THEY LIGHTED A TORCH

In the dark days of the Protestant Reformation when Christians were executing each other as heretics there were a few who dared to light a torch. The "Wars of Religion", as they are called in the history books, were as disgraceful as they were bloody, and of course terribly destructive to the cause of our Lord in a world that so badly needed Him.

One evil day during this cruel period of church history was the day John Calvin sentenced Michael Servetus to be burned at the stake for his heresy. His crime was abandoning the doctrine of the Trinity. He believed the Son came into being when the preexistent Christ was united by God with the man Jesus. Christ was eternal, but not the Son. Calvin ruled therefore that he should be executed "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."

This was the time when Roman Catholics and Protestants were killing each other in bloody wars, and when both groups were drowning Anabaptists. Almost no one dared to raise a voice in protest. But there were two Protestant leaders who would not be silent. The fact that they spoke out is significant enough, but it is what they said that lighted a torch that must be passed on by every generation. This journal wishes to do its part in passing the torch along, and with the conviction that the more you shake it the brighter it burns.

Sebastian Castellio was a professor at the University of Basel, who, when he heard what Calvin had done to Servetus at Geneva, issued a treatise entitled Concerning Heretics. The gist of it was that no one knows enough about what is right and wrong to persecute another man over differences of opinion. He stressed the point that the sincerity of a conviction matters more to God than the correctness of an opinion.

Our brotherhood needs to ponder those words. There are different ways to persecute and kill a man. Calvin burned his brother at the stake. Some of us do it through slander, envy, hate, and exclusion. The Bible tells us that he who hates his brother is a murderer. but it is doubtful that many of us believe it.

The other man was Jacobus Acontius, who, still supposing that persecution might be necessary in some cases, insisted that a brother should be charged only over points declared in the scriptures to be necessary to salvation. He saw these points as being only two in number: belief in the Lord Jesus Christ and belief in justification by faith.

One historian speaks of these two men in these words: "Very few appeals had been made on behalf of liberty of conscience, and Castellio's and Acontius' were like voices crying in the wilderness."

What these men did resulted one hundred years afterward in the English Act of Toleration. They lighted a torch and it was passed along.

The principles these men appealed to are the very ones that motivate this journal. We too need the grace of toleration, for we too exclude each other over differences of opinion. Castellio's thesis that a loving, sincere heart means more to God than correctness of opinion is a basic premise of this journal. And we have said several times, as did Acontius in his dark day, that nothing should be made a test of fellowship that God has not made a test of salvation. And his belief that the acceptance of Jesus as Lord is the only basis of our fellowship has long been our premise.

These were little men whose voices must have sounded faint at first, and their names barely made the history books. But as the historian says: "Yet the issues these men raised and the arguments they provoked resulted in an agitation that runs in a direct line to the English Act of Toleration."

Their torch has passed to us. Let's shake it for awhile and pass it on!

BROTHER BENEATH THE STRANGER

We are indebted to Adlai Stevenson for this reference to "the brother beneath the stranger:' which we believe says so much. The ambassador used the phrase in a speech at Northwestern University when he said: "Can any greater task befall the university than to create this universal human capacity to work with others, whatever their divergences in culture and background, to discern the universal values of our common humanity, to see the brother beneath the stranger, to accept the truth of our solidarity beyond all the barriers of history that separate?"

That statement, so pregnant with urgency, should be heeded by the church as well as the world. We can ill afford to remain strangers to each other. To see the brother beneath the stranger is indeed an imperative.

It is a mockery that the church is willing to tolerate its own divisiveness while world leaders search diligently for the unity of mankind. Mr. Stevenson was speaking at a university that has long conducted special studies in African cultures in an effort to create more understanding between blacks and whites. The ambassador praised a professor friend of his at Northwestern who had given a lifetime of labor "in a new way to break down the hatreds which spring from prejudice."

Other educators are laying plans for a world university that will bring together all the cultures of the world in a discipline of understanding and brotherhood. Most colleges in our country are inviting students from many lands to their campuses for the purpose of discovering universal values and a common humanity. The response is gratifying. Not only are foreign students coming by the thousands, but many of our high school and college youth are going abroad. It is not unusual for our own students in this country to request a roommate who is a foreigner. Never before in human history have people been so eager to understand each other and to exchange ideas with one another. It is as if they supposed that the survival of the world depends upon it. And maybe it does.

So many of us within the brotherhood of believers are strangers to each other. An even greater tragedy is that the Lord is a stranger among his own followers. It may be only a precious few of us who really know as a friend and brother the carpenter of Nazareth. Occasionally we hear of some prominent churchmen who has conceded that if Jesus were in our midst today that he would be as strange and obnoxious to us as he was to his own age. I recall one of my own professors at Harvard expressing the conviction that if the Christ should appear in our culture he would be killed or imprisoned and he added that it would be the church that would do it!

We are not brothers together just because we attend worship at the same place or because we have been baptized and profess the same religion. The large, affluent suburban church may be bound together more by economic status and cultural interests than by their mutual love for Jesus. Just as people can live in the same block or even in the same apartment building with each other for years and yet be strangers to each other, just so people can sit with each other in the same pews at church for a long time and still not know each other. We hate to think of it being true, but surely many people who have long been husband and wife are still strangers to each other.

When men know the Lord they cannot be strangers to each other. They are soon drawn to each other just as each is drawn to the Master. To know each other as brothers men must know the Lord together. This means believing together and suffering together. "If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together" (1 Cor. 12:26).

We are told in Heb. 2:10 that the Christ was made perfect through suffering. If His work was unfinished apart from suffering, how can we expect victory without suffering? "Rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed" (1 Pet. 4:13 ). "For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict which you saw and now hear to be mine" (Phil. 1:29).

It is when we suffer together"engaged in the same conflict", as Paul puts it that we come truly to know each other. A foxhole is not only a good place to come to know God, but also a place to get acquainted with each other.

"Knowing Christ" was no simple thing with Paul, for he saw it as an experience that comes only through self-denial. "Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ" (Phil. 3:89).

The apostle goes on in verse 10 to speak of "knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection." When people share this kind of faith they know each other, not because of their close proximity in the neighborhood or in a pew, but because their hearts are drawn together in Him. They know each other because they know Him.

WHAT WILL HEAL OUR DIVISION?

What we believe to be a common error in brotherhood thinking in regard to division and its cure appears in a recent issue of The Admonisher (San Bernardino, Calif.) The editor suggests that if the support of orphanages were limited to individuals instead of being included in church budgets this would heal the division that exists in the brotherhood over this matter. The editor goes on to speak of "the sponsoring church form of cooperation" as another issue that is dividing the church.

We have long talked this way about division and its cure, and it is time that we give such notions close scrutiny. Is it true that our many divisions have been caused by views on the millennium, instrumental music, the manner in which the Lord's Supper is to be served, the dividing of a congregation into classes for Bible study, the professional minister, Bible colleges, open membership, and now orphanages and the sponsoring church? And is it true that these divisions will be healed when all these things are corrected to the satisfaction of all, assuming such a thing to be possible?

Both reason and revelation, as well as human experience, show us that the answer to both of these questions has to be no. Our divisions were not really caused by things, nor will the healing come by some magic manipulation of things, whether organs or sponsoring churches. It may sound too simple to say that people separate from each other because they want to, but there is much truth to that.

The marriage experience illustrates the point. Who really believes that poor cooking, disagreements about money or how to rear the children, or in-law problems are causes of divorce? The last one of us could file for divorce at once if we really wanted to. We would find some "cause" for the breakup. But the real cause would be a lack of love. The couple that is "knit together in love" can go through thick and thin and come out loving each other all the more.

We may readily admit that strains can be put upon the bonds that hold people together, whether those bonds be marriage or Christian brotherhood, but if the love that does the binding is strong enough the pressures can be endured. "Above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony" (Col. 3:14).

When a marriage fails, therefore, it looks as if it has to be a lack of sufficient love on someone's part. We occasionally hear of the person who takes a trifling mate back again, despite his or her gross infidelity, and we are made to wonder how he or she could bear to do it. We have to understand that love can be that strong. The prophet Hosea was trying to teach something like this. God told the prophet to take his whoring wife back again, and to love her, even as the Lord loves the people of Israel despite their unfaithfulness.

Will a brotherhood splinter itself up into all sorts of parties, one group not even speaking to the other while they debate such issues as whether they should call the others "brother" anymore, if it is really in love? If God in his holiness and goodness can keep loving us despite our waywardness, should not we who are evil find enough love in our hearts to maintain contact with our brethren with whom we differ? If Hosea could put up with a trifling wife for love's sake, can we not bear with each other when the stresses and strains are no more than differences about methods and procedures?

Is there more love in a cold and calloused world than in the church of our Lord? A service club seems better able to let love hide differences than a congregation of saints. And observe how business men manage to get along as well as they do in their partnerships. City councils, schools, lodges, and sewing clubs seem to find more peace than the holy ones of God. Something is surely wrong, and we are persuaded that the something is our own degeneracy.

We cannot agree with our California brother that our divisions will be healed with the demise of the sponsoring church or the striking of orphanages from the church budget. There would soon be something else. Love and only love is the answer. And this begins with more love for the Christ. "He who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:20). Love has its fruit, but factious separation is not part of it. Faction is in the heart, not in an organ or communion cups. Faction cannot lodge in a heart that loves.

The California editor would surely respond to this editorial with an insistence that we cannot just love our problems away. 'What do you do when digression is practiced?," they sometimes ask. The thesis seems to be that if "error" or wrongdoing (unscriptural practices) enter a congregation, one of two things must be done: get rid of the intrusion in some way or withdraw from it. But where do the scriptures uphold such a view? We know of no passage in all the Bible that teaches that disciples of Christ should separate from each other. This constant reference to "error" is a matter that needs more attention than we can give it just here, but it is enough to say that all of us are in error in some respects, except those who are exactly right about everything ( the number of which must be increasing! ). Recently I was asked if I had fellowship with brethren in error. My reply was that I hardly see how I could have fellowship with any other kind!

But to those who are so concerned about "error" in a congregation, so much so that they suppose they have to start another congregation in order to get away from it, we would ask how they handle such matters in their own homes. Do we run off from our brothers and sisters, separate ourselves from our parents, and split our home asunder because of differences? Do we not stay together and work things out the best we can?

It is only "the love of Christ which controls us" that can serve as a healing balm for our many divisive wounds (2 Cor. 5:14).