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Letters to the editor
Mennonite Brethren Herald welcomes your letters on issues relevant to the Mennonite Brethren Church, especially in response to material published in the Herald. Please keep your letters courteous, brief and about one subject only. We will edit letters for length and clarity. We will not publish letters sent anonymously, although we may withhold names from publication at the request of the letter writer and at our discretion. Publication is also subject to space limitations. Because the Letters column is a free forum for discussion, it should be understood that letters represent the position of the letter writer, not necessarily the position of the Herald or the Mennonite Brethren Church. Send letters to:
Letters, MB Herald
3-169 Riverton Ave.
Winnipeg, Man. R2L 2E5
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or by e-mail to mbherald@mbconf.ca. (Please ensure that your postal address is included in your e-mail correspondence.) |
Confession of Faith on target
Recent letters to the Herald concerned the “relaxed” eschatological position in our current Confession of Faith (COF). Please allow these comments.
I had a near crisis of faith some years ago when I was finally able to consider the amillennial position, finally able to say, “Lord, I’ll go wherever the biblical data leads.” (I ended up staying premillennial.) In that final approach, I felt like I was ready to lose my faith. This should not be! This feeling should only occur if cardinal doctrine is in threat. In my MB youth, I had been taught speculative, derived (premillennial) thinking as if it were cardinal doctrine. (That derived speculation had been uncritically mixed with the true cardinal end-time data about which all believers must agree.) Let us avoid doing that today. To the extent that our latest COF avoids speculative, derived eschatology and stays only with doctrine agreed to by the universal church, the “restricted” content of our COF is a good thing.
I have met missionaries whose denominations have a very strong premillennial stance. During their overseas service, some of them have moved to an amillennial belief, but have to hide that conviction when home on furlough. This is soul destroying, hurting personal integrity. Let us not put any of our MB members in such a position.
At least a few of our MB members have moved from childhood premillennial thinking to amillennial thinking. Do they have to be “secret” believers in this regard in our churches? Should they feel obligated to seek out another denomination?
Because personal eschatological convictions develop slowly, all denominations have youth who agree with the denominational end-time viewpoint and years later develop divergent convictions.)
Perhaps we might consider developing a “two-tier” COF with the first tier containing cardinal doctrine and the second tier “issues emphasized by most of our current leadership”.
One letter writer’s allegation that our new COF “omits beliefs that were included in former Confessions” is perplexing. (Our first COF, the Schleitheim Articles of 1527 doesn’t even address eschatology.) Every element in the “Christ’s Final Triumph” section of our 1975 COF is retained in our 1999 COF. In fact, the 1999 COF provides additional details: Christ’s return being “visible” and “triumphant” and “imminent”, our “living in expectation of His . . . return”, that believers “receive new and glorious bodies”, and the judgement of believers. The only thing missing is the former full quotation of Matthew 25:13 and Revelation 22:30 but these references are still listed. Further, the mention of the “Antichrist” with a capital “A” allows an indirect nod to the premillennial position while not putting amillennialists into a confessional crisis. Nicely balanced writing!
While Scofield-type dispensational thinking has had varying levels of popularity within MB churches during the last 100 years, it was not part of our original Anabaptist eschatology, and it has never been universally believed within our denomination.
At the same time, let us be willing to monitor the health of our traditionally predominant premillennial thinking. Such thinking has helped keep us from an entangling level of participation in secular government – thus allowing us to keep intact our Anabaptist peace position. It has also helped us avoid the “displacement (of ethnic Jewish hope) theology” underlying amillennial thinking – which produces an additional stumbling block to Jewish salvation witness and makes some amillennials vulnerable to the temptation of anti-Semitism.
Our leadership wants us to take our COF seriously. The recent letters are a sign that it is indeed being taken seriously. But let us be sure to grace our words with salt (Colossians 4:6). If we exhibit discourtesy in our end-time discussions, our youth will be strongly tempted to minimize the “blessed hope” of Christ’s return.
Richard Loewen,
St. Catharines, Ont.
Real teaching indirect
I thoroughly enjoyed the last two issues (Oct. 25, Nov. 15). But I was saddened by the editorial (Oct. 25) that says these changes are only temporary. Teaching is of utmost importance to the editor and rightly so. I’m sure you want it to be the most effective teaching. How many times do we have to tell you that indirect teaching through people’s experiences is much more effective than direct teaching through lectures.
The Viewpoint by Faye Kliewer (Oct. 25) is a good example. All my life I have resisted admonitions to write letters to our Member of Parliament. I don’t sign my name to a letter with 50 other signatures because I’m sure that will end up in the wastebasket. After reading Faye’s article about getting involved in politics, I have done a turn-about in my thinking. No amount of lectures convinced me, but a person who actually did something did. This is real teaching.
Shirley B. Bergen,
Winnipeg, Man.
Previous | Next Last modified January 9, 2003.
© 2003 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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