A Brighter Day

W. Carl Ketcherside

[Page 12]

     The signs are everywhere manifest that we stand upon the threshold of a new era as heirs of the Restoration movement. After a long dreary night of factionalism and strife, when the dark clouds of debate and partisanship eclipsed the sun, an occasional shaft of light breaking through a rift betokens the dawn of a better day. Those who have long been sick at heart with the wars and wrangles engendered by the factional attitude are lifting up their downcast hearts with a hopefulness unique in our generation. Many despairing that anything could be done to alleviate the sad state of Zion and resigned to trudging the pathway of traditionalism to its bitter end are now cautiously conceding that something may be done!

     Something is being done! At the risk of partisan persecution men are daring to rise above the narrow intolerance of their own past to break through walls and batter down barriers which other men have constructed to keep brethren apart. Without sacrificing personal convictions or compromising previous views, the value and dignity of brotherhood is being reaffirmed and recaptured in a drama of spiritual adventure which cannot long be ignored even by its most bitter antagonists. This is one of the most vital and refreshing things that has happened to the forces of restoration in a hundred years. It could become the prelude to a real restoration of the restoration spirit.

     The Holy Spirit has a way of supplying needs in the spiritual realm when those needs become acute. God has not retired on social security. This is God's world and nothing is more essential to this age than the gathering and unifying of the forces of righteousness. Slowly, deliberately, but with increasing momentum, hearts are beginning to respond to the irresistible impulse of the Spirit. We are being impelled toward a closer walk with God and our brethren all of them! You can read the stirring story in reports of meetings in many papers. You can see it in happy faces reflecting an inward glow of renewed relationship at those meetings.

     For more than two years the editor has sought to avail himself of every invitation to share in the meetings of brethren of every existing faction. He has regarded every such invitation to participate as an open door swung wide by angelic hands, to explore areas of agreement in love. He has watched initial fear and suspicion melt away with hope and joy taking their place. He has seen skepticism supplanted by sanction and doubt dispelled by delight. The army of the saints, plagued by division in its own ranks, harassed by hatred and hamstrung by hostility, is being once again welded into a cohesive force that even yet may bring the full power of its arsenal to bear on the real foe.

     Of course there is opposition. We have all been brought up in or brought into a factional pattern. Those who have lived so long in the swamps and lowlands of unbrotherly hate cannot all be transferred at once to the mountain peaks of faith and made to breathe the rarified atmosphere of brotherly love. Many have difficulty getting their breath. While gasping for it they lash out at those whose spiritual lungs are adapted to the purer air. The essential thing is that we love them, cherish them, hold ourselves ready to help them when they will permit. This is the only guarantee against starting another party--the absolute refusal to succumb to the temptation to love only those who agree and separate from those who do not! A faction can only result from a factional spirit.

     We must cultivate patience and forbearance! The New English Bible renders Philippians 4:5, "Let your magnanimity be manifest to all." The word translated "magnanimity" is epieikes. It is one of the most important terms in the sacred scriptures to the renewed restoration spirit. We urge our brethren to do research in its implications for our day and its problems. It is not too much to say that this word, correctly understood, will revolutionize our entire approach toward discipline and brotherhood.

     The word epieikes is a good illustration of the richness of the Greek language.

[Page 13]

It demonstrates the keen discriminatory features of that language. We have no single word in our tongue which will adequately translate it. Matthew Arnold renders it "sweet reasonableness" but this does not do justice to it. Aristotle, in the book of ethics which he dedicated to his son Nicomachus, concluded that the term signified that which was better than justice. He said it is that which corrects the law when a deficiency occurs because of the generality of the law.

     Laws are given to regulate intelligent beings but such beings cannot all fall into the same category if they possess will as well as intelligence. They are affected by circumstances, opportunities, natural temperaments and abilities. No law can then be made which will be universal in application. The spirit of the law, its intent, design and purpose, must be understood and applied by intelligent administrators. It is here the Christian administrator is superior because he interprets the law on the side of mercy. If laws are made for the good of man, not only is man superior to law, but his good is superior to law. But the letter of the law is sometimes opposed to the good of man, so there must be some quality which is "better than justice." That quality is expressed by epieikes. Archbishop Trench in his Synonyms of the New Testament says the word expresses that "moderation which recognizes the impossibility that cleaves to formal law."

     We believe the Restoration movement began in the spirit of epieikeia but as we became more sectarian in attitude we became more legalistic. This is a natural trend for it is by legalism that the sect perpetuates itself. Now there is every evidence that while respecting and reverencing the will of our absent lord we are rejecting the idea of "smiting our fellow-servants" as a means of demonstrating our faithfulness to our stewardship. This is not equivalent to lowering the requirements of law, or of disregarding any of the demands of law, but it is rising above the letter of the law to operate in the realm of the spirit. Here is our hope for the future. William Barclay in A New Testament Wordbook says, "A new world would arise in society and the Church if men ceased to base their actions on law and on legal rights and prayed to God to give them epieikeia." Perhaps it would do as well to substitute for some of our outworn slogans the scriptural one, "Let your moderation be known unto all men."