The world in which we live is not a world at peace. More wars are currently raging than at any other moment in recorded history. Eighty percent of the deaths in these wars are civilian. Since 1700 the frequency of wars has been rising steadily, as has their destructiveness, and by the time the twentieth century is complete it will have accounted for nearly all war-related deaths in the modern period (90 percent). The distinction between civilian and combatant is no longer upheld. Modern war has become essentially indiscriminate.
World military expenditures, a major incentive to war, have surged beyond belief. A staggering 1.8 million dollars is spent every minute on armaments, a figure that has been climbing for at least twenty-five years with no end in sight. These expenditures not only amount to inexpressible monetary waste. They also buttress global and imperial structures of massive inequality – structures in which the poorest two-fifths of the world’s population must scramble to divide a pittance of the world’s gross national product (less than 4 percent), while a princely sum of 75 percent is allotted to the richest fifth. Meanwhile military defence budgets in the third world are today seven times higher than they were in 1960, more than half of all third world governments are military-controlled, and two billion of their subject populations must live in daily fear of violence, war and torture visited upon them as domestic policy.
No mere statistics can convey the human costs of the global arms race. When 14 million children under the age of five are dying annually from causes whose solutions are often low-cost and readily available, no numbers can do justice to the magnitude of the misery. When year after year necessities are denied to the many while luxuries are lavished on the military and the few whose interests they serve, the statistics mount up like tombstones in a global cemetery, “monuments,” writes Ruth Leger Sivard, “to lives lost to neglect:”
- 100,000,000 people have no shelter whatsoever
- 770,000,000 do not get enough food for an active working life
- 500,000.000 suffer from iron-deficiency anaemia
- 1,300,000,000 do not have safe water to drink
- 800,000,000 live in “absolute poverty,” unable to meet minimal needs
- 880,000,000 adults cannot read and write
- 10,000,000 babies are born malnourished every year.
(These and all other statistics in this essay are from Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures, 1987-88, Washington, D.C., 1987.)
Poverty and deprivation of these proportions cannot be meaningfully addressed by a further bloating of the world’s military budgets.
Hanging over all these problems, like the sword of Damocles, by a single hair, is the threat of nuclear war. Recent steps towards superpower disarmament – while not unimportant – have not fundamentally changed a situation fraught with dangers unprecedented in human history. A world
bristling with 55,000 nuclear weapons whose combined destructive force is 16,000 megatons (16 billion tons in TNT equivalent) is still a world on the brink of self-extermination. War by inadvertence – by human miscalculation or technical malfunction, especially during a crisis – remains an ever-present possibility. Nor can war by design be entirely ruled out. For the world’s nuclear forces are increasingly being integrated into aggressive, first-strike postures. The trend is toward strategies of preemption. At the first sign of a hostile more, the enemy’s weapons and command structure (whichever side it may be) are slated to be destroyed. More and more, the world’s nuclear forces are being kept on hair-trigger alert.
Perhaps it would not be superfluous to review the probable consequences of an all-out nuclear war. Virtually all major cities in the Northern hemisphere would be demolished, as would many in the southern hemisphere as well. Millions would be killed by blast and firestorms. Radioactive fallout would mean the slower deaths of millions more. Vast areas would be rendered uninhabitable. Bacteria, viruses, rodents and insects in contact with corpses would rapidly spread disease. The stratospheric ozone layer (already jeopardized as it is) would suffer serious depletion, nuclear winter would severely lower the earth’s temperature, and the biosphere would be disrupted on a global scale. Massive crop failure would ensue, and famine would weep the earth. The states of life could be permanently altered by the long-term ecological effects. Adequate words are lacking to express the full enormity of the situation. Nuclear war would be a terminal event. (The relevant scientific literature is conveniently summarized, with full references, by Helen Caldicott, Missile Envy, Toronto and New York, 1986, pp.7-30.)
How is the church of Jesus Christ to proclaim the gospel in the face of this perilous situation? How is it to live out its calling in faithfulness to God, devotion to its mission, and service to the world? What alliances should it be ready to enter, and what distinctiveness should it strive to preserve? What directions once taken should it gladly reaffirm, and what ventures should it humbly reconceive? No comprehensive answer to such questions can be attempted here. All that can be offered are a few jottings for reflection and orientation. Perhaps it would be well to mention, however, two limitations which pertain to this essay’s point of view.
First, the point of view reflects the North American setting from which the essay is written. Christians from third world settings sometimes wonder whether the potential holocaust of a nuclear war does not serve to deflect attention away from the actual holocausts of hunger, torture and death which they readily see around them in their own countries. As the introductory material is meant to suggest, this essay assumes that the two issues are closely linked. The militarization of the world economy not only establishes an important precondition for the outbreak of nuclear war, but also for repression and social misery in the third world. It is true that Christians in developed countries would be irresponsible if they concentrated on the peril of nuclear war to the exclusion of all else. But it is also true that they would be irresponsible if they neglected altogether the nuclear peril to the entire globe which their own countries do so much to foster. Although different Christians in different settings will need to emphasize different tasks, it seems beyond question that the mounting prospect of nuclear war is a matter of urgency for the whole church. “For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Rom 12.4-5).
Second, the point of view reflects the conviction that there is no necessary conflict between justice and peace. Justice without peace, it is assumed, is not justice; and peace without justice is not peace. Both are two ways of describing the same basic reality as a whole. Neither can finally be complete without the other. Justice without peace is mere vengeance, and peace without justice is mere repression. A church which truly knows that justice and peace are first of all designations of God’s reality, God’s promises and God’s dominion will be a church that refuses to accommodate itself to either vengeance or repression. It will therefore be a church which exhibits a profound suspicion towards violence in all its forms, even if the resort to violent means under certain carefully prescribed conditions is perhaps not altogether to be ruled out. This point of view will be explicitly elaborated in what follows. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12.21).
Within these assumptions it is proposed that covenanting for peace in a nuclear age would mean at least three things: rethinking the just-war tradition, rethinking ecclesiology, and rethinking the meaning of status confessionis. Decisions that might be taken by a new covenant for peace will be suggested largely in the form of questions. The questions are not meant to be rhetorical, but really open-ended for discussion.
Would not covenanting for peace in a nuclear age mean rethinking the just-war tradition?
The most radical form of this question can perhaps be posed with reference to the witness of the historic peace churches. Can the Reformed churches still afford to reject this witness categorically? Was it really a good idea to incorporate such rejection in the Reformed confessions of the 16th century? Can the Reformed church look back with anything but shame on its persecution of the Anabaptists, sometimes even unto death? Would not an adequate form of repentance include listening carefully to their witness today? Is it not central to this witness that in all – and not just some – situations of human life, Jesus Christ expects nothing less from his disciples than love? Is not this love to be marked especially by a spirit of forgiveness? Does not this love refuse to retaliate against those who inflict or threaten injury? Does it not instead respond with benevolence? Are not Christians called to love their enemies, to do good to those who hate them, to bless those who hurt them, and to pray for those who abuse them (Luke 6.27-28)?
The historic peace churches have never been able to understand how Christians could show love to their enemies by killing them. Contrary to just-war theorists from Augustine onward, these churches have wondered how the love expected by Jesus could be reduced in certain settings to little more than an inward attitude toward one’s enemy. Can the disposition of love, they have asked, really stand in complete contradiction to the outward action (as it seems to do when one’s enemy is killed in battle)? Are not Christians called to suffer and die for peace, yet never to kill for peace?
Is it not in this way that the Christian life corresponds not simply to the life and teaching of Jesus, but most especially to the theology of the cross? For is it not the cross that demonstrates how God’s enemies are dealt with by God? Are we to respond otherwise to God and one another than God in Jesus Christ has responded to us? Was not God’s love shown for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us? Was it not while we were enemies that we were reconciled to God by the death of God’s Son (Rom 5.8, 10)? Is there some other norm for Christian behaviour, the historic peace churches would ask, than love for our enemies even, if necessary, unto death?
Have the Reformed churches nothing to learn from this witness even if, perhaps, they cannot appropriate it entirely? Confronted by the current situation – with its unprecedented slaughter, both real and potential, of noncombatants; with its heedless plunge toward nuclear chaos in defiance of the divine creation; with its vile immiserization of the poor through military squandering and sabre-rattling – do the Reformed churches really have a better witness to offer, something deeper, more biblical, more complete? How does it stand with their historic espousal of the competing and dominant alternative – the so-called just-war tradition? Have they really been faithful stewards of that which they have so long espoused?
A distinction is commonly made in the just-war tradition between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Jus ad bellum, or the justifiability of going to war, concerns such matters as whether the authority waging the war is legitimate, whether the cause at stake is just, and whether the ultimate goal is peace. Clearly presupposed is that some authority may be illegitimate (eg lawless), that some causes may be unjust (eg, economic aggrandizement), and that some goals may violate peace (eg subjugation of a people). Jus in bello, on the other hand, or the justifiable way of fighting a war, is concerned primarily with the means rather than the ends. It is necessary to ask whether the means employed are “proportional” (not doing more harm than good), and whether they are “discriminate” (not directed against noncombatants). Clearly presupposed is that some means may not be proportional (eg destroying a village in order to save it), and that some may not be discriminate (eg direct and deliberate aerial bombardment of cities). Further criteria – whether the war is waged as a last resort, whether international law is respected, and whether success is probable – would seem to overlap the distinction between ends and means or between justifiably going to war and justifiably conducting one. Again, however, the implications are clear: war is not always the last resort (eg aggression), international law can be violated (eg starving prisoners of war), and success is not always probable (eg reckless retaliation). Strict versions of the tradition have held that no war is justifiable unless all the criteria are reasonably and continually met. In any case the spirit of the tradition is clear. War is never to be endorsed uncritically, but must always be justified before the court of moral judgement.
How, then, does it stand with the Reformed church’s historic espousal of this tradition? How credible has been its stance? In what meaningful ways, if any, has the just-war tradition been institutionalized? How has it entered into Reformed congregational life through preaching, worship and pastoral care? Have believing Christians in Reformed congregations been taught and prepared to engage, if necessary, in selective conscientious objection when it comes to the outbreak of war? What agencies exist in the church to determine whether the causes and goals of going to war may be justifiable or not in any particular case? What programmatic attempts have been made – and at what level of the church’s life – to determine whether the weaponry amassed for waging war could reasonably be used in a proportional and discriminate way? What monitoring systems exist to supervise a war as it is being conducted? What support systems are in place to uphold Reformed Christians who cannot in good conscience condone a war effort? How prepared are Reformed Christians to pay the price, if necessary, of refusal? How prepared are they to disobey orders, to resign from office, to enter the opposition, to stand by the moral dictates of the just-war tradition even at the cost of military victory for their country? What instances can be adduced from history to indicate conscientious objection by the Reformed church – or have no wars waged since the Reformation demanded conscientious objection?
In an age when the destructiveness and frequency of warfare are mounting, these questions are not idle. At a time when the casualties of war are overwhelmingly civilian, and when creation itself totters on the brink of nuclear devastation, could the questions be posed in any other way? If war is not thought to be prima facie unjustifiable until the case for an exception is made, if the ends and means are not scrutinized, if the possibility of objection and refusal is not entertained, how can an espousal of the just-war tradition be considered morally serious and credible? These questions form the background for what follows and will reemerge in various ways. (For further discussion, see John Howard Yoder, When War Is Unjust, Minneapolis, 1984.)
Would not covenanting for peace in a nuclear age mean re-thinking the question of ecclesiology and in particular how the church is related to the world?
If, as implied, the just-war tradition has not been espoused by the Reformed churches as credibly and seriously as might be hoped, then a further set of questions might be raised. Is the deficit in implementation merely an aberration or does it perhaps have deeper roots? If it is assumed as at least a working hypothesis that in the life and teaching of the Reformed churches, the doctrine of selective conscientious objection to war (ie the just-war tradition) is less than fully operative, then might further connections be made? Might certain distinctively Reformed beliefs about God, or about sin and salvation, or about hope have contributed to the situation? The full range of possibilities cannot be explored here. An examination of such beliefs might actually heighten rather than explain the contradictions. Be that as it may, a modest proposal will here be made. Could the gap between espousal and implementation with regard to the just-war tradition perhaps be related to a larger disorder in the doctrine of the church?
Two differing views of the church are widespread today at the practical level, and they are reproduced within the Reformed tradition, though not confined to it. The one view might be called “activist,” and the other “conversionist”. The locus of historical meaning is found by the social- activist church to rest primarily in the transforming of unjust social and
economic structures. The church itself is not portrayed as a real anticipation of God’s dominion so much as an instrument of divine mission in and for the world. What ultimately matters is the building of a better society or the amelioration of a worse one. Social structures are to be humanized to the greater glory of God, who would seem to be of interest primarily as the agent behind movements for social change; and the gospel would seem to be valued mainly for its power to legitimate, motivate and evaluate the work of secular transformation. The activist church is thus preoccupied with righting the wrongs of history and with making the secular city conform to the city of God.
By contrast, the personal-conversionist church argues (not without justification) that the effects of human sinfulness will not be eliminated merely by juggling the structures of society. The element of inner guilt and personal reconciliation with God, this church insists, is not to be bypassed. The locus of historical meaning is thus shifted from without to within, from social structures to individual souls. Social and ecclesiastical structures are left as they are. What ultimately matters are inward renewals of the heart. The church is rejected as a means to secular ends only to be promoted instead as the means to an other worldly salvation. This church offers no alternative social ethic of its own. It merely replaces a religiously glorified secularism with a religiously glorified inwardness which too often means indifference to social misery.
For all their differences, at least two things would seem to be held in common by the activist and conversionist churches. Neither pays much attention to the internal ordering of the church, and both in their own way tend to equate faithfulness with effectiveness (regardless of whether “effectiveness” is measured in terms of social change or the number of personal conversions). Could it be that a way beyond the impasse between “activist” and “conversionist” lies not in a “middle way” between them, but rather in a radical alternative? Might not the excessive secularism of the one and the inordinate individualism of the other be overcome by avoiding what they dubiously affirm and attending to what they unfortunately neglect? Could it be that the decisive locus of historical meaning lies neither in the transformed social structure nor in the strangely warmed heart, but rather in the congregation’s loyalty to Jesus Christ as expressed primarily in the ordering of its own inner life? Might not the decisive (if not the only) contribution of the church to the world be made precisely by embodying a social difference? Can it be denied, furthermore, that faithfulness is a higher virtue than effectiveness? Does not faithfulness require that some things be done even if they will not be “effective” and that others be shunned even if they would be? Although faithfulness and effectiveness may often be compatible, is not effectiveness to be relinquished as the overriding goal?
What would a church look like that had moved beyond activist and conversionist deformations? Only the barest sketch can be offered here. Clearly, however, it would be a church committed first of all to restructuring neither society nor the heart but its own internal relationships according to the will of God. It would not be a church without strategy for transforming the world, but a church whose strategy began with the transformation of itself. It would apply the imperatives of the gospel first to the ordering of its own common life. Personal conversion would
then be a matter of entering a distinctively restructured community. Social action would be grounded in the centre of a communally embodied way of life. The church would not ask more of the world than it asks of itself, but more of itself than it asks of the world. The internal ordering of its common life would become a matter of utmost concern, for the church itself would be acknowledged as a mystery and a prophetic sign. Its primary calling would be to become a provisional representation in communal form of the salvation accomplished in Jesus Christ for the sake of all. It would not forget that the church cannot be the church without direct engagement in society. Nor would it forget that Christians cannot be Christians without an ongoing process of personal conversion from themselves to Jesus Christ. But it would know that the church’s highest form of social responsibility is truly to be the church, and that personal conversion without social embodiment is a contradiction in terms. It would therefore continually be striving to restructure itself in conformance with its own deepest and God-given identity. The church restructured – let us call it the “confessing church” – would be a church of reconciliation, a church of nonconformity, and a church of the cross. (In what follows it is taken for granted that different churches in different settings will correspond to these descriptions to different degrees.)
The confessing church will be a church of reconciliation. Just as in Jesus Christ the world is reconciled to God, so in the faithful community social divisions are to be overcome. The great social division in the world of the bible is the one between Jews and Gen tiles. If that division falls, they all fall – -whether based on race, gender, class, nation or any other social distinction – -so that all are one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3.28). The social novelty of reconciliation will be seen by a confessing church as essential to its proclamation of the gospel. How, this church would wonder, could the mystery of reconciliation, once hidden but now revealed, not be accompanied by a living communal sign of the message to be proclaimed (Eph 3.4-6)? How, this church will ask, can the gospel be credibly proclaimed if the community is organized around existing social divisions?
The confessing church will be a church of nonconformity. It will know that the church is holy and is called to be holy, not as isolated individuals but corporately and communally. It will know that sanctification means being called to be socially different. “Do not be like them” (Matt. 6.8). “You shall not do as they do” (Lev 18.3). The social novelty, moral sincerity and liturgical devotion of such a church will distinguish it from the surrounding world. Ever vigilant against sectarianism, it will know that in the history of God’s people by far the greater sin has been acculturation. It will expect to be essentially counter-cultural, living as the city of God even now, if only in seed form. The ordering of its internal life and the outward mission that flows from it will reflect the difference it makes that Christ, not Mars or mammon, is Lord. (This difference, it goes without saying, will need to be reflected at all levels of the church’s life – not only at the local level of living communities, which is the primary reality of the church, but also at the regional, national and international levels of denominations and ecumenical bodies.) The church’s holy nonconformity will be enacted above all, in imitation of the grace of God, by reaching out to those in deepest need and by making room for them within the community. How, the community will wonder, can its life together not take the form of living fellowship with those who are outcast, despised and humiliated? How, the community will ask, can its protest against social injustice be taken seriously if, in conformity to the world, personal contact with the lowly is excluded from the life of the congregation (cf. Rom 12.16, Gal. 2.10)?
Finally, a confessing church will be a church of the cross. It will know that confessing Christ is not just a matter of proclaiming a message. It will proclaim the message and socially embody it in the face of hostility from the world. What matters in the face of opposition, it will urge, is witness without compromise. When opposed it will preach the gospel boldly. A confessing church will rejoice when counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 5.41). It will be ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die for the sake of his name (Acts 21.13). It would rather endure anything than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel (I Cor 9.12). It will know – not just as isolated individuals but corporately and communally – that the kingdom of God is entered through many tribulations (Acts 14.22). Its suffering will result not from misbehaviour (though it might involve civil disobedience), but from conformity to the crucified Christ. It will be the cost of nonconformist existence. It will be the way the church enters the triumph of grace over the powers of this age. It will mean joyfully trusting in the victory of Christ, come what may. How, a confessing church will ask, can a community which compromises its witness – either for the sake of avoiding suffering or for the sake of supposed effectiveness – -be leading a life worthy of the gospel of Christ? (Phil 1.27)
Various strands in the argument can now be drawn together. How can the just-war tradition be credibly implemented in the life and teaching of the church if the church has not been nurtured and instructed in its implications? How can congregations of the Reformed church acquire the skills and practices of selective conscientious objection if they have not already ordered their inner communal life to express the important element of cultural nonconformity required by the gospel? How can congregations respond credibly and faithfully to such disturbing cultural developments as the rising frequency and destructiveness of warfare, the erosion of noncombatant immunity, and the prospect of nuclear devastation if believers are not already personally and communally prepared to suffer all things as loss rather than compromise their witness to the gospel? How can the appropriate readiness be acquired if it seems to descend out of nowhere instead of growing plausibly from the prior counter-culture shape of the community’s life together in the world? How can a credible witness to the gospel take place here and now without the actual existence of a church which is striving to become less acculturated and is prepared, in various ways, to become more cruciform? These and similar questions take on heightened force when the nuclear situation, to which we now turn, is more directly pondered.
Would not covenanting for peace in a nuclear age mean rethinking the meaning of status confessionis?
Conversionist and activist visions of the church can both be interpreted as expressions of acculturation. Although the strengths of the one are often the weaknesses of the other (and vice versa), both are insufficiently concerned about the internal ordering of the church’s communal life, and both are overly concerned about “effectiveness” (however defined). Neither the inward turn of the conversionists nor the outward turn of the activists, regardless of their partial validity respectively, takes with sufficient seriousness the communal way of the cross to which the church is distinctively called. Neither takes with sufficient seriousness the church itself as the social embodiment of the gospel. Neither really grapples with the live possibility that faithfulness may mean the relinquishment of effectiveness, and that in any case faithfulness is always to be judged on its own terms. Yet is it not perhaps the way of the cross – the confessing church as cruciform church – in its multidimensional reality which holds the key to covenanting for peace in a nuclear age?
The conversionist approach to peace in a nuclear age may be illustrated from the writings of a respected Reformed theologian in the United States who is known especially in “evangelical” circles. Although the positions taken by this theologian contain much of value, both theologically and politically, and although elements of the more “activist” position are not lacking from his thought, his vision is finally dominated by a “conversionist” view of the church. The dangers of total war are recognized: “There is a palpable gulf between legitimate self-defence and the genocide of civilian populations.” Quietism is rejected and a moderate activism is espoused: “We must press for a drastic reduction in the nuclear arsenal of all nations.” A nod is even given to the possibility of a “confessing church”: “The choice today is between a prophetic church and a merely cultural church.” Yet the weight of argument falls finally on “conversionism”: “Only a reborn heart,” we are told, “…can bring people closer to the reality of peace in our time.” Hence, when all is said and done, “the emphasis will be on personal rather than social transformation.” Here the false dichotomy between “personal” and “social” is reproduced rather than overcome. The significance of a confessing church in which the two are one is not really entertained. Acculturation thereby enters into the discussion primarily in the form of ecclesiological and political blandness. Even the most promising suggestions (which are not lacking) are blunted insofar as they occur within the abstract and finally stultifying context of the “reborn heart.” (See Donald G. Bloesch, Freedom for Obedience, San Francisco, 1987.)
Blandness is hardly a problem with the document we will take as illustrating the activist approach to peace in a nuclear age – the total condemnation of nuclear weapons (including production, deployment and use) affirmed by the World Council of Churches at its assembly in Vancouver held in 1983. Nuclear weapons are rejected in the strongest possible terms: “We believe that the time has come when the churches must unequivocally declare that the production and deployment as well as the use of nuclear weapons are a crime against humanity and that such activities must be condemned on ethical and theological grounds.” No justification is allowed even for nuclear deterrence: “Nuclear deterrence, as the strategic doctrine which has justified nuclear weapons in the name of security and war prevention, must now be categorically rejected as contrary to our faith in Jesus Christ who is our justice and peace.” However, although intimations of the need for a confessing church are (as in the previous case) not entirely lacking, the emphasis falls almost exclusively on the need for churches to influence the formation of social policy.
Many sensible policies are advocated, yet none of them seems fully commensurable with what has been so vigorously denounced and rejected. If nuclear weapons are indeed a crime against humanity, is it sufficient merely to call for initiatives like a mutual and verifiable freeze? If nuclear deterrence is indeed contrary to faith in Christ, would a policy of no first use really address the problem posed to faith? Notice that the scathing analysis, whose urgency leaves nothing to be desired, is followed by a set of policy recommendations in which someone else (the state) is told what to do by the church. Is influencing state policy really the primary goal of Christian social ethics? Does the church really have nothing more distinctive to do than to try to influence policy formation? Does it really have little more than recommendations which apply essentially to social actors other than itself? If the church indeed lobbied for such policies, would it really have discharged its social mission with regard to nuclear weapons? Again, the significance of a confessing church as the primary goal of Christian social ethics has been remarkably overlooked. Acculturation has entered the discussion by defining Christian social ethics almost exclusively in terms of goals desirable for state policy. The distinctive ordering and counter-cultural responsibility of the church have ceased to be fundamental, becoming little more than a matter of peripheral vision. (See Gathered for Life, Official Report, VI Assembly, World Council of Churches, Ed. by David Gill, Gen eva, 1983.)
A confessing church would approach the problem of peace in a nuclear age by asking primarily about its own faithfulness and only secondarily about its possible effectiveness in the world. It would earnestly explore the ways in which its own lack of faithfulness as a community may have contributed to the world’s current dreadful plight. Its sins would be publicly confessed, even as it sought all the more for that godly grief which produces repentance and which, leading to salvation, brings no regret (II Cor 7.10). Above all, it would ask whether certain pledges and practices demanded of it by the state are compatible with its own fundamental identity.
Can the church cooperate, actively or passively, with crimes against humanity and still bear faithful witness to Jesus Christ? Can the church tolerate within itself the formation of a moral intention (as required by the doctrine of nuclear deterrence) which would consent under certain circumstances to commit mass murder? Can it still be the church of Jesus Christ if its members are prepared, however conditionally, to engage in genocide (and, potentially, in the case of nuclear weapons, omnicide)? Would not the church find itself compelled to deny cooperation with the greatest of crimes by refusing all consent to it in advance? Would it not vigorously search out all acculturated beliefs, no matter how deep-seated they may have become, which contradict the gospel and blind the community to the magnitude of its faithless acquiescence? Would it not (like the early church) come to regard certain professions as incompatible with membership in the Christian community? Would not embarking on a path of noncooperation and refusal lead the church more deeply to take part in the passion of its Lord? Finally, would not a confessing church be led, were Christian acquiescence to remain normative and widespread, to consider acknowledging a status confessionis in which the disorders in the community’s doctrine and life were publicly exposed as intolerable for the sake of the gospel? “In right confrontation with the world,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “the church will become ever more like to the suffering of its Lord.”
It is true that a confessing church can exist without necessarily requiring the declaration of a status confessionis. The church has other ways of confessing, other ways of preserving its fundamental identity, and other ways of opposing the evils of any particular time. It is also true that the issues surrounding the concept of status confessionis can be confusing and complex, and that the term is currently in danger of being inflated to the point where it serves no useful purpose. It will not do to declare any and every serious problem a status confessions. If the case for such a declaration cannot be made in the strictest of terms, it cannot be made at all. What then is a status confessionis?
It is a situation as urgent as it is unexpected in which nothing less than the truth of the gospel and the fundamental identity of the church are at stake. A status confessionis occurs whenever a set of beliefs and practices which blatantly contradict the gospel are openly represented and theologically justified by a dominant or significant segment of the church. It occurs when the contradiction has become so intolerable as to constitute an emergency. The emergency is that a church which continues to accommodate itself to such a contradiction can no longer legitimately represent itself as the church. It can no longer bear faithful witness to the truth of the gospel, for in the name of the gospel it has assimilated and justified beliefs and practices which the gospel finds deeply repugnant. The enormity of what it justified, the falsehood of what it accepts, and the faithlessness of what it represents have become so overwhelming that the time for deliberation has passed and the time for decision has come. Reformed theologians like Karl Barth and Reformed bodies like the executive council of the Reformed Church in West Germany have urged that consent to nuclear weapons by the church and cooperation with policies based on them have resulted precisely in a status confessionis.
Once again, and for the last time, the various stands in the argument can now be drawn together. How can the church consider declaring a status confessionis if its members are alienated from the just-war tradition and from the vision of a confessing church? How can the church think clearly about nuclear weapons if it has not already thought clearly about selective conscientious objection and about the faithfulness of holy nonconformity? How can a church which has grown used to enjoying cultural respectability, which flounders desperately between the individualism of conversionists and the secularism of activists, which knows little of suffering dishonour for the name of Jesus Christ (let alone rejoicing to be counted worthy of it) – how can such a church become more truly the church? How can it come, when necessary, to break with the culture to recover its identity as the social embodiment of the gospel, and to rejoice to be counted worthy of suffering dishonour for the name of its Lord? How can it be brought to accept the necessary dishonour it would suffer by refusing to cooperate with, and by actively opposing, godless schemes which require consent to the possibility of committing mass murder? Or is consenting to such schemes a question about which differing opinions in the church are possible? Can a church which accepts such schemes, which justifies them, or which hesitates and otherwise acquiesces in them still be considered to have retained its identity as the church? Is it really leading a life worthy of the gospel of Christ? If not, then the persistent calls for a status confessionis will rightly have initiated a process of deliberation in which the church will find no rest until it comes more convincingly to articulate and embody its confession.
see handout in class for references
