, through the Spirit, that we might be more and more like Christ, both now and forever.

 

            These lines from 2 Cor. 3: 18 reveal that the essence of Christian faith is more personal than doctrinal. To put it another way, doctrine points to a Person, and the idea is not that we might believe certain things but that we become like that Person. Doctrine is the means, Christ is the end.

 

            I’ll settle for that as the consummate idea of all mental and spiritual energy, to be like Jesus Christ. Not only spiritually, but ultimately corporally also, for the same Paul assures us that “we eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body” (Philip. 3:20-21).

 

            These three ideas might be seen as three keys that open vaults to a universe of ideas. To embark upon Socrates’ exploration of self opens one to the disciplines of psychology, sociology, history, anthropology, and even the health sciences. But Socrates caught the vision of it all, integrity of selfhood. When there is self-deception life cannot be authentic.

 

            Campbell’s vision of the one church points up the integrity of the Body of Christ. Division among Christians is both sinful and intolerable. Sects and denominations must yield to this inviolable truth. The church’s unity and catholicity are the only true bases for viable social religion. If the church is not essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one, then it cannot be the Body of Christ.

 

            And Paul’s idea of Christlikeness is the capstone of all that is good and excellent and noble in all human thought and endeavor. It sums up what God is up to. – Leroy

 

 

 

ON GAINING A BEACHHEAD

 

            Various metaphors are used to help us cope with life on this troubled planet. Warfare is a common one. We are in a war, even if only a few seem to realize that. Complacency in a world like ours has been likened to a woman at a garden party who was warned of a lion loose in the area. “Really?,” she said, as she took another bite of her cucumber salad.

 

            If we are going to stand our ground and fight, we have to have a beachhead. Equipment and arms too, of course – “the whole armor of God,” to use the biblical metaphor – but its the beachhead I want to talk about this time.

 

            I rest my case with the blind man in John 9, whom Jesus healed in one of the most detailed stories of Scripture. It covers an entire chapter of 41 verses. The story of the Prodigal Son by contrast is only half as long. John must have seen it as extremely significant to the Jesus story, giving it all that space. Some see it as an expansion of what he had said about being born from above in chap. 3, for that is what happened to the blind man.

 

            What impresses me is that the healed blind man, trapped in a war he never expected to fight and against all odds, found his beachhead, and he held on, never surrendering his ground. There is a lesson here for us.

 

            He had been blind all his life. How he must have longed to see! An expectation always beyond his fondest hopes – until Jesus came along. John tells us that Jesus healed him so that “the works of God should be revealed in him,” but the blind man didn’t know that. All he knew was that Jesus anointed his eyes with clay made of saliva and told him to go wash. He did so and came back seeing.

 

            This caused excitement in the community. He was known about town as the blind beggar. But now he could see. Wow!

 

            They wanted to know how his eyes were opened. He recounted what Jesus had done. No big speech, just the facts. They then took him to the Pharisees, who asked him the same question. Again he told what Jesus had done for him. The Pharisees couldn’t believe that he had been born blind, so they summoned his parents for verification.

 

            The parents confirmed that he was their son and that he was born blind, but they did not know how his eyes were opened. “Ask him,” they said, “he is of age.” They were wary because anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Christ was threatened with expulsion from the synagogue.

 

            The Pharisees then told the man, “Give God the glory! We know that this Man is a sinner.” The man held his ground: “Whether He is a sinner or not I do not know. One thing I know; that I was blind, now I see.”

 

            The Pharisees continued to complain, insisting that they were Moses’ disciples and that they didn’t know where Jesus came from. The blind man would only say, clinging to his beachhead, “He opened my eyes.”

 

            It is a tender story of a newly-found faith. The man once blind did not likely know much about theology, nor did he know hardly anything about Jesus. But he knew what Jesus had done for him: I was once blind and now I see!

 

            The blind man’s faith in Jesus took on an interesting progression. When he was first asked about what happened, he said, “A man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed, and I received sight.” Jesus was at first the man who had healed him.

 

            But when the Pharisees later asked him, “What do you say about him because he opened your eyes?,” he said, “He is a prophet.” He had time to think about it and now believed that only one who spoke and acted for God could open the eyes of the blind – a prophet.

 

            When Jesus heard that the man had been abused and cast out, he returned to his side and asked him if he believed in the Son of God (or Son of Man, the readings differ, but to the blind man the ideas would be the same). The man answered, “Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus answered, “You have both seen Him and it is He who is talking with you.”

 

            The man then confessed, “Lord, I do believe,” and he worshiped him.

 

            Jesus was first the man who had healed him. Then, on further reflection, he was a prophet. Finally, when in his presence moments longer, he saw Jesus as more than a prophet, but as the Son of God.

 

            This story teaches us that faith must have its beachhead, a place where we can stand and fight with assurance. The blind man now healed could stand his ground, even in the face of threats from ecclesiastical authorities, This one thing I know. I was blind and now I see.

 

            Such faith cannot be gainsaid. It invites no argument. When faith is so strong that it becomes knowledge, it is a faith that becomes contagious. We see it in Paul’s” I know whom I have believed, and I am fully persuaded,” and in Augustine’s “I believe, therefore I know.”

 

            Does the modern church have such beachheads of faith? Have we built on the rock that withstands the fierce assaults of a disbelieving world? If we can say, “We are sinners saved by grace,” and make it evident by our manner of life, the world will listen.

 

            If the world does not take the church seriously, it may be because there are not enough of us around who say, “This one thing I know, I was once blind and now I see, lost but now I’m found.” – Leroy

 

 

 

Between Us . . .

 

            Each year at the Lectures on Preaching ACU honors two of our senior ministers. This year it was Harold Thomas and Nokomis Yeldell. Knowing both men, under dramatically different circumstances, I wanted to be there for the occasion. Harold Thomas has suffered long for his resolve to be a free man in Christ. It was reassuring to see him at last formally honored. He has been a dear and trusted friend all these years. Brother Yeldell’s honor was also appropriate, for he too has labored valiantly for the Lord. But our story is far different. Back in 1986 in Miami he and other leaders of the black Churches of Christ excommunicated me, along with Ivory James, Jr., one of their fellow black preachers, whom they had put on trial for heresy, which consisted of having fellowship with Baptists and “not saying it right” about baptism, instrumental music, etc. When Ivory asked me to serve as his defense counsel, they called in Ira Rice, Jr. Ira and I were the only whites at the trial. Ivory and I lost, hands down. It was incredibly brutal and vicious. When I had a quiet moment with Nokomis at Abilene, holding his hand, I asked him if he remembered Miami. He did, and he responded graciously when I told him I still loved him nevertheless. We both spoke tenderly of dear brother Ivory, long since ousted by the black Churches of Christ and now in an independent work in Jacksonville, Florida. Ivory, with whom I keep in touch, recently told me that Nokomis was not as much a part of the “lynch mob” as some of the other leaders and that he was “a fine Christian gentleman.” Moreover, he told me, Nokomis was minister to a black congregation in Abilene back in the old ACC days, and was not allowed to enroll in classes because he was black. He was allowed to audit, but was told there could be no official record that he ever attended. (That wasn’t mentioned at the honors banquet!) But the ACU president recently apologized to the black community for the sickening racism of those days. Things do change! As for Ivory, he told me that at the time of the trial he figured it would take a decade or more for the black Churches of Christ to start awakening from their sectarianism. He says this has begun to happen. There is in fact a considerable number of younger black preachers, “better educated,” as Ivory describes them, who hold periodic renewal sessions, who have invited Ivory to share with them. Yes, things do change!

 

            In September I was also present for the 30th Anniversary Celebration of Integrity Magazine at the Troy (Michigan) Church of Christ. Hoy Ledbetter, the founding editor, was present, along with the editors over the three decades. I likened Integrity’s role in Churches of Christ to Socrates’ mission to ancient Athens. Both served as gadflies to their generation, and both found it risky. On Lord’s day I addressed the Troy Church of Christ on the Lordship of Christ. They are such a beautiful, Christlike congregation, biblically-rooted and mission-minded. I enjoyed the home of Bill /Henrietta Palmer. I was to stay with Joe/Geneva Jones, but Joe scared us with a spell in the hospital, and he missed the celebration, but he is OK now.

 

            Also in September I was with the Westworth Church of Christ in Ft. Worth for lectures on our heritage in history and Scripture, where Bob Mullins ministers. They have a growing realization that as they better attend their roots the better will be their fruits. At one point I read their own congregational statement of purpose as reflective of what our heritage is about. It reads: “The Westworth Church of Christ seeks to worship God by reaching our neighbors and by serving and growing through grace and knowledge as those who belong to God and one another through Jesus Christ”. They are such lovely Christians. Ouida and I had a great time in the home of Joe/Melba Campbell, who live but a few doors from the church.

 

            One of my favorite newsletters is California Letter by James Albert, which ministers especially to one-cup, non-class Churches of Christ. You will not find a more impressive effort to liberate people from sectarianism, and he has been at it for many years. In a personal letter to me recently he described the changing scene, noting that even the Internet has played a role: “Lots of clashing in the one-cup Churches of Christ right now. A new and younger guard is taking up the “fight” I have been in for years. I’m hoping and praying for positive results in the long run. The internet has been a considerable factor as the sectarian leadership can’t control it, even though they are trying to. Thanks for your leadership through the years.” I admire reformers like Jim Albert who stay put and hang in, “with all longsuffering and teaching.” Victory comes at last, for others more than self.

 

            Ouida and I will spend a hunk of October visiting with dear old friends in Maine, Wayne/Alice Newland, where I will address the Greater Portland Church of Christ, and with Stan/Dot Carpenter at their new retirement home on Cape Cod in Mass. We hope to visit old haunts around Harvard, where we once lived and studied. And then fly on to Pittsburgh to meet with still more friends who will take us to Bethany College in West Virginia for the 19th Annual Restoration Forum. I am to do Raccoon John Smith for the Forum. Raccoon never got to Bethany, so I thought I’d go there for him. But I am afraid he might not like it – too far from the boondocks of Kentucky, and a little too sophisticated! That’s supposin’ he can find the place!

 

 

 

            You’ll be fascinated by Robert Capon’s The Fingerprints of God, which tracks the “Divine Suspect” throughout history as well as Scripture. God’s fingerprints are all about us! His hidden presence is behind all history. The book also seeks out God’s fingerprints in leading thinkers throughout history. There is wisdom in this one. $17 postpaid.

 

            We can all use some good stuff on biblical interpretation, and a new book by Gordon Fee, Listening to the Spirit in the Text, provides that. Fee here lays out a way to deal with a biblical text both critically and responsibly. It is a “how to” book on approaching the Bible seriously by a noted evangelical scholar. $14 postpaid.

 

            Leonard Allen’s new publication venture, New Leaf Books, should prove to be a great blessing to Churches of Christ and others. We highly recommend the first two publications: Communings in the Sanctuary, a reprint of Communion meditations by Robert Richardson, which first appeared in the 1840s in Alexander Campbell’s Millennial Harbinger. $14 postpaid. A Church That Flies by Tim Woodroof is subtitled “A New Call to Restoration in the Churches of Christ.” It calls for some bold thinking for these changing times. $16 postpaid.

 

            I am pleased that my history book, The Stone-Campbell Movement: The Story of the American Restoration Movement, remains in print and available in its revised and expanded second edition. It tells candidly and factually what happened, not always a pretty story. We can supply you a copy at $25 postpaid.

 

            If interested in our own heritage, you might also consider Our Heritage of Unity and Fellowship by W. Carl Ketcherside and Leroy Garrett, edited by Cecil Hook. $12 postpaid.

 

            We are disposing of our old issues of Restoration Review (1958-92) at 25 copies for $10 postpaid, selected at random. For $25 we will send you one copy of every issue on hand, some 80 in number.