The Apostolic Ministry, 1946 r.

The Apostolic Ministry, 1946 r. - Kenneth E. Kirk

APOSTOLIC TESTIMONY. Our religion is based on facts seen and known, abundantly verified and honestly related. Of these facts apostles were the chosen witnesses. When they spoke to their countrymen, the Jews, they showed how those facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled Old Testament types and prophecies of the Christ. But the real foundation which they laid everywhere was one of fact. Jesus had died and God had raised him from the dead. Of these things they were absolutely sure, and on their testimony the Church was built. On this it is well to lay emphasis. From one side there comes an insidious suggestion to cease from asserting the miraculous nativity and the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ as historical facts, and to content ourselves with the elevation of ideas and sweetness of culture which are associated with his Name. To this we cannot listen, because we cannot live in a house without foundations, and we do not believe that the ideas and influences of Christianity can long remain with us if we part with the historical Christ to whom the apostles bore witness. From the opposite side we encounter another danger. The facts which were testified by apostles and prophets ere overlaid with masses of theological statement and niceties of controversial distinction. Not the Redeemer is preached, but the scheme of redemption; not the death of Christ, but the doctrine of atonement; not his resurrection, but the tenets of the schools regarding the results secured by his "finished work." Now, we do not for a moment disparage theology, systematic or polemical, or forget that St. Paul put much theology into his letters to the Churches; but it is a thing taught and argued, not witnessed. We must adhere to our point, that the gospel is a proclamation of facts, and the Church rests on a foundation of facts, certified by the apostles as competent and chosen witnesses - facts, however, not dry and barren, but significant, suggestive, full of profound meaning and intense spiritual power. St. Paul was careful to assume no higher place in regard to the gospel than that of a faithful witness. He delivered it just as he had received it, "by the revelation of Jesus Christ." He told the Galatians that, if he himself should be found at any future time proclaiming any other gospel, or if an angel from heaven should do so, he was not to be listened to - he was to be accursed. Any perversion of that gospel which had been delivered from the beginning would be sufficient to discredit an apostle as a false apostle, an angel as a fallen angel.