About Opinions

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     "We have no nostrum, no peculiar discovery of our own to propose to fellow-Christians, for the fancied importance of which they should become followers of us. We propose to patronize nothing but the inculcation of the express word of God, either as to matter of faith or practice; but every one that has a Bible, and can read it, can read this for himself. Therefore, we have nothing new. Neither do we pretend to acknowledge persons to be ministers of Christ, and, at the same time, consider it our duty to forbid or discourage people to go to hear them, merely because they hold some things disagreeable to us; much less to encourage their people to leave them on that account."--Thomas Campbell in Declaration and Address.

     The longer I sojourn among men and the more ardently I study the message of divine revelation, the more enamored do I become of the ideal of those princes of the faith who caught a glimpse of the pristine unity of all believers in Christ and proposed to restore it by renouncing all creeds and confessions as a basis of oneness, except the great and abiding foundation truth that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

     The efforts which they exerted to effect such union, and which gained the momentum to graduate into a swelling movement, are laudable and praiseworthy. It is fascinating to realize that they captured the concept of oneness predicated upon belief in and reliance upon historical facts directly related to the person of Jesus, and at the same time had the foresight to distinguish between those facts and any opinion or speculation formed concerning them. The hope of a united body of saints was thus lifted out of the morass of debates and tumults and placed upon the solid ground of verifiable fact.

     Properly understood, this strikes at the very heart of all sectarianism. If the gospel is Jesus Christ himself, and if obedience to it is simply identification with him in the saving facts of his death, burial and resurrection, we have a basis upon which to unite everyone on this earth who believes into him through the apostolic testimony or proclamation. By its very nature the gospel, the evangel, is unitive. It calls men out and calls them together. God calls us into congregation with one another and not to separation from one another.

     Our separation is from an alien world which does not acclaim Jesus as Lord. It is not from the new humanity. It is the gospel which we hear while in the world and to which we respond. That response brings us into a state where we share a common life, the life of Christ, the more abundant life. It is obvious to all thinking believers that the gospel unites by bringing all who receive and obey it into one body through the Spirit.

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     Those who are inaugurated into the one body are not one in opinion nor will they ever be. They may even hold varied views related to the very facts of the good news. For example, they may differ upon the day of the week that Jesus died, they may differ about the number of hours he spent in the tomb, and may speculate about the nature of his resurrection body which could appear in rooms where the doors were locked.

     But no opinion upon such matters will legislate against one's acceptance by God, or negate the promise of forgiveness. One is not saved from sin by the formation of correct opinions, or deductions from and explanations of the facts, but by belief or trust in them. There is a difference between reposing trust in one and being able to explain all the things which happened to that person. Most of us can only speculate as to why certain things happened to ourselves. One need not be able to explain the Federal Reserve System to trust the bank with his deposit of money or other valuables.

     To me it appears quite tragic that most of the heirs of the restoration movement have lost all consciousness of their great patrimony. As a result they are milling about defending their unwritten creeds as fervently as their fathers once rejected them. Remember that whatever one must mentally or verbally subscribe to in order to be received by or welcomed in a party is the creed of that party. This is as certain as if that thing were emblazoned above the speaker's platform. And whatever grounds are urged as a basis for excluding one from communion constitutes the creed of those who exclude him. And their exclusion of him upon any other grounds than a rejection of the Lordship of Jesus over his life, proves that they are a sect in the fairest terms of the word.

     Those who exclude their brethren because their views, explanations and opinions are at variance with the orthodox views of the group should cease parading under the guise of being Christians only! To be fair they should itemize and print the things one must believe, and those which he must not hold, in order to remain in the party. They should present this list to all prospects prior to baptism. True, this would constitute a written creed, but it would at least make the sect honest and open. It is dishonest to bring people in on the glad good news that our only creed is Jesus, and then throw them out because they did not read the fine print in the contract. We need to stress our exceptions as well as our acceptance. When I talk about these things they gender a lot of questions. Let me mention a few of them with answers.

     By "our history" I take it you are talking about heirs of the particular restoration movement with which we are identified. I say "particular restoration movement" because ours is one of some sixteen restoration movements. Many of them began in the same era. All had the same ideal, the achievement of unity by a return to the pattern of profession and practice of the primitive ekklesia of God. All of them suffered from the sin of division, and most of them divided over some of the same things as the concept of idealism clashed with the changing culture.

     Certainly we must have hit a derail and jumped the track somewhere because we started out to unite the Christians in all of the sects and ended up smashed to smithereens among ourselves. Being human, we made a lot of mistakes, some more tragic in consequence than others. It will be a difference of opinion as to which one was the most critical and any one that I choose will produce a good crop of dissenters.

     However, I think our greatest error came when we began to equate the restoration movement with the church of God. For one thing this took the "move" out of the movement and added a new party to the spectrum. We crystallized into a religious sect which we assumed was the restored church and from that

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time on we ceased to be unitive and became divisive. Since then we have not even united among ourselves but have divided even the "unity" movement.

     The body of Christ has never ceased to be a living entity since its inception at the coronation of Jesus at God's right hand. It was marred, scarred, bruised and battered, and appeared under some strange forms during the changing centuries, but it never died. Sometimes it was an underground entity and sometimes an above-ground organization, but it was the one body composed of all of the saved on earth at the time.

     Men arose in various ages and places to attempt reformation as the form took on new shapes, for reformation is simply re-forming, and most of the reformers had as their goal the elimination of accretions and the recapture of lost values so as to return the ekklesia to its original shape. None of them had the idea that the Lord had closed shop, or that the church had ceased to exist, although they were quick to confess that it suffered from abnormality and malformation.

     Each reformatory effort produced a new creed defining what men thought of as essential to the faith, and each such creed created another cleavage, so that every effort at reform of the existing order produced a new sect. The restoration movement which grew out of the efforts of men like Thomas and Alexander Campbell, was an attempt to unite all Christians by ignoring all creeds and synopses of faith and going back beyond their origin to restore to the church the primitive order of things.

     It was not an attempt to restore the church. None of the restoration pioneers believed that the church had disappeared or been stamped out. In the first paragraph of The Declaration and Address, Thomas Campbell asserted that "The Church of Christ on earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one," and identified its membership by their character. The successors to the pioneers, as always, were the settlers, and these ceased to explore and probe and began to defend. Assuming that the ground which had been captured was all there was, they denied that there was any more to the universe, and began to build a wall around it and to hang as traitors those who still wanted to be explorers.

     And that is where we are today. The "Lord's Church" in our vocabulary does not refer to the one body of believers in the world but to the particular segment of the restoration movement to which the speaker adheres. There are no "Christians in the sects" to unite, so our original goal has been abandoned, not because it has been attained, but because Satan, as always, has brainwashed us into becoming an additional sect.

     The one body is the result of man's response to the universal call of God. The restoration movement is a human attempt to restore to the called a sense of proper relationship to the revealed will. To confuse and confound the movement of God in the universe with a movement of man in the church is like confusing citizenship in the United States of America with a women's liberation movement in California. And to designate such a movement as the United States and assume that only those identified with the movement are citizens of the commonwealth would be both absurd and asinine. Yet, as I visualize it, that is what we have done with reference to the kingdom of heaven in this age.

     If there is not we are doomed to become ever more sectarian and exclusivistic. There is no use trying to correct the situation by impractical methods. We have been trying them for decades and they are continually being trumpeted in "brotherhood journals" and pompously advocated and proclaimed in "brotherhood lectureships." You could as easily straighten out the spaghetti in a can by pounding on the can, as you could to untangle our tragic mix-ups by hammering away in a one-sided college lectureship. We have organized, reorganized and

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disorganized the restoration movement until it is no longer a race with the runners looking unto Jesus, but a ride on a partisan merry-go-round with the passengers all looking for justification for their factional projects. Unless we get off the whirling carousel we shall continue to grow dizzier for "round and round she goes, and where she stops nobody knows!"

     Our pioneers had no problem with the ripped-off fragmented religious scene of their day. They simply recommended ignoring all of the sectarian creedal tests of fellowship which had arisen, and returning to the original dynamic. They were not interested in debating the deductions and objecting to the opinions which give rise to the creeds. It was the tests of union and communion which they wanted to scrap in favor of the faith in the gospel which introduced men into and sustained them in the unity of the Spirit.

     If that approach was valid for the fractured religious world of that day why is it not equally appropriate for the fractured restoration movement now? The only practical solution is to ignore all of our parties, plans and programs, and all of our debates, dogmas and details, and return to the concept of the ekklesia as the called out, the people of God, the family of God. It was never intended to be a church among churches, or a sect among sects. It was not meant to be an organization supported and sustained by other human organizations, institutions and inventions. The way to unite is to unite, not to debate!

     The calling of a religious party "the Lord's church" does not make that party the kingdom of heaven over which the Messiah presides. Designating a religious movement "the church of Christ" does not make that movement the exclusive, warranty-guaranteed body of which Jesus is the head. We are not to be identified as his disciples by our signboards but by our love for one another. If we do not have that distinguishing characteristic it makes no difference what we huddle behind. If we do have it, it may not make too much difference either.

     The body of Christ in a city is not a party meeting at a certain location or street address. There is certainly nothing wrong with a group of saints meeting at such a location. There is nothing wrong with them appointing a board of trustees and owning property if they wish. The sin comes when they think of themselves as the whole body in that city and deny that any others are children of God, or arrogantly assume that only those belong to God who belong to them. The body of Christ in a given city or district is composed of every saved person in that area. It embraces every individual in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, every cleansed, justified and sanctified member of the new humanity!

     The practical solution to the grave problem created by equation of the restoration movement with the body of Christ is to abandon this egotistic, self-righteous concept and return to our original goal which was to be a project to unite the Christians in all of the sects. We will have to stop trying to con honest people into believing that we have tried to make Christians and Christians only. That is just not true! We have been trying to make "Church of Christ Christians" just like the Baptists have been trying to make Baptist Christians and the Presbyterians have been trying to make Presbyterian Christians. They deny this charge just as we deny it. There is a difference! Our good Bap-

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tist friends will say that they seek to make Christians first and Baptists secondarily. We just try to make "Church of Christ Christians" first, last and all the time. Because we have come to the conclusion that "the Church of Christ" to which we belong is identified with the one body which belongs to Jesus, we do not think there are any Christians in the sects. If you are not in "the Church of Christ" in a city, you are just not a Christian, and if you are in the wrong "Church of Christ" which means in another organization than ours, you are not anyway. We are in jeopardy until some brother with a sacrificial spirit is willing to move in and start a "loyal church" and then we can move to it and be safe. We have left off trying to reach Jerusalem and have settled for building a modern Babylon, a state of unparalleled confusion.

     The practical solution is to "discern the Lord's body," and to cease regarding it as a nineteenth century movement with a twentieth century existence, hung-up and strung-out on all of the trivia promoted by professional preachers and organizational schools. All of these things quench the Spirit under a heap of noncombustible issues. The practical solution is to triumph over the organizational concept dumped on us by a Roman hierarchy and free men and women to be sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, brothers and sisters in the majestic family. It is enough to be members of the new humanity, citizens of the royal and divine commonwealth.

     Let us receive, recognize and respect all of God's children. Let us confirm our faith in Christ Jesus by confirming our love for them. To love the brethren in deed and in truth, as opposed to mere word and speech, is the first qualification of a peacemaker and the first principle of any endeavor toward unity. Membership with us may or may not be important but being a member of the one body is an imperative. There is no life if you are severed from the head.

     It might be for you but it would not be for me. It is too much like cutting a dog's tail off an inch at a time to make it easier on the dog. I am not sure we will ever get rid of the sectarian spirit by dissolving it gradually. I am afraid that with such an approach there would always be a residue left in the heart. Moreover, the party spirit (hairesis) is a sin, according to Paul. It is a serious question whether one ought to pull out of sin by degrees or repent of it and be washed clean by the blood of Jesus.

     I have chosen for myself the latter approach, preferring to throw off the chains than to file away at one link at a time. I do not bind this upon all and I recognize that freedom gained too suddenly may bring additional trauma to those unaccustomed to it. But I want Jesus to rule over my heart and being and I am too old now to surrender myself to him a bit at a time. I think God will stand by me if I kick the whole sectarian habit. "God is my refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble." If I cut loose from all the moorings of the flesh, he will not let me drift. "'Twas grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will take me home."

     To me the party spirit is an octopus, and I am not interested in being freed from one tentacle at a time. I want to kill the octopus. I do not want one foot on solid ground while the other remains in the quicksand. But again, I would make it clear that I do not expect others to see things as I do. It is not necessary for them to implement their lives as I do. I want to be free from the virus and infection of sectarianism, and I want to be free now!

     I have no intention of being a front man or a promotion agent for any factional group of earth. I belong to Jesus Christ my Lord. He is the sovereign over my whole life. Never again will men

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entice me into a party where I must exhibit my love for them by hating or mistreating other brethren. Jesus is not dragging me out of the sectarian spirit by degrees. He delivered me and I intend to stay free. This disturbs a lot of my good brethren who would prefer that I "line up" with something so they could more effectively attack me. As it is, they take a cut at what they think is the root of things with their little hatchets and frequently cut one of their own feet off.

     It is true that a lot of brethren have been training their big journalistic guns on me in recent months, but none of these things really move me. For one thing, those who make such personal attacks and accusations are generally professional preachers, men who in other communions would be called "the clergy." I don't think most of the common everyday folk like myself are as hostile and bitter. Many of them realize there is something seriously awry with our approach to unity which has resulted in so many tragic divisions. There are people in every area of the non-instrument spectrum who share my views, although a lot of them do not dare express their real feelings, or they will be cast out of the synagogues. They appreciate the fact I am saying what they would like to say.

     I have a great deal of compassion for the preachers who feel that they prove their faithfulness to God by attacking me. I know of men who were "smoked out" by their brethren and had to take "a public stand" with reference to me. But I used to react exactly as they do now. I was just as factional and exclusivistic as they are. Herein lies our real hope. If God could change my heart and make it possible for me to love and cherish all of the brethren, he can change them!

     One problem is that a lot of brethren exalt their power and derogate the power of the Spirit. They think they are here to save the truth and forget that the truth is here to save them. I get a real bang out of some of the things they say about my thinking. Everyone of them admits that men can be wrong about some things and still be saved. But they are not about to list the specified "issues" on which you may err and still remain in the fellowship of the Spirit. No two of them would come up with the same list. All of them would differ!

     What I have done is to lift the matter completely out of the arena of wrangling over "issues" which are purely temporal and secondary, and have elevated it to the plane of relationship to God through Christ Jesus in the Spirit. This is more than one can stand who trusts in his own righteousness achieved by works. All of the "lawyers" in all of the parties oppose me and for the same reason. I belong to none of their parties but am free in Christ. I trust absolutely in His righteousness but I do not trust in my own.

     I do not think God is nearly as interested in our tests of fellowship as our debaters are, and even if heaven smiled upon our silly party standards under which we march, the Father would not wilfully murder his children because they were honestly mistaken about them. Jesus shed his blood for persons, not things. It is persons who have been redeemed, not things. And persons whom Jesus ransomed can be mistaken about things and still be saved, provided they do not let the things become an object of worship and turn them away from Jesus.

     I have not been mealy-mouthed or used weasel-words! I am bold in saying that the loving God is not going to deliberately destroy a loving child because he claims to speak in tongues. He is not going to brutally destroy one of his children just because that child thinks Jesus will precede the millennium. I have read the scriptures through time and time

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again and that is not the nature of the Father therein revealed. He loves those who have been born again, and so long as one acknowledges Jesus as the Lord of his life, his whole life, God is not going to drive him out into the cold.

     When I began to write on the theme of fellowship I anticipated that I would be branded as a heretic and castigated as a betrayer of the faith. A lot of brethren cannot distinguish between the faith once delivered to the saints and their own opinions delivered daily on the brotherhood milk route. So I am not at all surprised that a lot of them are against me. It would cause me to do a lot of rethinking of my position if some of them were for me. I feel fairly safe as long as they are in the opposition. But a lot of them will see the light and change. Even if they do not I shall go on loving them anyhow!

     I probably wouldn't miss it too much. It is a little childish for brethren to talk about withdrawing something they have never exhibited or manifested. You don't miss the money if someone withdraws ten dollars he never gave you. That is the trouble with "withdrawing fellowship" in a lot of places. There wasn't any to start with.

     My position is that fellowship is not something men can extend or withdraw. We are called into it by God. It is in Christ and it is the fellowship of the Spirit. As long as the Holy Spirit dwells in one he is in the fellowship. It is only one who has not the Spirit who is none of his. Men cannot bestow the Spirit and they cannot withdraw Him. They can put you out of parties, sects and denominations, which is really what you meant by your question. But anything men can put you out of, you are probably as well off out as you are in. It is like an updated sign I saw recently, "Confucius say, 'Man who sits on tack is better off.'"

     Really, I am only in the fellowship with brethren because I am in the fellowship with the Father. Our horizontal relationship is simply the result of our vertical relationship. I was not adopted by men but by God, and while all who love God should receive those whom God receives, if they do not it is their misfortune. Only God can add me to the body and only God can remove me. "God hath set the members in the body as it pleaseth him."

     I intend to stay so close to Jesus that nothing can ever move me. He is my guide and my leader. I will not fear what men shall do unto me! I shall welcome all who are in Christ Jesus and I will receive them as God received me with all of my longings, shortcomings, weaknesses, hangups and ignorance. God did not tell me that when I was good enough, or smart enough, or wise enough, he would accept me. He did not tell me that when I made a good grade on the doctrinal test I would pass. He accepted me and I have been trying to become a better person ever since, although I still have a long way to go. It isn't always easy for me!

     So-called "discipline" and "withdrawal of fellowship" in our day, has little to do with what the new covenant scriptures teach. It is not spiritual action taken by those who love Jesus, but human reaction of those who fear change. It is administered not by loving saints but by institutional wardens. It stems not from love for brethren, for generally those excluded are much more loving than those who exclude them. The basis of it is insecurity. Those who think for themselves and can no longer goose-step in unison to the sound of the party trumpet are regarded as a threat to the authoritarian structure. So they are warned, unison to the sound of the party trumpet are regarded as a threat to the authoritarian structure. So they are warned, threatened and finally thrown out, by status quo defenders.

     We should not feel sorry for the excluded! Not every one can get out of a

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trap so easily. To be freed from a snare without having to gnaw your leg off is a blessing. Our sorrow should be reserved for those who pompously regard themselves as the guardians of orthodoxy and who issue ultimatums, and who arise on Lord's Day to pontificate on error by which they mean disagreeing with tradition and their opinions, and who then read a document, generally drawn up by the preacher, declaring that a brother and his family are consigned to limbo because they claim to have attained a closer walk with God through an experience with the Holy Spirit. With shepherds like this watching the flock, who needs wolves to scatter the sheep and drive them away?

     First of all you need to ask if what you call "discipline" is the will of God. If it is not, it should not only be weakened, but abandoned. Is it the will of the heavenly Father to cut off from our association a saint who has diligently studied the scriptures and come to the conclusion that Jesus will return before the millennium? Is it the will of God to hound out one who believes that a Christian cannot serve in the armed forces of the United States, or one who holds that he can? Is it the will of God to set up arbitrary rules that if one is absent from three consecutive gatherings of the congregation he is summarily dismissed from the "membership" and to "return to the fold" must march up during an invitation song and make an acknowledgment and ask forgiveness of "the powers that be"? "Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, that he hath grown so great?"

     The will of God is revealed in the word of God. It says nothing about such high-handed tactics in the family of God. We are encouraged to receive one another, to be patient and longsuffering. We are to be kind, considerate and merciful to each other. We are a family circle not a big business organization. Our names are enrolled in heaven and not on a factory payroll. The ekklesia of God cannot be maintained like an assembly line. We are not to judge one another but to love one another. We dare not "set at nought a brother for whom Christ died."

     Many of our brethren cannot distinguish between sin and error. The first is an action of the heart which is an offence against God and His majesty. It dethrones God in the inner chamber of the spirit and substitutes self in the reigning position. On the other hand, error is a mistake of the mind. We can no more endorse error than we can condone sin, but error like disease, is not always fatal. Our hope of life not conditioned upon a person being right, but upon being in the right person. He that hath the Son hath life, he that hath not the Son hath not life!

     Error can become sin when it is voluntary or when it causes the errorist to swerve from the faith. Involuntary ignorance is never a sin. Voluntary ignorance is a sin because it causes one to fall below his potential deliberately. But all of us form opinions and not all of them are correct. We are neither infinite in perception nor judgment. We are not saved by being correct on all matters nor damned because of being incorrect on some. If we were, there would be no salvation, and damnation would be universal and the lot of all.

     No opinion held under the Lordship of Jesus is a ground for congregational action against an individual. It is only when one is led to deny the relationship he sustains to Jesus through the Spirit, or to subvert the divine purpose by factionalism and deliberate fragmentation of the one body as God's unitive instrument on earth that the community of saints should dissociate from him.

     One cannot divest himself of an honestly-held opinion by order of others. Such orders do not make better Christians but greater hypocrites. Anyone who denies what he holds as a conviction in

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order to remain in good standing with a group only proves his insincerity, and not the rightness of the group. Any group which issues dogmatic orders of this kind intrudes where it has no business, violates the rights of citizens of the kingdom of heaven and sins against the consciences of the brethren. All who engage in such high-handed action seek to lord it over the heritage of God, and become the greater sinners.

     Honest opinions are our brain-children and one can no more be expected to abandon them than he should be expected to abandon his children in the flesh. One can conceal his thoughts as he can his children when his home is under attack, but he ought not to deny them to save his own skin. One who reads the word of God and meditates upon it cannot help but form opinions about what he reads. If he is a person of integrity he will never ask himself what opinions he must hold to be in good standing with men. Instead, he will reach conclusions which appear to him to be the will of God in the subject-matter involved.

     To hold that a person is subject to penalty for holding an opinion is like punishing him for digesting his food. One can no more keep from digesting mental food than he can his physical food, if he is mentally healthy. Mental digestion is as spontaneous and natural as is physical digestion. It is absurd to pour every mental capacity into a party mould, for all such moulds are themselves but crystallized opinions which have been set and hardened.

     Our next question is, "But are not elders charged with formulating and regulating opinions of the members who are under their charge?" My answer to this and other questions related to eldership and membership will be given in our next issue. I do hope that you will look forward to it and read it with care. If you should like to have additional copies of this issue to circulate among your friends you may secure them at the rate of ten for one dollar.