Things That Matter Most … No. 4

IN DEFENSE OF AN ERRING BROTHER

They are after Bill Banowsky of the Broadway church in Lubbock. Some of the “war bulletins” of congregations across the country have written him up for accepting an invitation from the Baptists to speak at one of their Sunday School conventions. The Gospel Guardian also has an article entitled “Banowsky Backed Down” blazing across the front page, with brother Roy E. Cogdill serving as surgeon of the operation.

A word of defense may be in order. Not that it will likely do brother Banowsky any particular good to be defended in the pages of Restoration Review, especially within Guardian circles, but there are principles involved that we think are important, and an exploration of these might do a lot of good.

Brother Cogdill’s attack upon the Lubbock minister is especially disturbing, for if our brotherhood is made to move in the direction that would please the Guardian, we are doomed to be nothing more than an arrogant sect that assumes an insipid infallibility. Some of us need to protest when a brother is castigated because he would dare to sit with Baptists in one of their conventions and say a word from the Bible. To Roy Cogdill this is “fraternizing with error,” and he calls on Banowsky to give an account of himself.

It so happens that our Lubbock brother did not actually make the speech for the Baptists. He was advertised as a featured speaker, along with information about him and his church. Then he asked to be excused. Roy wants to know why Bill backed down. They’ve invited him to give an explanation as to why he did not go on and make his speech once he had agreed to, but he only says that he doesn’t want to make a mountain out of a mole hill. So they are after him, trying like a Freudian psychologist to uncover the motive for his behavior. Roy seems to think that Bill acted out of political expediency, fearing that he might offend the Lord’s people for hobnobbing with the Baptists.

Now isn’t this some issue for the lead article of a religious journal. With the world falling apart around us we dilly-dally with this kind of thing. Even while our religious neighbors put forth noble efforts to achieve the unity for which our Lord prayed we busy ourselves by devouring each other at tiddlewinks. In a culture that is making historic strides toward better understanding among all religions, we chastise a brother who would venture so far from home as to appear on a Baptist program.

It is hard to believe that Roy Cogdill is not really a bigger person than this would suggest, and we would hope that the Guardian envisages for itself a nobler role in brotherhood history than to be trite. All the fratricide of recent years has caused brethren to be less than magnanimous. Not only have we become insensitive to the love that hides a multitude of sins, but we have become unreasonable and impassioned in our drive to impose our own opinions upon others, which we neatly equate with “the truth.”

The most important fact about Roy Cogdill’s piece on Bill Banowsky is that he is wrong. He is morally, logically, and scripturally wrong. He is morally wrong because he obstructs a brother’s urge to be free and out-going in his spiritual experiences. It is like not letting a bird sing. Nothing is more natural than for man to exchange ideas with those with whom he differs, to speak and to listen, and to grow thereby. If it is wrong to impede a child’s growth so that he is stunted, then it is wrong to force brethren into a kind of straitjacket of orthodoxy, lest they become intellectually responsible citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

Brother Cogdill is logically wrong because his conclusions simply do not follow. He speaks of association with Baptists as “having fellowship with error,” and implies that “participating in inter -denominational meetings” makes one a liberal. He gives the precious term “the truth” such slanted usage that one would suppose it had relevance to where one speaks and with whom one speaks and to whom one speaks rather than WHAT one speaks. Roy expresses no concern whatever as to what Bill might have said at the Baptist convention. The whole point is that they were Baptists. It is the old fallacy of guilt by association. If one mingles with the Baptists, then he is held responsible for everything that Baptists are supposed to believe. This would not follow even in the case of a Baptist, for one might belong to the Baptist Church without being “Baptistic” in his thinking. So our brother is grossly guilty of the fallacy of non sequitur. It simply does not follow that brother Banowsky is “fraternizing with error” because he speaks, or agrees to speak, at a Baptist convention.

According to Roy Cogdill’s logic, Bill Banowsky is already “fraternizing with error” in that he ministers to the Broadway congregation, which is a “liberal” church. The only way for Bill to escape this peril would be to leave one party and join another, Brother Cogdill’s. But this really would not solve his problem, just as it does not for Brother Cogdill, for whenever “error” shows itself one would again have to flee its presence, lest he have “fellowship with error.” The brother who is out-of-error one day might be in-error the next, so one must be constantly on guard to make sure he is not hobnobbing with errorists. And what party among us will dare to claim it is free of all error?

The only answer to the question as to whether we might have fellowship with brethren who are in error is that there is no one else with whom to have fellowship. I certainly honor both Roy Cogdill and Bill Banowsky as my brothers, and I have no trouble loving them both and sharing with them the common life; but not because they are free of error, for they are not; but because they are children of God.

Since I’ve referred to Roy’s sin against logic, we might further observe what logic does to his position. Let’s try a syllogism:

All brethren whom we may fellowship are brethren who are without error.

No brethren are without error.

Therefore, there are no brethren whom we may fellowship.

Brother Cogdill affirms the major premise in his article about brother Banowsky. I affirm the minor premise. Unless he is willing to deny the minor premise, the conclusion necessarily follows since it obeys all the rules of logic.

Now let brother Cogdill name just one brother who is without error. He cannot and he dare not. Then there is no one with whom he can have fellowship, according to his position. He is forced to admit, therefore, that we can enjoy fellowship with each other, all of us having errors of some description, without having “fellowship with error.”

This takes us to a consideration of the truth about error. Obviously errors differ in kind and intensity. Peter and Judas were both “brothers in error,” but there was an important difference. Peter erred in cursing and denying that he even knew his Lord, but he did this amidst an act of courage that was beyond that of the other disciples, who fled when Jesus was captured. Peters’ heart was right. He was overtaken by the immensity of the situation. He immediately began to cry his heart out for what he had done. This kind of error would not call for a withdrawal of fellowship, would it?

There were other errors in Peter’s thought and behavior, some serious enough to call forth Paul’s wrath, and while this may have stained the fellowship, it certainly did not nullify it. If brother Cogdill will allow as much difference between brethren today as there was between Peter and Paul, without an impairment of fellowship, then he should be willing to whistle for the dogs that he has turned loose on brother Banowsky.

There is error like Peter’s, but then there is error like Judas’ — or like that fornicator at Corinth or the heretic in Titus 3:10, or like Hymenaeus and Alexander. Peter’s heart was right; Judas’ wasn’t. The fornicator at Corinth was not merely overtaken in a trespass; he had committed his life to sin. The heretic in Titus 3:10 is described in the following verse as “perverted, sinful, and self-condemned,” and as for Hymeanaeus and Alexander it says of them that they “rejected conscience.”

Now if Bill Banowsky were fraternizing with folk like these, I would support Roy Cogdill’s criticism, though we would do better to leave it in the hands of his elders, it not being our business. Discipline is not for publishers and editors.

But surely there is a difference between those who are described in the Bible as perverted, self-condemned, and without conscience, with whom fellowship would not be possible, and such people as might be gathered at a Baptist Sunday School convention. How unfair it is for brother Cogdill to say that “having fellowship with error” is only a “mole hill” to brother Banowsky. That is as bad as saying a man doesn’t believe in helping orphans when he chooses not to support Boles Home. It may be that brother Banowsky disdains “fellowship with error” as much as brother Cogdill, but does not see that making a speech for the Baptists would involve this.

I have said that Roy was scripturally wrong as well as morally and logically, and it is here that his error is most grievous—though certainly of not the nature to cause a breach of fellowship between us, for I consider brother Cogdill a good and sincere man. But he misunderstands 2 John 9-11 when he applies it to something like Banowsky’s agreement to visit the Baptists. To say that a Baptist is necessarily one who “has gone onward and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ” and therefore “has not God,” as the passage reads, is not only to be judgmental but also to be unkind. And who is to say? Suppose a Baptist says the same thing about Roy Cogdill because he belongs to the Church of Christ?

Brother Cogdill must not allow himself to treat the Bible that way, and he should not want to treat the Baptists that way nor Bill Banowsky. He knows that John’s epistles were composed in order to combat the Gnostic heresy, and that John was writing of factious men who were bent upon destroying the body of Christ for the sake of their divisive doctrine, which was a denial of the incarnation of Christ. John was giving instructions about men who were involved in “wicked work” (verse 11). He calls them “deceivers” and says they deny that the Christ has come in the flesh (verse 7). Is brother Cogdill serious when he applies such Biblical descriptions to the Baptists?

Verse 10 says that we are not to allow such deceivers into our home. Does brother Cogdill mean that he turns Baptists from his door, not even allowing them the hospitality of his home? Does he practice the kind of religion that he would impose upon our Lubbock brother?

A critical look at this passage will lead us to some such conclusion as that reached by Prof. Barclay of Glasgow, that it was an emergency regulation designed to protect the still unconsolidated churches from the insidious influence of Gnosticism. History has it that the same writer fled from a bath-house because of the presence of a leading Gnostic heretic. Surely this passage isn’t telling me that I have to flee public places if a Baptist shows up, or that I have to bar my door to them. But this is the kind of interpretation that brother Cogdill is giving it, at least for Bill Banowsky if not for himself.

Here I sit in my office the day after having both a premillennial Church of Christ brother and a Baptist in my home the night before, along with other “faithful brethren” like Roy Cogdill and myself. We ate together, prayed together, and talked about the Lord together. That is fellowship, isn’t it, or more properly an expression of fellowship or the shared life. I agree neither with the Baptist nor the premill brother on a lot of things, just as I don’t agree with “faithful brethren” on a lot of things, but it is hard for me to see that I disobeyed 2 John 9. It is equally hard for me to see that Bill Banowsky would have, had he accepted his now notorious invitation.

Brother Cogdill is not only morally, logically and scripturally wrong, but also in contradiction to what our most respected leaders have always practiced from the inception of the Restoration Movement. The Campbells spent their lives speaking for churches of all descriptions, and Alexander Campbell opened both his college and the Bethany congregation to representatives of all the denominations. James Harding, even when debating the Baptists, made a point to recognize them as brothers. One reads of “Brother Moody” all through the Moody-Harding Debate. Raccoon John Smith chose to stay with the Baptists, so as to bring them closer to Christ, and refused to leave even when they wanted him to.

It is a cruel and abrasive doctrine that says we cannot go among our religious neighbors and carry on dialogue with them, except it be perhaps to reprove their errors. Only if one of our ministers makes sure that he “skins ‘em” is it lawful for him to venture forth. So he spends his time preaching to those who already agree with him on everything.

I believe we can do as brother Campbell did back when our Movement first began in this country. He spoke everywhere. And he did not feel obligated to berate his audience to the point that he would not be invited back — the sure criterion in some circles today. Campbell would lecture long on the great themes of the Bible, such as ‘’The Philanthropy of God.” Certainly he addressed himself to lively and controversial issues, but always in the spirit of sharing truth with equals.

Why cannot Bill Banowsky and Roy Cogdill and all the rest of us do the same thing without 2 John 9 thrown at us, as if we were doing some evil deed? I would like to encourage brother Cogdill to break free of the sectarian shell that now confines him, so that he will indeed be a free man in Christ. He is a dedicated, intelligent man, and the world that Christ died for needs him. If the Christ he loves could move in such forbidden circles that his enemies would say of Him that “He associates with sinners,” then surely Roy Cogdill can at least touch base with folk no worse than Baptists.

If he wants me to say that Baptists are “in error,” I will readily do so. But perhaps no more readily than many responsible Baptist leaders who realize that they yet have much to learn. Why cannot we in the Churches of Christ show the same attitude. We too are “in error” about some things no doubt, so let’s talk together and share together, hand in hand, in an effort to be drawn closer to each other by being drawn closer to Christ.

We have miles to travel before we rest, brother Cogdill. Let’s not leave the impression that we have arrived, waiting somewhat impatiently for the rest of the world.

 

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