Evangelical Assertions on Social Change

Recent years have seen several attempts to recover an evangelical social ethic. One of the latest is article five of the Lausanne Covenant, drawn up at the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland. We find in this at least nine assertions about what an evangelical social program should be based on. These are: (1) concern for justice; (2) concern for reconciliation; (3) concern for the liberation of human beings; (4) respect for the dignity of persons; (5) the determination not to exploit but (6) to serve fellow human beings; (7) denunciation of evil and injustice; (8) efforts to exhibit and (9) to spread the righteousness of Christ’s Kingdom. A biblical analysis of these terms may help define further the positive perspectives of evangelical social concern.

1. Rightly the quest for righteousness as a Christian concern is deduced from the biblical doctrine of God “who executes judgment for the oppressed” (Ps. 146:7). Not only those who are especially commissioned (e.g., the king in Israel) but all of God’s people are called to concern themselves with establishing justice, be it in judicial or in everyday social affairs. Men’s injustices will never be reconciled with the righteousness of God (Rom. 1:18).

2. Jesus speaks not only about the need and possibility of reconciliation between man and God but also and in no uncertain terms about reconciliation between human beings. He seems even to give precedence to the latter: “If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift” (Matt. 5:24). Wherever the Gospel comes, it works toward reconciliation. Moreover, the Gospel expects Christians not only to settle their own feuds but also to become agents of reconciliation among others (Matt. 5:9)!

3. The third affirmation takes us right into the present debate about “liberation” as a Christian social goal. To be sure, Zechariah’s prophecy (Luke 1:74) of “being delivered from the hands of our enemies,” quoted so often by liberation theologians, clearly speaks of God or Christ as the author of the deliverance. Neither does Luke 4:18, in which Christ proclaims “deliverance to the captives,” call for liberating social action, although the verse was used to this end at the Lausanne Congress and elsewhere. The Lord’s appearance then at Nazareth does not support such a generalizing conclusion, and the authors of the Lausanne Covenant were wise not to summon it to support social liberation. Nor does the New Testament’s central concept, soteria, salvation, so very intensely discussed in recent years, yield the foundation for social ethics. In the few places where soteria signifies not the eternal deliverance of sinful man from the wrath of God but earthly deliverance, e.g., from sickness or distress at sea, it clearly shows that biblical salvation is not something that man helps himself to.

Nonetheless, there is strong evidence of God calling those in authority to release, to give freedom to, the ones they keep oppressed. Each sabbath year the Hebrew slave was to be set free and even sent away with gifts (Exod. 21:2), and in one of his most powerful sermons Isaiah challenges his nation in the name of God “to let the oppressed go free” (Isa. 58:6). Also, in the New Testament the call to liberation goes to the owner of a slave (Philem. 16). Liberation in biblical terms means release, not self-emancipation.

4. The idea of the dignity of man runs right through the Old and New Testaments. It is rooted in man’s being created in the image of God and in God’s creational blessing upon man. We are called to suffer insults against ourselves, but the honor of the next person must be sacred. The Commandments make us honor father and mother, and the epistles add all masters, elders, kings, even “everyone” (1 Pet. 2:17)! They all are God’s creation, called to be in communion with God and to be respected for this.

5. Christ made service the basic obligation of Christian ethics (Matt. 20:26) and explained his commandment in the parable of the Good Samaritan. We are to care for the elementary needs of our neighbors and so to take part in God’s sustaining work for his creation. Service, though, is not limited to material things, nor to individual or group action, but must find expression also in legal and institutional ways that bind whole nations.

6. True to biblical fashion, the Lausanne Covenant combines positive directive with terms of prohibition. Exploitation has stood under God’s judgment since the days of Sinai (Exod. 22:20). God makes himself the guardian of the socially weak, the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger. Extortionate capital interests, the curtailing or withholding of wages, perversion ofjustice, use of fraudulent weights and measures, and the impairing of merchandise quality, all come under this heading of exploitation. In short, everything by which the avarice of man takes advantage of the needs of his neighbor, the avarice that the New Testament flatly calls idolatry, stands under the judgment of God.

7. “Denouncing evil and injustice” was put into the text during the Lausanne Congress, probably in order to cover what has been called the “prophetic ministry of the Church.” To denounce means to point publicly at something, and in recent years has meant the public accusation of persons, not just on account of a crime. If this is really “denouncing,” then we should be warned that denouncing certainly does not represent the action of the prophet. Whereas denunciation always includes accusation before a third party, the prophets make a point of addressing the sinner himself (see chapters 1 and 58 of Isaiah, chapters 7; 26, and 34 of Jeremiah, Amos 4; Matthew 3), be it the king (Sam. 12:7) or the whole nation (Hos. 9:1). Even Herod, the illegitimate ruler, is not denigrated in front of the nation with a view to exercising public pressure upon him; he is personally called to order by John the Baptist. “You …!” The second person singular is the indelible and distinctive mark of the prophetic ministry.

8. “To exhibit the righteousness of Christ’s Kingdom” is a very good phrase that is consonant with the strong interest the Bible takes in giving evidence of what is believed (Matt. 5:16; 1 Pet. 2:12). Christ’s Lordship is meant to be recognized in the lives of his faithful (Jas. 3:13). This is the given road for Christian witness in hostile surroundings. A changed life is noticed anywhere and invites inquiries into its roots. But it is also needed in the missionary situation—and that means in every situation. For surely Christ’s Saying “By their fruits you shall know them” (Matt. 7:16, 20) will be applied by others to the Christians themselves.

9. Finally, can we “spread the righteousness of the Kingdom” beyond exhibiting it? This can only mean to help plant new men, more trees of the kind that produce the fruit desired. Faith without works is dead. But surely works without faith is a vain expectation.

KLAUS BOCKMÜHL

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