THE CHURCH AND ITS WORK

Understanding important truths from the Bible….

The following is an extended quote from Studies in Theology, written by James Denney and is from a lecture delivered at the Chicago Theological Seminary in 1894.  This particular lecture is titled, “The Church and The Kingdom of God”.  Denney was a Scot Presbyterian Conservative Scholar in a time when conservatives were becoming scarce in both Britain and the U.S.A.

It is evident that the conservative church of Denney’s day was wrestling with the same problems that are so worrisome for us.  They were worried by the “how to” mentality, the church’s social involvement, the political activity that was to be entered, and the general thought that the church had all the answers.  If the church or the Kingdom of God is held responsible for the perfection of the Social Institutes then it is a depressing failure.  If it is understood as the engine for the calling and building up of the elect then there has always been and will continue to be an overwhelming success to celebrate.

Please read this which I have found so interesting.

“All that is binding on citizens of the Kingdom is binding on members of the Church.  They are to carry the new life into every department of human activity, and by so doing to Christianise all.  In the calling in which Christian men are called they are to abide with God.  Whatever line of business a Christian man works in, he must work in it as a Christian.  If he is an artist, he must be a Christian artist; he must recognize a responsibility to Christ and to the brotherhood in all the use he makes of pen or pencil.  If he is a capitalist, he must be a Christian in the use of his money, and of the power it gives him, remembering what Christ says about the dangers of wealth, and that the soul of the poorest workman he employs is worth more to God than all the money in the world.  If he is a politician—and in a free country every man ought to be one—he will carry Christian conviction, Christian cleanness of hand and of purpose, into his politics, and remember that Christ’s will is supreme over nations as over individual men.  All this, you will say, is commonplace, and so it is; but it is commonplace the disregard of which has brought upon the Church many of her perplexities and dangers.  Take, for instance, those economical questions that arise in disputes between capital and labour.  People cry out fiercely that the Church ought to mediate, that the Church ought to be on the side of the poor and oppressed, and so on.  The Church ought certainly to be on the side of justice and of mercy; but it needs more than sympathy with justice and mercy to decide on the merits of the whole circumstances of the case, and that, it is impossible and unnecessary for the church to have.  It is no part of my business as a Christian man, or even as a Christian minister, and therefore it is no part of the business of the Church, which is the assembly of Christian men, to understand mining, docks, engineering, railways, or any industry, so as to be able to give sentence in cases of dispute.  To do that is the work of Christian men who in God’s providence are called to live the Christian life under the conditions in question; and it should be left for them to do.  When representative Christian ministers—like Cardinal Manning, or the Bishop of Durham—interpose in economic disputes, in their character as ministers, it tends to put the Church in a false position, and though the present distress may excuse it, it is on larger grounds to be regretted.  All life has to be Christianised; but the process is to be accomplished, not by dragging everything under the scrutiny and sentence of the Church as it exists among us, but by sending out into all the departments of life men to live and work there in the Spirit of Christ.  The Church is the home of the Spirit, the nurse and the educator of the Christian life; but her power to leaven society, and to be the salt of the earth, will not be increased if she makes it her policy, in the name of practical preaching to lay down the law about all the details of existence.  Christian ethics is not casuistry, still less is it the doing of other people’s duties for them.  There were things Christ refused to do; there are things that the Church, and the ministers of the Church, should refuse in His name.  We shall speak often of money, if we speak as He spoke; but we shall not divide the inheritance.  We shall not assume that because we are Christians we are experts in economy or in legislation, or in any branch of politics, any more than in science or in art.  We shall believe that the Church which cultivates in all its members the spirit of humanity, the spirit of liberty, justice, generosity, and mercy, will do more for the coming of God’s kingdom than if it plunged into the thick of every conflict, or offered its mediation in every dispute.  The Church does nothing unless it does the deepest things; it does nothing unless it prevails on sinful men to have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and to walk in love even as He loved us.  Let us fix our minds on this as the first and supreme interest, and everything else will come out in its proper place.”