Conserve and Progress

Who Can Tell the Difference between a conservative and a progressive? What does the antithesis between them really mean? Much depends on what the conservative wants to conserve and where the progressive wants to progress. The indefiniteness of the words makes them usable as slogans more than as specifically meaningful terms.

The way in which a person tends to think about things is influenced by psychological and character traits. It is influenced by experiences that have profoundly affected his response to what is going on in the world. There is certainly a difference in ways in which different people respond to life and history, and this difference is often what the words progressive and conservative are intended to imply. The difference plays an enormous role in the life of the Church.

Indeed, these words signal the experiences of many, many churches—their tensions, their fears, and even their schisms. In turning to the Scriptures, we do not get off easily with a quick endorsement or quick rejection of either mentality. Conservative-minded people have no trouble at all finding texts that summon us to conserve (e.g., 1 Tim. 6:20; Gal. 5:25; 2 Tim. 3:14; Heb. 13:8); one thinks perhaps most quickly of Jeremiah’s prophetic appeal to seek after the old paths (Jer. 6:16). But the progressives then call us to consider the constant biblical pointers toward the future, to the warnings against turning our eyes backward and away from the promised new things to which we are called to move forward. The new has come, and the new creation must define our whole lives; the old things are passed away.

These things play a significant role in theology, especially in eschatology. One need only think about Moltmann’s Theology of Hope and about the theologies of revolution. The notion of progress is not limited to the theologian’s study; it crops out in his attitudes toward the concrete life of our times. Theology has never been more “functional” than it is today. It refuses to abide by former abstractions and plows instead into the decisions of real life. And this is true of conservative as well as progressive types.

It is highly important that words like conservative and progressive not be used as slogans or derogatory labels. We must, if we are to be servants of one another, be sensitive to the motives, the backgrounds, and the concerns that lie within the manner of thought these words betoken.

Is there, one is sometimes tempted to ask, a split, a schism in the Church—not merely differences in specific dogmas or organization but wholly different ways of looking at and judging everything? Are there two mentalities, two orientations, two styles, two kinds of sensitivities prevailing in the Church?

Paul wrote that there could be no division in the body (1 Cor. 12:25). He also says that our lives must be defined by concern and love for the welfare of one another. It makes one ask whether the names we toss around at one another serve and can serve this end. Perhaps our use of words like conservative and progressive have, instead, hurt one another and brought the Church into division.

I am personally persuaded that the concern and love we owe each other as members of the same body is often tragically neglected. There is too frequently a tendency toward mutual irritation rather than consolation, and the result is only greater alienation. But it must be possible for us to rise above false dilemmas. The biblical teachings about the old and the new need not be taken as paradoxical. They both rise from the reality of the Gospel, and may not be abstracted or isolated from the Gospel. I should like to point to an example in which the opposition that exists in the world between progressives and conservatives is overcome. It is an example out of Paul’s own life.

In the third chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians we encounter words that, on first hearing, sound very conservative in tone: “Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing” (v. 16). This suggests that we ought, without deviation and without hesitation, to maintain the same ways that we have known in the past. Does not Paul want us to keep walking the familiar paths, and thus be conservatives? But let us take care. For the Apostle also sounds a rather progressive note in the same connection: “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I strive ahead if that I may apprehend that for which I am also apprehended of Christ Jesus” (v. 12). And he underscores the same thought in the next verse, where he speaks of “forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forth to those things that are up ahead” (v. 13).

Clearly, to remain in the old paths does not mean that nothing new is going to happen along the way, and that we should not be prepared to seize the new things. The way that Paul wants to walk, in company with the Church, is the new way in Christ. (“The old is passed away; see, the new has come”—Second Corinthians 5:17.) The familiar path he speaks of is, in fact, the path that leads into the new reality of the new creation.

This accounts for the intensity and restlessness of Paul’s life. This accounts for the way he kept going, never standing still—for all the great journeys he made on behalf of the Gospel, and for his thoughts about the ones he wanted to make (Rom. 15:29). The past plays a most decisive role in all this, but not because it is old and familiar and comfortable. The past is crucial because it was into that past that God came in Jesus Christ to make all things new. The past, for Paul, means that past event in which God radically changed things, and thus set our minds on those things that are within the promises of God.

In all the tensions that are created by the dualities of conservatism and progressivism, it is important that we keep listening to Paul. For the thoughts he expresses are not empty formalities. They have content that is given to them by the Christ. They are historically filled with the things God has done and is going to do through Christ. They make it possible for life—and theology—to be poised and strong in the face of surprising new things.

Here we must pose urgent questions, in careful love of one another, about the bond between the past (when Christ arose) and the future (when Christ returns)—and about the way we live and think in the time we are still on the way.

In Paul’s words we find the rest (“I am apprehended”) and the restlessness (“I keep pursuing”) joined together. They are joined in the reality of Jesus Christ. Christ has opened up the future to us as a new and promising future. It is he who wants us all to walk into the future together. And it is he who will, in the end, save us from splintering ourselves over the question of whether we should be conservative or progressive. It is he, finally, who summons us all to look after one another, each having his own mentality and psychic orientation, in love and concern as members of the same body.

G. C. BERKOUWER

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.