Magyar Egyház, 1961 (40. évfolyam, 1-10. szám)

1961-01-01 / 1. szám

10

MAGYAR EGYHÁZ

this overally merger will be a good thing.

Will the new Church, numbering some 15 million communicants (excluding the 3 million Episcopalians) be vital and alert? If present trends are any indication of the future, is simply will not. Vitality has passed to the new Pentecostal and cultic groups, such as the Mormons, Christian Science and Unity movements. Their enthusiasm and commitment will guarantee them a great future. The new united Church will have billions of dollars worth of property, the best trained clergy, the wealthiest laymen: plenty of the material things of life. Whether it will have the spiritual power so terribly needed by modern America is questionable. Only a resurgence of the apostolic fervor and true theological unity will be able to make the new united Church an alert and authentic voice for the Almighty.

(We invite the readers' comments to the above article as well as to the issue involved in the form of both articles and letters to the editor.)

"THE MORE WE GET TOGETHER . .

by ALADAR KOMJÁTHY This past summer a news item perplexed the good Protestant people of the Netherlands, for it told of the transfer of the Reverend Hendrik van der Linde into the Roman Catholic fold. Dr. van der Linde has been an ordained pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church. He was a pioneer of the ecumenical movement in Holland for many years, secretary of the Netherlands Ecumenical Council, and an important figure in organizing the first Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948. Newspapers carried the story of his decision to enter the Roman communion under headlines such as “The Way of Christian Unity” and the like. But — is such a step as van der Linde’s an authentic witness and service to true Christian unity?

There are others who define unity as a gradual merger of all denominations. They assure us confidently, it is just a matter of time, just a matter of the burial of a certain number .of .“conservatives,” .as .one .North American professor cynically remarks to his classes. But is this, any more than the first, Christian unity?

Unity is a basic theme in many New Testament passages. Yet the word “unity” itself occurs only three times, once in John 17 and twice in Ephesians 4. In both passage it is given a very specific content and context.. .

Unity in the New Testament understanding of the word is not a matter of Roman Catholic monopoly, nor of pan-Protestant amalgamation. It is a unity in Jesus Christ, constituted in His oneness with the Father and His oneness or indentification with sinners for their salvation. The Ephesian Letter specifies “unity of the Spirit” (4:3) and “unity of the faith” (4:13). In John 17 we are given the source and the context of these unities, together with their missionary purpose; the high-priestly atonement and the high-priestly intercession of Jesus the Messiah. He prays,

“that they all may be one, even as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me.” (Jn 17:21).

This prayer is a part of the Passion story, uttered at the moment when the Son of God is completely identifying (unifying) himself with us and reaching the fulfillment of his ministry in suffering. His prayer throbs with this costly and complete unification “in Christ”—this reconciling bond forged in his unique identification on the one hand with the Father and on the other hand with us:

“I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made

perfect in one, that the world may know . . .” (Jn

17:23).

Classic Christian doctrine tells us in the ecumenical creeds that Jesus Christ is one person, perfectly uniting the divine and the human natures in himself. Don’t think it is an outdated Greek concept. In today’s human situation it witnesses to the powerful, joyful, gospel truth that Christ identifies himself totally with us. He is “in us” as the Father is in him, in service and in obedience, yes, even unto death on the cross. The Sao Paulo meeting of the Presbyterian World Alliance restated the heart of our reformed inheritance, and the heart of the Biblical revelation: The Lord is servant, and this servant is Lord.

But what of this Servant Lord’s professed servants? Does our life today as the Church reflect any readily recognizable identity with his suffering-servant way of life? The Church has been talking incessantly about the relevancy of its message for the world, but in sober fact do we do much more than talk about it? Does the Church bear discernible witness, in the whole tone and attitude of her enterprise, to her unity with her Lord? And her unity therefore with that disunited world which he came to gather together in reconciliation by the mighty power of his death and the mighty power of his resurrection?. .

Our churches, perhaps especially the Reformed or Presbyterian, have been criticized in all parts of the world, that we have become a bourgeois cult, a religion of the respectable, the profitable, the unpainful. Certainly there is a grave difference between the social composition of our congregations and the surrounding society. The impact of this gulf became painfully clear to me a few years ago, when the young heroes of the Hungarian revolt arrived as refugees in our communities. These young men and women, the beatniks of Budapest, were—and still are—living in a “post-Communist” world of thought: and our decent, good, religious-minded congregations could not find the way to the simplest spiritual communication with them.

How can we identify ourselves with the disinherited of the earth, if we don’t understand them? Merger of two denominations might reduce the confusion and visible contradictions in the Church’s organizational activity, but will it really fathom and solve a problem as deep as these disunities in our world?

We need to experience personally and corporately what it means to be the Fellowship of the Forgiven, and so what it means to be entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation, of unity with every man in the limitless grace of God. We need to become honest about the blatant disharmony between those sweeping affirmations we mouth about “the Body of Christ” and the observable behaviour in our church courts and congregations. While we profess according to the Apostles’ Creed that we believe in a holy and catholic Church and yet are unable to join hearts with others who profess the same creed, we put poison and death in Christ’s cup.

It is too easy to joke about each other’s denominational foibles, to scoff at Theology when it challenges us with real questions and straight answers, to plan