Forty Years in the Wilderness (Part 8 of 7)

Forty Years in the Wilderness (Part 8) – Defining The Truth

Some detail in this article of the series published in "The Shield" in 1946, is specifically relevant to that time and, while being read, should be mentally noted as such. Whilst it is THE BELIEVER'S conviction that the Australian Unity Basis (B.A.S.F. with the Cooper/Carter Addendum), adopted since this article was originally written, is an absolutely essential framework of our ecclesial co-operation, it is not without its faults; and the underlying problems, referred to here, are worth serious consideration today.

Defining The Truth

Whilst the apostles, in the course of their labours in laying the foundations of the early ecclesias, have indicated the legitimate scope of our basis of fellowship, we feel that brethren generally will recognise the wisdom of Bro. Roberts’ counsel in his “Ecclesial Guide”, Section 34:

“Examination implies a recognised basis of fellowship; that is, a definition of the doctrines to be recognised as the truth. Examination would be objectless if there were no such definition recognised, whether written or understood. It is necessary to have the truth defined. It is not enough for an applicant to say he believes the Bible, or the testimony of the apostles. Multitudes would profess belief in this form, who we know are ignorant or unbelieving of the Truth, and, therefore, unqualified for union with the brethren and Christ. The question for applicants is, do they believe what the Scriptures teach? To test this, the teaching requires definition. This definition agreed to, forms the basis of fellowship among believers, whether expressed in spoken or written words

“The history of creeds, which have supplanted the Scriptures in past ages, naturally leads some to feel an objection to this basis in a written form, but it is obvious that there are advantages in connection with a written form that outweigh the sentimental repugnance inspired by ecclesiastical precedents. A mere understanding as to the definitions of truth is apt to become dim and indefinite, and the way is open to the gradual setting in of corruption. So long as it is understood that the written definition is not an authority, but merely the written expression of our identical convictions, there is not only no disadvantage, but the reverse, in reducing the faith to a form that shuts the door against misunderstanding.”

The above remarks embrace certain important points which bear repetition:

  1. “The history of creeds” provides grounds for a reasonable objection to a written basis of fellowship. (We point to this, not as evidence against the use of a written basis, but as a cogent argument for the need of special care in its compilation and mode of employment.)

  2. It should be understood that “the written definition is not an authority.”

  3. That definition should be “the written expression of our identical convictions.”

  4. It should be of such a character as to “reduce the faith to a form that shuts the door against misunderstanding.”

It is merely necessary to ask whether the principal bases of fellowship, in use throughout the Christadelphian world today, actually measure up to these requirements. For instance, do they “shut the door against misunderstanding”?

A brother pointed out many years ago that some “Statements of Faith”, so far from explaining anything, “need themselves to be explained”. Unintentionally, perhaps, but nevertheless in­controvertibly and irrevocably, that important fact has been confirmed by the author of the recently-published booklet, “Adam and Mortality”. The front page prominently features Clause 5 of “The Birmingham Statement of Faith”, which, incidentally, happens to be the particular proposition around which great storms of controversy have raged for forty years past. Above the words of the clause appears, in heavy capitals: “THE TRUTH”; below, in capitals again: “EXPLANATORY DIAGRAM OVERLEAF.”

What have we here but an emphatic confession that Clause 5 calls for explanation? If part of this Statement of Faith requires explaining, then I conclude that document has NOT “shut the door against misunderstanding.” That fact is further established by other evidence to be presented presently. Diagrams may be helpful to impress, but are scarcely necessary to explain, first principles of divine truth. Had it been otherwise, the apostles would have laboured under severe handicaps indeed.

The Birmingham Amended Statement Of Faith

Nothing that follows in this section is designed to impugn the wisdom, sincerity, or competence of the brethren who compiled that Statement. Through no fault of theirs it has been elevated to a pedestal which it was never designed to occupy.

Forty years ago a brother described the Statement as “a monument to the stupidity of those who compiled it,” and the “A” Ecclesias have since made much of that remark. Admittedly, such a reference was rash, unkind, and grossly exaggerated, but perhaps its author could have been forgiven, as Brother Roberts was, earlier, for vaporisings generated by “controversial heat”.

However, we surely are at liberty to examine calmly the credentials of any credendum presented as a basis of fellowship among believers. All honest brethren, even those who wish it otherwise, must confess that in certain respects the Statement falls short of requirements. Its very name so testifies. “Birmingham” proclaims its human origin and local scope; “amended” declares its imperfection. I admit that its compilers have never claimed perfection for it, but that is not an argument in favour of its universal adoption as a basis of fellowship. True, perfection could not be expected of any human document, however wise, able, honest and earnest its authors may be.

Therefore, the fact that the Statement has been amended implies no reproach towards either the brethren who first drafted it, or those who since amended it. The marvel is not that it has been amended, but that it has not been amended more frequently. Emendations to such a document should be promptly effected, when once its deficiencies, or excesses, are discovered and proved. That there are such defects and excrescences attaching to the Statement is clearly manifest, and those who love “whatsoever things are true, honest, just and pure” will scarcely deny it.

We look at the desiderata of a basis of fellowship as listed in the “Ecclesial Guide” and enumerated in the previous section, and we ask:

  1. Has special care been used both in the compilation of the Statement and in the mode of its employment? If so, the document will be a literal, unequivocal statement of first principles, not susceptible of differing interpretations.
  2. Is “the written definition” used as “an authority”? Yes; as an authority so dominant and so sacro­sanct that, in some quarters of the Household, to question its veracity in any jot or tittle has been to incur the risk of prompt disfellowship. (Experience proves it.)
  3. Is it “the written expression of our identical convictions?” How could it be, unless devoid of all ambiguity?
  4. Has it “reduced the faith to a form that shuts the door against misunderstanding”? If “explanations” and “interpretations” of the Statement are necessary (and on the showing of the “A” brethren they are), then definitely NO!

The following information will be of interest. Early in 1904, a few months before the major division came, a Sydney brother (now deceased) wrote to our late Brother C. C. Walker, then editor of “The Christadelphian”, suggesting that “The Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith” be called “THE Christadelphian Statement of Faith”. Here is the text of Bro. Walker’s discreet reply. It appeared in “The Christadelphian”, March, 1904, page 113:

“Brother R.W. asks us to countenance the movement at the antipodes to give up the word ‘Birmingham’ and substitute Christadelphian’. Our answer must be as before: We have no authority to do so. Neither has anyone else. The Birmingham Ecclesia can only speak for itself; and it is so with every other Ecclesia. We entirely sympathise with every godly effort for unity on a pure basis; but it would be a mistake to issue a document under the above title, because it would imply the right of the issuers to speak for the whole household of faith, which right does not exist. The principle of ecclesial independence must be jealously guarded, and it is the beginnings of things which have to be watched. There is no desire on the part of the Birmingham Ecclesia to impose its form of words on any ecclesia; but there can be no valid objection to any ecclesia adopting it if it sees fit. But to adopt this statement and give it a universal title that the Birmingham Ecclesia conscientiously refrains from giving it, does not seem right at all. If a group of Australian Ecclesias desires a common statement, let them accurately define its scope and limitations. We are happily agreed as to the “one faith”, but let us be careful about our definitions. Ecclesiastical history is a warning to us in this respect.”

That is just where we have not been careful, and the warnings of history have gone unheeded. If the “definitions” of the Birmingham Statement itself had been more carefully made, its explicitness would have dispensed with any need for the “explanations” and “interpretations” now being offered by our Bro. Barnard. Let brethren everywhere “mark and inwardly digest” the following, appearing in the preface to “Adam and Mortality”:

“As a humanly compiled epitome of the ‘one faith’, the Statement of Faith must be interpreted in the light of the Scriptures, not vice versa”! To those who show a preference for dictionary definitions, the following will be of interest:

“INTERPRET”: “To explain the meaning of; to expound; to put in other words; to translate, as a foreign speech or writing; to decipher, as hieroglyphics; to give a solution to, as an enigma; to tell the meaning of, as visions and dreams; to put a meaning or construction on, as looks, signs, conduct; to explain by synonymous terms, to define”

If any Statement has to be ‘explained’, ‘expounded’, ‘translated’, ‘deciphered’, ‘solved’, `construed’, or ‘defined’ in this way, then I say, respectfully but earnestly, that it scarcely secures its object even as a Statement of the faith of a single Ecclesia, and fails very seriously indeed when used as a basis of fellowship among the sons and daughters of the living God. I do not wish to be unkind, but what can Bro. Barnard’s reference to the Statement mean but that (1) the light of the Scriptures must be applied to see through the fogs of its obscurity; and (2) the Scriptures must not be interpreted in the `light’ of the Statement of Faith?

Clause 5

Here is the much disputed proposition:

“Adam broke this law (the law under which his Creator placed him in Eden) and was adjudged unworthy of immortality, and sentenced to return to the ground from whence he was taken — a sentence which defiled and became a physical law of his being, and was transmitted to all his posterity.”

By universal admission, the first part of this proposition is a literal statement of fact. But regarding the second half, we are entitled to ask, is it literal truth? or is the language figurative? I know it to be a fact that in the “A” Ecclesias, as well as in the “B” Ecclesias, there are some who hold that the latter part of the clause is true literally, whilst others believe that it is figuratively true (i.e. by metonymy). Metonymy is that figure of speech “in which a thing is named by some accompaniment”. A homely illustration is “the kettle is boiling”, the contents being named by the container. Though untrue as a literal statement, the idea behind the words is readily perceived in that case. There is no ambiguity.

But whilst well-understood figures of speech may be quite in order in everyday conversation, figures not so well understood are quite out of order in a Statement of Faith, and totally inadmissible in a BASIS OF FELLOWSHIP. The latter must, of necessity, be couched in literal terms. Only thus can “the door against misunderstanding” be kept firmly closed.

In the first of his “Christendom Astray” lectures, “The Bible — what it is, and how to interpret it”, Bro. Roberts stated (p.15):

“The elementary principles of divine truth are communicated literally; its recondite aspects are illustrated metaphorically and symbolically… the literal must be recognised and studied as the alphabet of spiritual things.”

Again (Lecture 2, p.45):

“We ought to procure our fundamental principles from teaching that cannot be misunderstood.”

That being so, then any “humanly compiled epitome” of “fundamental principles” should be presented in language of the same kind.

Appended to Clause 5 are fourteen passages of Scripture adduced to support the proposition as it stands. On examining these critically many years ago, I was compelled to admit, against my desire, that whilst they fully substantiated the simple truths presented in the first half of the Clause, they certainly did not express, in literal teaching, “that cannot be misunderstood”, the supposedly “fundamental principles” of the second half. The latter may be deducible from the appended Scriptures, but deduction, induction, or any form of inference can have no part in a Basis of Fellowship. Primary principles, as Bro. Roberts has shown, are not communicated that way.

We revert, then, to the “Explanatory Diagram” of the clause, as supplied by Bro. Barnard, to see if that will help us. A study of it reveals the following great and important truth: Man, at creation, was made upright, and placed under law in Eden. Whilst in that very good state, there was no death. He enjoyed his Creator’s favour until, yielding to temptation, he sinned. Sin brought death; man fell. All subsequent generations inherited mortality by nature. By no device of his own can man extricate himself from his hopeless position. God, in His mercy, has opened up a Way of Life through “the seed of the woman” — His Son —whose sacrifice, prefigured in the Mosaic law and even earlier institutions, has laid the foundation for the complete defeat of the serpent power, and provided a basis for the forgiveness of sin, whereby men may attain to Eternal Life. But certain features of Clause 5 are left unexplained, and they happen to be those very features which compose the core of controversy. Only “wishful thinking” could see an explanation of them in the diagram.

Bro. Barnard himself evidently recognises its shortcomings, for later — on page 2 he intimates that, after all, part of the clause can be waived. Here are his words:

“What sensible man would withhold fellowship because of a difference of opinion as to how Adam was physically defiled? Broadly put, the truth expressed by Clause 5 (unexpurgated) is that as a result of sin the “very good” human pair were physically defiled, that a body devoid of death became a death-full or mortal body (Rom. 5.12; 724).”

That is to say, it does not matter now whether we believe that “the sentence” physically defiled Adam, or whether we believe “sin” physically defiled him, providing we recognise that “as a result of sin he became physically defiled” (which all should be able to accept.) This concession is truly a progressive step. It comes strangely, though, after the author, in the preface, has attacked the alteration made to the 5th Clause at the Sydney Conference in 1938, and styled “the rejected portion” an accurate presentation of the Truth.

Those who have perused the unedifying history of the division will know that Bro. Barnard has actually pruned away a branch which the ancestors of his party fought for years to retain. I do not reproach him. Rather is his courage to be commended. But I feel that our Brother should not make his own pruning appear charitable, and that of his brethren heretical. I suggest that in 1938 they merely exemplified, eight years in advance, his own good counsel: “The Statement should be interpreted in the light of the Scriptures, not vice versa.”

The very pertinent question now arises: Is this the only element in the Statement that is superfluous? Are there now any other parts of the Statement which could profitably be more “broadly put”? The onus is now on the “A” Ecclesias to determine the answer.

The Statement may be quite suitable, as it stands, as a list of “Articles of Belief”, serving as a basis of membership of an ecclesia, but it is surely found wanting as a Basis of Fellowship in the Household.

For instance, literally construed, it requires brethren and sisters to believe, as a condition of association, that God used sinners as instruments to condemn, in the death of His righteous Son (Clause 12), a “just and necessary law” (Clause 6), wherewith His just and righteous sentence and defiled sinners in the beginning (Clause 5). It is something which brethren cannot conscientiously believe. Paul had somewhat to say regarding our treatment of the consciences of our brethren: a greater than Paul may have more to say about it very soon. Obviously, we have not been careful with our definitions.

It would not be surprising if further amendments were to emanate from Birmingham presently. There is enough spiritual acumen there to recognise the evils, latent and active, in the situation. It is a situation that cries aloud for adjustment.

The time has come when all lovers of truth, justice, and purity — in both “A” and “B” Ecclesias — will question, not merely the wisdom, but the very rightness and righteousness of imposing on the Household of faith, for unreserved endorsement (which hitherto has been the case) a creedal document which, on the ready assurance of its overseas authors, was designed for domestic purposes only, and which, on the recent voluntary admission of its local patrons, is in parts obscure, and contains possible inaccuracies of expression.