Hungarian Church Press, 1968 (20. évfolyam, 2. szám)

1968-06-01 / 2. szám

NCP Vol XX Special Number

1968 No 2

66 -(07770)

But there are example^ to show hew unjust this criticism actually is a Paul has also been criticized for sanctioning the marriage moral of his environment ty saying that man is the head of the woman, whereas he actually reverses this moral by exhorting men, in view of Christas example, to serve and love their wives in the manner ctf Christ loving the Church* Even in the. question of slavery, we cannot simply call Paul a conservative* He sends back the fugitive slave to Philemon, thus abiding by the social order of his day, yet he actually •upsets this order, in a revolutionary manner, when he asks Philemon to receive back his fugitive slave as a brother in Christ* Neither is his obedience to the civil authority servility but the fulfillment of the law cf love. He does not try to Justify the arbitrary measures of the civil authority, but, as the whole context of hiaJBpistle to the Romans bears out the' senses it is out of love that the Christian has the duty to support all that is good (Romans 12s2l)0 Undoubtedly, we find it necessary today to change the obsolete structures cf society, yet we are authorised to d.. this by the very freedom of love as Paul teaches us* At the same time, we are also to give serious thought to another consequence of Paul's ethics it does not lay the emphasis on the structural changes but, under the sovereignty of Christ*3s love, makes love the foundation of human relations*

C/ The Timeliness of Prophetic Ministry

There afe many people today who, because of the risk of misunderstanding , would like to dispense with the talk about the prophetic ministry of the Church* They hold that this term is no longer suitable to express the task of the Church in the world today* Xet- the Old and New Testament witness makes it clear that prophetic ministry and its foundation, "the prophetic charisma canne t be limited to the Biblical age., While 'reviewing the life of the primitive church, we noted how necessary it was, for the Apostle Paul himself and also for the congregations of the first Christians to attempt the timely and novel application cf the message of Jesus to the events and social situations cf their tine.

Hence the prophetic ministry cf the Church is still valid today, ani. it has the task to proclaim the new order cf things according to the will of godo The prophetic ministry, on the one hand, reveals and interprets to the Church the Judgments of God, But we must keep in mind that , in the Hebrew usage cf the Old Testament prophets, the word Judgment has a wide variety cf meanings*- God creates order, reestablishes order, arranges things, leads, directs« The prophetic ministry reveals the direction Gcd?s work takes in rearranging things, in shaping the new order of the worId and of the Church, The proclamation of Judgment aims also at obedience so that the Church in the newr situations may perceive the direction of Goa's way lest she obstruct the willof God*

The courage of the prophetic ministry lies in its tendency, while working for the inner renewal of the Church, to oppose all false attempts at the solution cf the existing problems - the attempts which in fact try to evade the