THE MYTH OF THE AUTHORITY OF SILENCE
W. Carl Ketcherside

Have you ever really thought what a gruesome image we project to the rest of the religious world? What a reflection of strife, division and the party spirit they must see when they gaze at us. The only thing that operates in our favor is not our adherence to the word of God but their own fragmentation. It is hard to point the finger of scorn at someone with a crooked leg when neither of your own is track straight. It is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. But the thing that makes us look bad is that we began as a movement to unite the Christians in all of the sects, and we have ended up with more sects than anyone else on the current world scene.

What is our problem? It is evident that some of the principles upon which we operate are termite-ridden and worm-eaten. So long as we keep trumpeting them we will proliferate our parties. We may pick up a few dissatisfied strays who will pay lip service to what we advocate, but thinking people will pass us by like a freight train does a tramp. And I am bold enough to say that one of our weaknesses is the perpetuation of the myth of the authority of silence.

We claim authority from two sources. One is what God said. The other is from what He did not say. I buy the first. I stake my hope of eternal life upon it. But the second is by nature divisive. It undoes the first. We can unite every belief in the apostolic testimony upon the first. But having united them we will scatter them into fragments upon the basis of the second. We must either divest ourselves of this idea or throw in the towel and cease declaiming that we are working to unite all believers. Actually we are working to divide them. Let me tell you why I affirm this.

1. The theory is based on a false assumption. Those who hold it operate on the conjecture that God laid down a meticulous pattern for the believers in the first century. The word “meticulous” is from the Latin word for fear. There is inspired within everyone an unhealthful fear of deviating in the minutest respect. This provides some grotesque examples of attempts to reproduce the original in a time and culture foreign to the one in which the Christian faith came. For years, the Quakers used “thee” and “thou” as a form of address. The Old-Order Amish and others wear “plain clothes” which means coats without lapels. They scoff at wearing ties as they would any other work of the flesh. Their women wear a prayer veil which appears as a doily on top of the head.

For years our brethren railed against “bobbed hair,” a subject no longer discussed from our pulpits. It has now been relegated to certain of the Pentecostal sects, whose women make up in elaborate and bouffant coiffures for their inability to trim their locks. The early church did not have radios, so for years we warned against them. The Bible says nothing about the television sets so we went through a period of lashing out at “piping an open sewer into your living room.” One segment of the restoration movement drew a line of fellowship against owning an RCA or Magnavox, and gave new converts thirty days to get rid of the instrument of Satan in the living room.

An editor of the Firm Foundation has had much to say about what he calls “pattern theology,” although I have observed that he, like the rest of us, is generally able to make either the pattern or the theology flexible enough to provide what he wants. That is why he is called “a liberal” by little minds who could not define the word if they were to be shot at sunrise. The pattern is not what the pattern provides or prohibits. It is simply that the pattern itself is a creation of latter-day saints. My only pattern is Jesus. He is also my theos logos, my theology. Jesus died to establish a relationship with God, and not to hand down another Law.

The fact is that since God did not provide every little detail to be ritually kept by all people in all places at all times, the silence of God has no authority involved in it. Actually it is dictated by western culture. We are always getting our culture and God’s will confused. If we ever get them sorted out into their proper barrels we will be a lot happier. What we do with the pieces left over will present some problem. The easiest way to dispose of them will be to do what Paul did with his past life, toss them in the garbage can.

2. The “law of silence” is not a law at all. Like so many of our other “laws” it is not found in a statement in the holy scriptures. It is derived from textual juggling. Certain passages are lifted from both the Old and New covenant scriptures and are brewed together to make the heady tea which becomes our unwritten creed. The one who selects them knows what he wants to prove before he chooses his “proof.” By manipulating them skillfully he can make them prove what he wants to prove. But is that what God wants proven? If not, how can one derive his conclusion from the text? Is this not a form of wresting the scripture? Is it fair with the Book to treat it in such fashion. Alexander Campbell had a word for those who did so. He called them “textual scrap-doctors.”

Take for instance the “gopher wood” argument devised primarily to prove that the use of instrumental accompaniment in conjunction with praising God is a sin. We shall ignore for the time being the validity of any argument taken from the old covenant scripture to prove such a proposition. The contention is that since God authorized gopher wood out of which to construct the ark, Noah had no choice. The use of any other kind of wood would have condemned him to death with the unbelieving ante-diluvians. It is implied that if Noah had used one other kind of board in the construction, the whole vessel would have been grounded, all the animals would have been trapped in it, and would have drowned in the deluge.

The general deduction is that “gopher wood” was from a particular species of tree. In my palmy days I used to identify it as cypress. But George Bush, Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Literature, at New York University, writes, “Probably trees, or rather woods of Pitch.” He further adds, “It is doubtful whether gopher is the name of any particular species of tree.” And again, he says “In other words, a general term for any kind of resinous wood suitable for the purpose.” It may have been that, instead of having no choice, Noah had quite a choice in selection of materials. Perhaps he did not have to search around for a gopher tree after all. The most that can be said about the argument which has been made with such assertiveness is that it is full of doubt, and a little unworthy of one who is attempting to establish “authority.” Such textual manipulation is a travesty on the judgment of one who seeks to guard his own integrity as an interpreter.

It is true to bow before the authority of God is spiritual in the highest degree. Such authority is found in what God has revealed. One can read it in what he has spoken. The church is built upon the apostles and prophets, upon what they revealed. It does not have another piling holding it up and representing what they did not say. To be in subjection to that is to be in subjection to the vacillating authority of men. That is degrading and denigrating to the spirit. When men devise arguments based upon their theorizing, one should contest them and not consent to them. To do the latter is to surrender the freedom wherewith Christ has set us free. Every hierarchy on earth operates upon assumed authority. “But it shall not be so among you, for all of you are brethren.”

The Jews were preoccupied with what God had not said. They engaged in long and pointless discussion over what God must have meant in areas where he had not spoken. The result is that they made void the law of God by their traditions. We also have our traditions. No people who have survived more than two generations are without them. We will be fortunate indeed if we do not frustrate the will of God, which is the unity of all who trust in Him through faith in Jesus, by those traditions which we hear proclaimed more frequently than we do the blessed gospel.