We entered this year with the burden of last year’s tensions. The international tensions of 1966 are the tensions of 1967, and now, as then, they bear hard on the whole of human existence. The relations between East and West, the volcanic rumblings from China, and all the other sore spots of international life are of deep significance for everyone.
But some people are so taken up with the disturbances of the present that they lose perspective on the past. Our a-historical way of thinking is in part an estrangement from the past; and this estrangement, like all others, is an impoverishment. For our time shares this with all other times, that it cannot be understood or explained in isolation from the past.
Deep and primitive forces help define the course of affairs and help bind us to the affairs of yesterday. The Church, too, has this consciousness of being bound with the past. It knows it cannot cut itself loose from the past, for remembrance of things past is close to the heart of its existence. It keeps hearing the permanent command: “Do this in memory of me.” And Paul writes: “Remember that Jesus Christ … was raised from the dead (2 Tim. 2:8).
As Israel lived out of its memory of the past, of the Exodus, of all the acts of God that were decisive for Israel’s history, so the Church lives out of its memory of the unique past recorded in the message of the Scriptures. Witnesses to Christ’s resurrection went into the world, not to declare generalized eternal truths, but to tell of their vivid past experience with the living Lord. This does not imply, of course, that the Church should try to withdraw from the present, as though it had no interest in the world of today, let alone the future. Rather, it is to say that the Church’s interest in the present and concern for the future rise out of what happened in the past, out of the redemptive events that took place in history.
Closely connected with its special interest in the past—with the unique events of the past—is the Church’s interest in its own history. This history is not a collection of incidental facts of antiquity, in the style of archaeology. It is like an account of a wrestling match: both falls and rises are included. It is the story of a struggle to keep the truth of the Gospel and to carry it to the ends of the earth. The Church, living in new and changed times, always experiences a renewal of its calling in terms of the present world. So it has come to know its own day. CHRISTIANITY TODAY is, in my opinion, a happy expression of awareness of this responsibility to meet the challenges of new times precisely because of the unchanging character of the Gospel.
Awareness of the Church’s past must take into account not only the Gospel but also the chasm-like divisions of the Church. The word of Paul still sounds today: “Is Christ divided?” But the facts of the past still make it hard for us to translate our answer to Paul’s question into concrete action today. The Gospel is clear in its picture of the one Shepherd and the one flock; but we are stuck with the terrible divisions of the Church. And no one can deny that the credibility of our message is encumbered with these divisions as with a dark shadow. We all have ecumenical concerns, but none of us has the redemptive word that solves the ecumenical problems. Many of us have an awful sense of powerlessness.
This year, 1967, we are especially reminded of the fissure in the Western church that opened up in 1517—four and one-half centuries ago. A fact of the Church’s life seems to be that once a break occurs, healing it is almost impossible. The break between East and West has lasted for more than nine centuries. Divisions seem to take root in history with a depth and finality that can scarcely be altered.
What is the state of affairs after the 450 years of division in the West? Much has changed, especially during the last twenty years, not only in personal relations between representatives of the two sides but also in the climate in which the two churches meet. There is a growing awareness that we have often struggled against caricatures of each other. It is not that the Reformation arose out of a misunderstanding on the part of the Reformers but that, after the break occurred, the distance between the churches grew so large that neither could see the other clearly. Each side looked at the other in unreal perspective. Bitter polemics bred more bitter polemics. And the conflict caused us to lose sight of the truth about each other.
In our time, we are busy trying to find out where the deepest differences between us lie and what the decisive issues are that keep the churches apart. The answers are various. Some say that it is the difference between Scripture and tradition. Others, the differences over offices and hierarchy. Still others, the disagreement about the sacraments, or the issue of justification by faith alone.
Actually, none of these is to be isolated from the others. Each issue overlaps and influences all the others. I have never been satisfied with any effort to localize the issue in a single point. But the efforts still go on. And they must keep going on, because we are not permitted the luxury of a fatalistic point of view about the differences.
One thing in the present dialogue is very encouraging: we are not polemicizing from a distance. This means that we are no longer able to concentrate on each other’s weak spots. We have to face each other at the point where each stands on what he considers his strong point. For instance, we have got to meet Rome on the basis of its stand on Christ’s words to Peter recorded in Matthew 16.
Meeting another at his strongest point is always harder than thumping away at his weak point in his absence. And it carries a great responsibility. We cannot get away with tricky arguments and debater’s tactics. Together we must plunge deep into the whole witness of the prophets and the apostles. This kind of dialogue is bound to have results, for it is centered on a study of the Gospel.
What sort of results? We cannot predict with certainty. But when a dialogue is undertaken, not to beat the other person in debate, but to come to a clearer understanding of the Gospel, good fruit must be borne. When we seriously attempt to fathom the full dimensions of the separation, we are certain to benefit. For here, caricatures fall away, and the real problems become more clear. This kind of discussion is going on all over the world. Here in my country, the Netherlands, countless publications witness to its existence.
Four and one-half centuries is a long time. But we are not allowed to lose courage—not if we are children of the Reformation. For we believe in the perspicuity of the Scriptures; and we believe they are perspicuous for others as well as for ourselves.
In this year, the 450th anniversary of the Reformation, we must not be overcome by illusions, to be sure. But neither ought we to be overcome by a sense of hopelessness. For we believe, not in the divisions of the Church, but in the one living Lord.
