MID-POINT OF REVELATION

The respected Jewish philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber, has charged that modern man believes neither in a supernatural origin of history nor in a purposive unfolding of history. God is virtually irrelevant to the affairs of everyday life and in international relations. Modern man suffers from this kind of atheism, Buber says, because he believes in no midpoint of revelation.

By this Buber means that man cannot believe that God may suddenly, as one reads the Bible with a searching heart, speak to him regarding the vital issues of contemporary life. The result is that man reads the Scriptures these days with antiquarian interest, if he reads it at all.

Does God speak to man directly and immediately in our day? Notice how I said in our day. This is precisely Buber’s point: men no longer believe in God’s living presence. God once did this or that, but He does so no longer. Religion must have been vital and exciting to Elijah or Paul, for the Spirit of God was a living reality in their lives. All He does these days is through the cold print of a book. Get full of that book and you get full of the Spirit! This is a view all to common. We may be disbelievers without realizing it.

Buber’s reference to “the midpoint of revelation” raises some critical questions for Christian faith. If we say that the Lord speaks to us as we read His word searchingly, just what do we mean by this? Is it that He gives us information supplementary to the Bible, or is it illumination of what is already written? Our hearts should leap with joy in either case! The average church member seems to be of that disposition that expects nothing in particular to happen when he reads the Bible and says his prayers. There is no midpoint of revelation (or illumination) in the lives of most of us.

If we look to the Bible and to the Lord for answers to the crucial problems facing our world, then we must believe that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Can not Jesus be as real and ‘precious, and as near, to me as He was to the woman who touched the hem of His garment? Cannot power flow forth from Him into my life with as much vitality as it did to that sick woman who struggled but to touch Him? While there may be some hazards in the view that God does indeed reveal Himself to our hearts, we should give serious thought to Dr. Buber’s invitation to the midpoint of revelation.

To this end we list a few scriptures for your careful study, trusting that you will look at them from a fresh perspective.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Rev. 3:30)

“Pray at all times in the Spirit.” (Eph. 6: 18)

‘Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.” (Eph. 1: 18)

“Let those of us who are mature be thus minded; and if in anything you are otherwise minded, God will reveal that also to you.” (Philip. 3: 15)

“All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God . . . When we cry, ‘Abba! Father! it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” (Rom. 8: 14, 16)

“How precious to me are thy thoughts, a God! How vast is the sum of them. If I would count them, they are more than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee.” (Psa. 139:17, 18)

A STRANGE SUGGESTION

I could hardly believe my eyes when I read from Father Daniel J. O’Hanlon, S. J., in America, the national Catholic weekly, the suggestion that Roman Catholics visit the services of the Pentecostals. It may be a longtime yet before I find suggestions like that in the Church of Christ press, and one might not find such in the Pentecostal publications, but I rejoice to find leaders in the Roman church thinking so freely. It is especially noteworthy that the priest thinks his people will learn how to be better Christians by getting acquainted with the Pentecostals, who have so much to offer the Christian world.

Father O’Hanlon sees the Pentecostals as “the fastest-growing group of Christians in the world.” He is especially impressed with their impact among Latin American peoples. In Chile the Pentecostals have gained more than one-half million in just a few years. There are 112 churches in Beuenos Aires alone. New York City has 250 Spanish-speaking Pentecostal churches. Four out of every five Protestants in all Latin America are Pentecostal. Even in Italy their churches have grown in number from 120 to 300 in a single decade.

The priest notes that Roman Catholics look at the Pentecostals with amusement while the Protestants keep their distance with hardly a good word to say for them. And yet they are appealing to the very ones to whom the Lord addressed Himself, the poor and the dispossessed. He sees Pentecostal religion, which manages to be pretty much the same around the world despite its loose organization, as a natural response to certain basic human needs.

He points to the security and the sense of belonging that one feels with these people. One convert to the Pentecostals told the priest: “I used to go to the Catholic Church, but there nobody knew me . . . now, in my church, they call me sister.” The Roman Catholics who visit Pentecostal services “will find much to admire and possibly a few things to imitate,” the priest insists.

The visitor will see that each new convert becomes a real part of an intimately united community, the churches being small enough that everyone knows each other by name. During the services each one feels free to speak of his most personal problems and experiences before the group. Each is encouraged to give vent to his feelings. The hymns are spontaneous as in a family songfest. He sees the vertical dimension as strong, for the people are united in the Spirit and with each other, but the horizontal dimension is weak in that their sense of responsibility to the larger human community is often stunted.

One important lesson we can all learn from the Pentecostal, the priest urges, is that it is still the poor in spirit who are open to God’s grace and to the love of other men, and these are usually not rich in this world’s goods. He sees the poverty and simplicity of the gospel hard to preserve in modern America. Unless these virtues are cultivated a cold, hard shell grows around our hearts and keeps God from us and keeps us from our brothers. He points to the fact that the pope has called for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit to restore the church to the freshness and simplicity she had at her birth.

Father O’Hanlon criticizes his own church by reference to some statements made by a visiting prelate from Chile. The visitor referred to the Roman Catholic Church in America as mechanical, external, and anonymous; it destroys intimacy and human personality. The American church is efficient, but what good is efficiency if you have to treat people as objects and machines?

O’Hanlon goes on to list other things that Roman Catholics can learn from Pentecostals: we can learn that in addressing God as Father and Christ as Saviour emotion is normal and natural, and that it finds its natural outlet in the company of our brothers in Christ. He thinks nothing would so revive his people as congregational singing such as goes on in Pentecostal churches. He doesn’t like the tag, despite its truth, that makes the main difference between Roman Catholics and Protestants that Protestants pray slow and sing fast while Catholics sing slow and pray fast.

He finds still more that his people can learn: being a Christian must set us apart from the world. While Roman Catholics need not imitate the Pentecostals in thinking that smoking and card playing are sinful, they need to come to terms with the fact that the real Christian cannot be conformed to the spirit of the world. He observes, quoting another Roman Catholic, that “the greatest obstacle preventing people from becoming Catholics is not the scandalous lives of the few, but the frightfully mediocre lives of the many.” He says the Catholics look and act like everyone else. He calls for the courage to be different.

Last of all, the priest points to the enthusiasm that the Pentecostals have for the second coming of Christ, a thought that has the power to transform our lives. He asks his people: “Does the vision of the triumphant coming of the risen Christ have any serious impact on our lives as Christians.

Father O’Hanlon, who is a professor of theology, observes that dialogue between Roman Catholics and Pentecostals is more difficult than with traditional Protestant churches because of the formidable social and cultural barriers, A parish priest has no problem making friends with the Presbyterian pastor, They may even play golf together. Their social and cultural background is similar. But not so with the Pentecostal minister, who may be a factory worker. “The Spanish-speaking minister of a small storefront church in a New York slum is not likely to join the alumni of Union Theological Seminary and the Pontifical Gregorian University for theological discussion in the pastor’s study over a glass of sherry:”

This delightful piece in America by a courageous priest is indeed heartening to those of us who are eager to see more dialogue between all disciples of Christ. Whoever heard of such a thing as a Roman priest suggesting that his people go to the Pentecostals in order to learn how to be better Christians! When I read his article to my wife she remarked, “He’s liable to get himself into trouble!” But I reminded her that it would be just as strange for one of our Church of Christ ministers to give such advice, and he would be just as likely to get himself into trouble if he did. Can you imagine one of our ministers advising his congregation to visit the Baptists or the Lutherans in order to learn more about how to be a Christian? This kind of self-criticism is rarer among us than it is among the Roman Catholics. Well, after all, if we already have all the truth and if we are it, why go looking anywhere’ else? Let them come to us and learn!

A DANGEROUS ENTERPRISE

There is occasionally that person in history that gives himself to the task of causing other people to think. It is always a dangerous enterprise. Socrates, called “the gadfly” by his irritated contemporaries, is a notable example of what happens to the man who stimulates people to think. The old philosophers urged people to “Know thyself,” believing as he did that ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.” This enterprise led to his death. He was made to drink the hemlock, not because he was a criminal, but because he disturbed the status quo. He dared to show people they were petty and superficial, that they were indeed fakes, and for this he had to be destroyed.

From the hemlock to the cross, four hundred years of history, the story is the same. The penalty for urging self-integrity is resentment and rejection. Plato was imprisoned and Aristotle went into a self-imposed exile “lest the people sin again against philosophy.” There is the roll-call of the prophets: which one was not persecuted? Jesus was crucified because he did not conform to the demands of orthodoxy. His sin was in being different. It may be all right to let people think they think, but it is fatal to cause people to become truly critical of themselves and of the institutions that look to them for support. Billy Sunday had a way of slapping his Bible across his knee and shouting, “Let us not forget that it was religion that killed Jesus!”

It is better to say that it was an institutionalized religion that killed Jesus; that is, a religion that was more concerned for preserving its parties and institutions than in cultivating the human spirit. Jesus was a threat to such institutions in that he sought to make men free, to deliver them from the machinations of man. “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” is one of the great principles of human history, but an orthodoxy that depends upon holding men’s minds in its grasp cannot tolerate freedom of thought. Jesus had to go. Orthodoxy could not stand him.

Causing men to think is indeed dangerous business. Look what happened to Bruno and Wycliffe and Galileo. Such men are the “heretics” of history. Some they burned at the stake, others they imprisoned, and still others were excommunicated. And what was their wrong? Thinking and causing others to think!

This journal attempts in its very limited way to encourage more thought among our people, and we rejoice over the signs that a few minds are being stirred. We are glad that more able men are willing to get into the act of creating thought by writing critical essays. Others are waiting in the wings, looking for the right opportunity to make their contribution. Whether or not such ones choose to make any use of this journal, we wish for them God’s richest blessings in their quest for liberty.

However each of us chooses to work for more free dialogue, it is important that we remember that the search for freedom is both tedious and difficult. It has always been so. It is the nature of orthodoxy to resist change. Partyism must oppose the open mind for the sake of its own survival. Institutionalism cannot tolerate honest criticism. All these forces --- orthodoxy, partyism, institutionalism --- make the stimulation of thought a dangerous enterprise. Orthodoxy has the assurance and conviction of being right, based upon a long tradition; partyism has the power to make one a hero or a heretic, rejecting or receiving on the grounds of one’s loyalty to the party; institutionalism has the positions, the jobs, and policy-making powers, including the ability to destroy whatever threatens it.

There is no question as to what side the money, the honors, the pulpits, and the jobs are on. The one who dares to offer honest self-criticism is certain to be cut off by these forces. He must refrain himself if he intends to get along. It is freedom in Christ that these forces cannot bear; it is the non-party mind that they cannot stand. Freedom is the undoing of these forces.

Yes, the one in quest of free thought is engaged in a dangerous enterprise. In terms of “power politics” it is not merely dangerous, bur calamitous. One’s own future in the party, not to mention his financial support, is lost. It all depends on what one wants in this life. Look what Luther could have been in the Roman hierarchy if he had played it safe. So with all those who changed the existing order. Orthodoxy would have embraced them and honored them had they so chosen. Plato issues the complaint that the very qualities that makes one an instrument for freedom likewise equips him for the allurements of the world. The reformers could have had the best jobs that orthodoxy had to offer. Thank God they did not so choose!

This enterprise that we concede to be dangerous in terms of worldly honors is really the most rewarding work in the world. God’s blessings attend the one who truly yearns for the liberty of the saints. The Holy Spirit strengthens and comforts him who dares to stand alone against the forces of bondage. It is a sweet experience to see one break free from the shackles of exclusivism, legalism, and obscurantism. Freedom is its own reward. And yet it means so much more when one realizes that God, who knows how to bless and honor as no man does or can, will crown with glories unspeakable the one who chooses the freedom that is in Christ.

“Plant your feet firmly therefore within the freedom that Christ has won for us, and do not let yourselves be caught again in the shackles of slavery.” (Gal. 5: 1)

WORD FROM PAT HARDEMAN

Many of our readers will remember Pat Hardeman, a highly promising Church of Christ minister and professor at Florida Christian College who defected to the Unitarians a few years ago. It was quite a shock to many brethren that such a bright and gifted man would walk out on us like that and go to the Unitarians, of all places!

The reactions at the time appeared to be a mixture of disbelief, chagrin, and insult, along of course with sadness. We are convinced that thousands will always be interested in brother Hardeman’s personal welfare, trusting that he is happy and busy in some worthwhile pursuit. For this reason we share the news that we have from him in a recent letter.

Pat is presently engaged as the Project Director for the Community Service Foundation in Florida, which is a private foundation helping underprivileged people. He reports that “the work is challenging and heartwarming.” He is at present working on the President’s Task Force planning the War on Poverty. He serves as consultant to this group.

While our exchange of letters did not involve discussion of religious views, Pat did volunteer the statement that “I cannot refer to ‘Churches of Christ’ as ‘our people’ as you do in your letter.”

However this may be, we join many others in wishing for Pat the very best in life, and that the Father will richly bless him and lead him to truth, wherever that may be in his life. A lot has happened to both Pat and this editor since we shared the platforms in public debates in Kansas City and Nashville. I loved Pat then and love him even more now. And I probably disagree with him more now than then!

Some of us are urging Pat to write the story of his change, telling why he did what he did, for what it might mean to those of us he left behind, and also because he was a part of an important period in our history. He is a character in one of the chapters of the Restoration Movement, and it is only proper that he should leave a legacy to that Movement on why he made the decisions that he did. We are happy to report that he is considering doing just that.

ON CHRISTIAN COLLEGES

Back in 1960 this journal published an assay by Robert R. Meyers on Church of Christ Colleges: Anything Wrong: While this issue is no longer available, we do have a few reprints of Myers’ article at ten cents each.

Now comes a lengthy review of Meyers’ essay by Prof. James D. Bales of Harding College, the college where Meyers himself taught for several years. Certain Criticisms Concerning Christian Colleges by James D. Bales, a 27-page mimeographed booklet, which is attractively done, is free for the asking (Sta. A, Searcy, Ark.), but you should send a six cent stamp to cover postage.

We welcome this response from Prof. Bales. We wrote that we regret its length made it impossible for us to run in Restoration Review, but that we could find space for a summary if he would like for us to. While brother Bales made no request for space for a reply, we think it only fair that our readers be informed of the review and be encouraged to send for it.

‘’THE WONDROUS STORY”

Wayne Poucher, nationally known radio and television personality, as well as a minister of the gospel, has begun a new radio series known as “The Wonderful Story.” Brother Poucher is widely known and respected for his performance on Lifeline from Washington, a program that comments on American culture and politics. This new program will be strictly religious, consisting of choral singing, Bible readings, excerpts from renowned spiritual leaders.

It is possible for your congregation to support Poucher’s program on your own local station. The charge is very reasonable, and the good it may do is incalculable. For further information write to Wayne Poucher at Box 310, McLean, Virginia.