The Elusive Trail from Is to Ought

EDITORIALS

“The central problem in moral philosophy,” says W. D. Hudson, “is that commonly known as the is-ought problem. How is what is the case related to what ought to be the case—statements of fact to moral judgments.” David Hume, the eighteenth-century philosopher, is commonly regarded as having been the first to surface the problem when he speculated “that a reason should be given for what seems altogether inconceivable,” namely, the transition from the usual way of tieing together propositions, is and is not, to normative conclusions connected with an ought or ought not (A Treatise on Human Nature). Many thinkers since then have pronounced the logical gap unbridgeable, but an increasing number of philosophers are now challenging this view. The debate is intensive, and the outcome will be significant, because on it hinges the question whether there can be a rational relation between the descriptive and the prescriptive, that is, between science and ethics.

A parallel issue, or perhaps the same one expressed in different terms, now preoccupies the Church in general and the conciliar movement in particular. How do we get from the way things are to the way they should be, from the bad to the good? “Deliver us from evil,” Jesus prayed while in human flesh. Salvation is man’s eternal quest, and the first meaning given for the word in the standard Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary is “the saving of man from the power and effects of sin.” How to achieve this salvation is a paramount question facing the Church and the world.

In a sense, therefore, it is not surprising that the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism should choose the theme “Salvation Today” for its next meeting, to be held in Indonesia in December of 1972. Within the communions that make up the World Council of Churches, of which the commission is a part, there has been a growing divergence in the understanding of salvation as the content and aim of Christian mission.

In another sense, however, the choice of theme is appalling because it reopens discussions of a theological question that was settled long ago, and should be so regarded. Certainly John R. Mott, who greatly influenced the International Missionary Council, the predecessor to the CWME, had no doubts about it. His concern was not the content of salvation but its proclamation. And even as late as 1961, when the IMC became part of the WCC, it was explicitly stated that the aim would be “to further the proclamation to the whole world of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the end that all men may believe in him and be saved.”

Why, then, is the WCC now making the basic tenet of the Christian faith a debatable and presumably open and negotiable matter?

Thomas Wieser, secretary for the study, defends it on several grounds. First, he says that in the context of ecumenical dialogue, a belief in Christ for salvation may impede or foreclose discussion—after all, one must have “radical openness” to the dialogue partner. He also suggests that the issue should be recanvassed because of the increasing prevalence of the idea that secular man needs no divine savior, a throwback, undoubtedly, to universalism and perhaps even pantheism. Moreover, he says, some people affirm that God’s saving work is not being accomplished through the Church alone; indeed that the Church itself “is in need of being saved, i.e., liberated from imprisonment by traditional attitudes, institutions and activities which prevent it from being a missionary church and which repel people from participating in its life.”

Even more important, Wieser cites recent infatuation with what is called “humanization,” which dates back to the WCC’s 1968 assembly at Uppsala, as another attitude affecting the Christian conception of mission. This will perhaps be the most controversial aspect of the study because biblical support will be adduced. The other trends, though perhaps more “heretical,” haven’t nearly as much momentum, and their advocates are unpersuasive because they argue almost entirely on other-than-scriptural grounds (the WCC still is “a fellowship of churches which confess Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures …”).

What is this humanization? It is described in theoretical terms as modern man’s struggle for his humanity amidst destructive forces. The Church’s part is seen as identifying with the world and taking part in efforts to achieve human rights, social justice, and world community. When these goals are reached, mankind will apparently have attained “full humanity.”

Such ideals are lofty enough in their own right. But more needs to be said. It can be argued that evil is pervasive in man and that in this sense his “humanity” needs to be overcome rather than realized. What is the resource for overcoming evil? It is no small point. The underlying thinking among these “humanizers” seems to be a carryover from the old emphasis on divine immanence. Indeed, the whole approach is only too reminiscent of the old social gospel that looks for a human utopia in which man is reconciled to man without first being reconciled to God. Sin is simply not reckoned with.

When the WCC begins to tell us how to engage in humanization, the theory becomes even more suspect. Almost invariably, humanization turns out to be a campaign to resolve man’s internal problems by political and economic means, leaving the heart untouched. And even then the methodological emphasis is highly selective, with certain evils and certain ideologies getting nearly all the attention. In recent years, the focus has been upon racism and the war in Viet Nam. The means advocated for bringing an end to both have been conceived in very narrow terms that hardly do justice to the “humanity” of all those involved. Meanwhile, religious liberty, which one would think essential for full humanization, has scarcely been mentioned.

Evangelicals do not quarrel with humanization when it is equated with service to fellow man. In fact, they see it as a Christian duty. But they affirm that the prerequisite to social compassion lies not in the political or economic realm, because we are still here dealing exclusively with man and man is not the solution but the problem. The answer comes only from God. And as Peter Beyerhaus suggested in the International Review of Mission, these views cannot be compatible:

There is no bridge which leads us over from a social concept of humanization to the biblical mystery that by Christ’s sacrifice we were not only vested with our true humanity according to his image, but made children of God and thus partakers of his divine life.

There is indeed a trail from the is to the ought, but man by himself cannot find it. As E. M. B. Green declared in The Meaning of Salvation, no man lives up to his own standards, let alone God’s. That’s why he needs to have God rescue him.

A Time To Dream

“We are such stuff/As dreams are made on,” said Prospero in The Tempest. This is true for everyone, for within us all lies freedom to choose our dreams and goals. For some, the dream is eternal; Paul, for instance, chose to strive for God’s “Well done.” For others, such as a fifteen-year-old “groupie” who recently committed suicide, the dream is elusive, ephemeral. This girl chose not to strive but to succumb; her dreams were futile and unrealistic. She explained in her suicide note that she could not face a humdrum life of unfulfilled daydreams.

Man’s existential muscles need active, purposeful dreams for strength; passive dreams drain energy, Charles Williams, the Christian novelist of the occult, considers this. In Descent Into Hell, Hugh, one of the novel’s characters, remarks that “daydreaming without limits is silly.” It can also be dangerous. Without specific, challenging dreams, man easily drifts into a pattern of lethargy and even despair.

Summertime offers prime time for daydreaming. In that shady, pleasant corner of the yard, with a glass of iced tea near at hand, let’s dream as Paul dreamed—with purpose, for eternity.

Tinfoil Tribute To God

Paul had a mind for beauty. He told the Philippians to think about beautiful, pure, and lovely things. That’s a hard command to follow consistently, even when we can see all around us the unspoiled beauty of God’s creation; impure, unjust, unlovely thoughts readily crowd in to spoil our enjoyment of a glowing sunset or a sparkling mountain lake. What if we were surrounded by man’s defilement of that creation—by rotting tenements, rat-ridden alleys, garbage-littered streets?

James Hampton, who grew up in a Washington, D. C., ghetto, had the imagination to see the beautiful in the midst of the ugly. He had a vision of heaven, and from it he created “The Throne of the Third Heaven,” a work twenty feet deep and thirty feet wide, consisting of more than 250 pieces. For fourteen years Hampton worked on his tribute to God in a rented garage. Out of worthless junk—broken bottles, burnt-out bulbs, old cardboard, splintered furniture, discarded jelly jars, and lots and lots of silver and gold foil—this laborer fashioned thrones, pulpits, angels, and crowns glittering in their primitive, Aztec-like splendor. “The Throne of the Third Heaven” is now on display at the National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington.

Hampton’s achievement makes us grateful for and a little wide-eyed over God’s gift of imagination; it also makes us consider how seldom we realize that gift’s potential for beauty. This creator of a throne presents a vivid lesson to us all on how we can glorify the omnipotent creator through the transforming power of imagination.

Readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY are reminded that two of our summer issues appear three weeks apart. The issue you are now reading is the second of the pair separated by three-week intervals. With the next issue, to be dated September 10, we will return to our regular fortnightly schedule.

Wage-Price Spiral: Up Up And Away

This has been the summer for strikes, real and threatened. Steel, copper, railroad, telephone, and telegraph workers have been among the dramatis personae. Very substantial wage-increase contracts (30 to 40 per cent over thirty-six- and forty-two-month periods) have been signed. Almost instantly the steel-makers posted an 8 per cent increase in prices. The old wage and price spiral was working overtime; the administration strategy for holding the line on inflation seems to have failed. As Labor Day approaches there is little sign of solution.

The railroad strike was particularly unfortunate. It showed again the interrelatedness of the various segments of our economic system and how one segment can inflict irreversible damage on multitudes of people. Famers who had to plow under their produce and farm laborers who had no work suffered greatly. The consumer is paying higher prices for fruits and vegetables. People engaged in marketing operations had little or no business. Surely in a mature industrial culture the legitimate needs of labor and industry could be satisfied in a less disastrous way.

Economically, things generally are in a mess. America has a trade deficit, our balance of payments is adverse, the dollar is under assault, our world markets are crumbling and there is a whopping budgetary deficit.

Wage rises can be offset by increased production, and to some extent improved technological processes will have this result. But shoddy workmanship, employee thefts, assembly-line fatigue, and the prevalent philosophy of doing as little work as possible are a drag on the productive process.

The notion that profit-making is immoral needs to be dispelled. If all the businesses in America or even in the Soviet Union went profitless for two years, those nations would be virtually bankrupt. The more profits businessmen make, the more tax money flows into the government. A healthy business climate and healthy profits keep employment up and supply the funds needed for operating the government.

Unfortunately, every economic system is riddled by man’s sinfulness. There is covetousness and cupidity. Labor unions are big business today, and each seeks benefits for itself without due regard for the common good. Some business executives work to fix prices, engage in collusion, and in various ways bend or violate the law to their own advantage.

If the economic house of America or any nation is to be put in order two maxims need to be engraved on all our machinery and hung in the office of every executive: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you; Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Affirming Religious Freedom

Were all employers faithful Christians—or at least obedient to the New Testament guidelines on master-servant relationships—the trade union movement might well have been unnecessary. In this non-Christian world, however, the necessary checks against unjust exploitation by greedy employers provided by organized labor have been, on the whole, for good. But the unfair, exploitative actions of labor unions and their leadership testify to the universality of sin and refute the simplistic notions about “good guys” and “bad guys.”

Governmental constraints against labor abuses are as essential as labor restraints on management. Recently the Ontario government ruled that labor unions cannot demand personal allegiance as condition for employment when such association violates religious beliefs. We applaud Ontario for joining the ranks of other jurisdictions allowing conscientious objectors to pay the equivalent of union dues to recognized charities.

We believe that biblical teaching calls for us to uphold religious freedom before the law regardless of our approval of the particular religious conviction (except when the rights of others are harmed). In the Ontario cases the employees have not explained why they feel that association with a non-Christian employer is permissable while association with a non-Christian union—even as a nominal dues-payer—is not. Nevertheless, we agree with the government’s decision to distinguish union membership from employment in order to avoid trampling sincere religious convictions without the gravest of reasons.

Banana-Peel Heroes

One of the quaint and memorable lines from the old days of radio was Molly’s repeated rebuke to Fibber,

“ ‘Tain’t funny, McGee!”

That line might well be enshrined as the motto of our age. Very little strikes us as funny today. The prevailing winds of existentialism have blown away the fragile bubble of humor. Life, we are led to believe through countless movies, books, and songs, is just a stupendous, unfunny joke at our expense.

Man apart from God always paints himself as the great tragic hero, the larger-than-life-size figure who must bravely struggle along on the darkling plain of hopelessness and meaninglessness.

This tragic view of life is the ultimate idolatry, assuming as it does the centrality of man. The hardest admission for a man to make is that he is not God. But only when he does this is true humor possible.

Incongruity, often cited as the basic element in humor, is the name of our existence. Here we are mere creatures, subject to indignities on the order of slipping on banana peels, who yet have been granted the privilege of thinking our Creator’s thoughts after him.

Acknowledging this incongruity liberates a man and makes possible both true humor and true worship.

No Private Affair

Although the various branches of Eastern Orthodoxy compose the largest single group within the World Council of Churches, Western knowledge of their doctrines and outlook is at best sketchy. Even a conscientious effort to understand Orthodoxy is often unavailing. Many Protestants will feel their need of enlightenment underscored by the announcement this summer of a prayer that will do nothing at all for the national tourist organization. The prayer, issued by the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church, asks:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on the cities, the islands and the villages of our Orthodox Fatherland, as well as the Holy monasteries, which are scourged by the world touristic wave. Grace us with a solution of this dramatic problem and protect our brethren who are sorely tried by the modernistic spirit of these contemporary western invaders.

While highly original and in one sense much needed, the prayer holds out no possibility that some of the two million strangers to hit Greece this year may be “angels unawares,” nor even that they may come with benevolent, non-proselytizing views. With the passing of each annual scourge, the Greeks have the further difficulty of knowing what to do with the estimated $250 million that the wandering ones gladly spend in what has traditionally been a hospitable land.

Many Orthodox apparently want to be left alone. This was confirmed to us earlier this year in a letter of complaint from the Reverend Dr. Robert G. Stephanopoulos, director of the interchurch office of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America (an administrative oversight compounded by sheer forgetfulness kept us from publishing it). Father Stephanopoulos wrote in response to a CHRISTIANITY TODAY editorial commenting on the religious situation in Greece, where evangelical mission leader Spiros Zodhiates had been acquitted of charges of proselytism. The letter challenged our presentation of the facts in the case and went on to say that the teachings of Mr. Zodhiates are in many instances contrary to the teachings of the Orthodox faith and therefore deserved to be condemned.

Father Stephanopoulos further spoke of “not only ecclesiastical but cultural imperialism.” He deplored “the usual evangelical insensitivity to the historical and religious cultural conditions still existing in nations other than our own, conditions much too complex to be adequately comprehended let alone solved in simplistic terms such as yours.” He pointed out that the Orthodox believed that theirs is “the one true [his italics] Christian Church,” though he conceded that the Church of Greece stands in need of reform (“so does CHRISTIANITY TODAY,” he added parenthetically). And he said there are “admirable indications of genuine renewal in the Greek Church.”

We rejoice at any indication of true biblical renewal. And surely Orthodoxy has no corner on the need. What is disappointing is that many Orthodox leaders seem to regard interchange of ideas as unwarranted interference. Apparently it does not occur to them that “foreign” influence gave the Greeks what they possess of Christian truth right now.

Traditional Orthodoxy with its high view of Scripture has much in common with modern evangelical views. There is a theological gap, to be sure, but the gap is not as great as that between, say, those who hold a propositional view of revelation and those who do not.

Evangelicals may be “arrogant,” according to the Orthodox way of looking at things, in thinking they have something to offer. But there is a growing trend among evangelicals toward the kind of humility that allows us to say: Perhaps the Orthodox have valid emphases that we have neglected. Differences can be disagreeable, but they can also serve to bring us together long enough to see each other’s strengths as well as weaknesses.

The Church Unites

Paul discusses three kinds of unity in chapter four of Ephesians. One is a unity that is to be proclaimed, a unity that, though not always exhibited, is nevertheless true. Men, happily, cannot alter it. This is the unity of the one body, Spirit, hope, Lord, faith, baptism, God and Father (vv. 4–6).

Another unity is one that generally the new believer finds with his fellow Christians, a “unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Maintaining it requires the hard work of practicing lowliness, meekness, patience, and forbearance in love (vv. 2, 3). These virtues are all too rare, and hence so is this kind of unity.

A final unity in this chapter is one attained through cooperative work. It is not something that simply is, nor is it something we have when we first believe and need to work to keep. Rather it is the “unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God” that accompanies Christian maturity (v. 13). This maturity is not something to be realized only in heaven; it is contrasted with the immaturity of those who are “carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men …” (v. 14). Basic oneness instead of conflict in doctrine is attainable as the body of Christ “upbuilds itself in love,” which in turn is possible only “when each part is working properly” (v. 16).

Each Christian should constantly be aware of his responsibility to proclaim the unity that is and to help attain and maintain the unity that should be.

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