Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1906

Comment recorded verbatim by MacCallum on the closing paragraphs of H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Churches and the Body of Christ,” the William Penn Lecture delivered at the Race Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, Penna., November 8, 1953, and published in Philadelphia by the Young Friends Movement of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1515 Cherry St.

No date

 

 

 

Page 22/

 

   Niebuhr: “The most adequate parable of the situation in    which we find ourselves is the New Testament parable of the body of Christ. ‘For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.’” …

 

“With the aid of this parable we can understand our Christian societies, our relations as individuals to them and to the head as well as their relations to each other. We see the community of Christ as an actual community in the world, infinitely more complex than any human body, yet something like it. It is like a body in that it is made up of many members intricately interacting in common service, often in tension with each other, serving one another not only by way of positive help but also by balancing and checking each other. The body of Christ today, the community of Christ in the world, is as ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ as any of us are individually in our complex psychosomatic structure. Its rule is beyond our control. We cannot construct or reconstruct it. It is there and we are in it. We are in it as individuals and as societies. We are in it as those who need in the infinite activity of the body to operate together in ever new ways; perhaps as those who are being directed by the head to form new organs. But the reality and unity of the body do not depend on our understanding of its structure and on our efforts to supply it with unity or power.

 

“In this faith, in the reality of the holy, catholic church, of the community of Christ we can rejoice in the development of the many societies that are part of its structure, accept our own particular societies with gratitude and without feelings of inferiority or superiority to other societies, accept with gratitude also these other societies with which and sometimes against which we must work, and go about our business of building up the community through the special and limited services we can perform in this our time and place. The church beyond the churches exists now. We know it only in part, to be sure, and for the rest accept it by a faith that does not see, yet is loyal to the unseen.”/

 

 

Curious that language he uses. The context shows he’s applying it in a very narrow way, yet it’s susceptible of very wide application.

 

 

9/  “In all of this we express our desire for a church

beyond the churches, for a community of Christ, distinct from but not unrelated to the societies of national and denomination churches, associations and sects.”

 

 

Groping for consciousness of the universal Society as being creative and thus spiritual.

 

 

10/    “The search after the church beyond the churches …”

 

 

The “Altar”

 

 

13/    “…the warfare of the private interests of the      

individual with the more universal concerns of the social

bodies.”

 

 

No such conflict or warfare in the contractual (free) relationship. Only in government, not in society.