Coping with History

What ought a Christian to mean by "the church"? Speaking before the Chicago Church Federation, TIME & LIFE Editor Henry Robinson Luce joined the growing ranks of Protestants who are raising this pertinent question. This week, the Christian Century published Layman Luce's speech. Excerpts: , "Between us and the early church is the obvious difference that we Christians have become a great thing in the world. They were the leaven in the lump; we have become the lump. ... If today the laws of human society are not in conformity with the will of God, we cannot say that it is because God has not given us enough votes! ... To have such power and not use it is certainly to be wicked and unprofitable servants, good for nothing except to be cast into outer darkness; to have this power and use it is certainly to become involved in sinful corruptions....

"It is, I think, precisely by facing this dilemma that we can begin to see, once again, why the church is necessary, and what it necessarily must be. The church on earth must be a church that can cope with history. . . .

"How does the church cope with history? . . . The first and everlasting mission of the church is to bring continuously the knowledge of God into the world and to bring the world to the knowledge of God. As men come to the knowledge of God, and especially as they come to the knowledge of God in communion with one another, they learn to distinguish ever more sharply between God's will and man's will, and they cope, powerfully and dramatically, with history. . . ."

More Theology. "There was probably never a time when so many people were inquiring, sincerely, whether any knowledge of God exists or can exist. This is the incredibly great opportunity which now confronts the church of God. . . .

"First, Protestantism requires a stronger and better theology. . . . And we may give thanks to God that there is now rising mightily in the Protestant churches a stronger and more valiant theology. . . .

"The fashionable Protestantism of the last decades was a non-creedal, nontheological, nonecclesiastical Protestantism. It found many passages in the Scriptures to support its intellectually fuzzy, morally weak good-willism. It relied heavily, for example, on the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. If Protestants know anything, they know that thirteenth chapter--'But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three: and the greatest of these is love.' But our attention ought also to be directed to the fourteenth chapter. In the fourteenth chapter of First Corinthians, following right after the glorious hymn to divine love, St. Paul is terribly concerned about order in the church--not so much ecclesiastical order as intellectual order. And in that chapter he makes this striking announcement about God: 'God is not the author of confusion.' . . ."

More Understanding. "The expression of the knowledge of God is by no means a pedagogical exercise. The truth is to be spoken in love. The law of God is love. . . . Yet in this time of profound perplexities and difficulties we do well to keep before us the words of that great Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Anselm: 'Just as the right order of going requires that we should believe the deep things of God before we presume to discuss them by reason, so it seems to me negligence if, after we have been confirmed in the faith, we do not study to understand what we believe.'

"To understand what we believe, and to express it with some clarity and exactitude, is surely essential for Christian policy in the building of the great church which shall guide the city of man out of its present horrors and confusions toward the City of God."

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