One of the most momentous decisions facing Our church this year is the one we must make regarding the training of ministers in Africa. The possible consequences of that decision for the future of the church in Africa arc beyond our ability to measure and its implications for our churches at home are no less serious. The decision we must make is really whether we will abandon or continue to teach the Reformed faith!
The question confronts us in a very concrete way. The large and fast-growing Tiv church in Africa is asking for a Reformed seminary to train desperately needed ministers. Our missionary leadership refuses to support their request, saying they must be satisfied with and we must support a united school teaching Baptist, Anglican, Brethren, Lutheran and Methodist as well as Reformed students. The majority of our mission board has been persuaded by the missionary leadership to support the united school (TCNN) and to refuse the request of the African church, but a substantial minority in our board are protesting this decision, Now the synod must decide what we shall do.
Should there be any question about how this will be decided? Will our churches hesitate in answering whether they will abandon or teach the Reformed faith? Previous synods after very extensive study have decided this question. In 1959 the synod stated that although it would he willing to loan a teacher to a united school, in view of its total commitment to the Reformed faith it cannot see its way clear to he co-responsible for the college which may present many different doctrines,” and instructed its missionaries to work toward “establishing a Reformed Theological Seminary” (Acts 1959, pp. 46, 47). And thus Synod laid down a policy to be followed by subsequent synods. How does it come about that such a basic and clear question now arises again?
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OUR MISSIONARIES’ VIEW
The fact is that our missionary leadership in Africa has opposed these decisions and in practice defied them. Dr. H. Boer wrote in the December Reformed Journal (p. 14) of the 1959 decision, “It has never been observed… We do not in fact, and we cannot in good conscience and with a sense of missionary responsibility live any longer by 1959.” By-passing the question of the morality of such persistent defiance of the carefully considered and prayerfully made policy of their sending churches, let us consider why our missionary leadership insists on supporting a union school and denying a Reformed church the right to have a Reformed school. Do they ~ant to abandon the Reformed faith? The answer given ten years ago and again today is that they maintain that the TCNN docs not abandon the Reformed faith but provides us with a way to spread it more widely. Some of them claim that the Tiv request for a Reformed seminary is not motivated by concern for the-Reformed faith but by a desire to get something for nothing, a reflection of that church’s narrow, selfish preoccupation with its own tribe. This charge against the Tiv church is contradicted by the request of that church, which bases its plea for a Reformed seminary not just on its own great need but also on its responsibility toward fellow Christians who are misled by false doctrines. In the February Torch and Trumpet Rev. T. Monsma, who has been working among the Tiv, in a very informative article also refutes the charge of insincerity against the Tiv church. He writes, “I feel…that the reasons that the Tiv church has given for this request are sensible and should be taken at face value” (p. 20).
Despite his sympathetic attitude toward the Tiv church he somewhat hesitantly agrees with others of our missionaries who say that especially the political and social conditions in badly divided Nigeria should prompt us to support the TCNN. He admits that “it is obvious that instruction at TCNN is not as thoroughly Reformed as it might be at a denominational institution,” but in view of the generally “evangelical nature of the school” and the freedom it gives to a Reformed teacher to “teach as he sees fit,” he allows the practical considerations advanced by other missionaries to persuade him to agree to support TCNN instead of the Reformed school asked by the Tiv church.
Docs this claim of Rev. T. Monsma, and of others, that the TCNN is an evangelical school and that a Reformed teacher is free to “teach as he sees fit” justify our churches’ reversing the decision of our 1959 synod that “in view of its total commitment to the Reformed faith it cannot see its way clear to be co-responsible for the college which may present many different doctrines”? Does it justify our denying a Reformed church the right to a Reformed seminary which our churches have repeatedly said we should seek to establish? Does it make such decisions anything less than an abandonment of the Reformed faith? It does nothing of the kind. While it may be possible for a Reformed teacher to teach in a union school without denying his commitment to the Reformed faith, a Reformed church’s taking responsibility for and supporting a school that is designed to teach doctrines contrary to the Reformed faith is a quite different matter. That cannot by any stretch of imagination be made to harmonize with our form of subscription in which we promise to “refute and contradict” and “exert ourselves in keeping the Church free from such errors.” Ten years ago our missionaries were persuaded to support and to ask us to support a school which must teach doctrines which our Biblical, Reformed faith compels us to oppose. This our church refused to do. Now we are asked to do something even worse—to oppose a Reformed school and to override the convictions of a Reformed church that asks for it.
These arguments of our missionaries reveal in a startling way the degree to which missionary thinking on the field has been shifting from a commitment to the Reformed faith of their sending church to supporting a more broadly ecumenical way of thinking. Even more significant than the necessarily compromising character of the TCNN is the kind of missionary thinking which puts the maintenance of a common front ahead of preaching God’s truth.
The beginnings of this attitude appear far back in the history of that mission. As I mentioned in the February article, our missionaries in Nigeria first worked under the Sudan United Mission and it was not until 1939 that our churches which were supporting them took over the administration of their part of the field. Our synod decided this with the understanding that we would continue to cooperate with the SUM but also with the condition that this did not imply “any curtailment whatever of our authority to conduct mission work along the Reformed lines which we consider essential.” Later synods also expressed this willingness to cooperate, but repeatedly insisted that the Reformed character of our work must not be compromised.
On the field, however, there were indications of a tendency in the mission to stress cooperation at the expense of our Reformed character. In a very illuminating survey entitled Church Growth it in Central and Southern Nigeria, by John B. Grimley and Gordon E. Robinson (Eerdmans, 1966), author Grimley, crediting our missionary E. H. Smith as his informant, states that—unlike some other missions—“When the Christian Reformed Church later took fuller responsibility, it insisted upon being a hnlnch of the Sudan United Mission without its denominational name” (p. 49). This seems the more remarkable when one observes on the previous page the statement that the Dutch Reformed Church Mission (the South African parent mission of the Tiv churches which worked among them for forty years before the Tiv field was turned over to us) “after its early associations with the Sudan United Mission became a completely separate denominational mission. In other words, while the neighboring Dutch Reformed Mission early determined to be independent and uncompromisingly Reformed, our mission, as becomes apparent also from its later development, tended to stress ecumenical relationships at the expense of remaining distinctly Reformed.
DR. BOER’S LEADING ROLE
One of the most vocal and influential men in promoting this point of view has been Dr. H. Boer. Loaned first to a Baptist mission to help in pastoral training, he developed and promoted the ideal of a union school and became its head. Accordingly, the school became an embodiment of his ideas. He also, as the only Reformed representative on its staff, became responsible for the Reformed training of trainees from the Reformed churches. In this unique situation it should be obvious that it is impossible to understand and evaluate either the nature of the school or the kind of “Reformed” training being given to men from our fields without giving serious attention to his point of view. If it be objected that this is injecting a personal element into the discussion, our reply must he that, though it may be regrettable, this can hardly be avoided. When an institution having only a brief, broad, confessional statement is so largely the product of and so extensively under the influence of its head, one can hardly exclude from a discussion of it careful consideration of what he has said about and in defense of it. Dr. Boer, head of the TCNN and Reformed representative on its staff, is an outspoken exponent of the idea that we must stress church unity and not permit our or others’ doctrines to endanger it! This comes out in a remarkable way in the book just mentioned. In it Dr. Boer is quoted:
“The Church in Africa has lying before it the great opportunity of following new paths that are unencumbered by the antipathies engendered by theological debate, religious wars, and ecclesiastical splits and schisms. That she should explore these paths is not only a clear command of Scripture; it is no less a requirement of her present situation.”
The big issue in Nigerian Christianity is not whether the Church will be predominantly Lutheran or Reformed or Baptist or Anglican, but whether it will survive as Christian. The first duty of missionaries is to found the Church. The second duty of missionaries is to nurture the Church. This nurture must always take into consideration the nature of the Church’s situation. The missionary message should not be a colorless, creedless Christianity. It should come in the form of a convinced and convincing presentation of historical Christianity in which the missionary and his Church grew up. But this type of presentation must never go off the deep end so that the Church’s unity in Christ is endangered. Any pressing of viewpoints that tend to undermine the life of the Church as a whole is by that fact suspect, is by that fact contraband.” “Within the one Church there must be room for many viewpoints, but these viewpoints must be held within the one Church” (pp. 164, 165, quoted from H. Boer, “The Year of the Elephant,” The Reformed Journal, Nov. 1962, pp. 4,5).
Apparently such a one-sided emphasis on unity aroused some apprehensions in the mind of author Grimley for he interjects this observation between the quotations:
“On the commercial, educational, engineering, medical and other technical levels there is no indication that Nigeria desires to start from scratch nor to proceed on purely indigenous lines. On the spiritual and ecclesiastical level, while Nigerians rightly desire Nigerian ways of doing and thinking, yet Nigerian Christians can hardly be satis6ed with less than the fullest, truest, and most universal Christianity. Christianity is not provincial or national or bound to any culture–West or East—but meets the needs of man everywhere. Western missionaries, because of the universality of the Christian faith, need to be aware of the danger of Americanisms or Englishisms, but Nigerians must surely wish to assimilate truth regardless of origin into the indigenous pattern of church life.”
In other words, Baptist Grimley feels that he must remind the reader that in Nigeria as everywhere else we must be concerned not only about unity but about the unchanging truth of the gospel, which our missionary in his zeal for unity seems to be losing from sight! This is exactly the point that strikes the reader of many more of Dr. Boer’s writings. The emphasis on church unity becomes so strong that truth no longer seems to matter. And such an emphasis must threaten not only the Reformed faith but just as certainly the faith of every evangelical Baptist, or Lutheran or any other Christian who is concerned about the integrity of the gospel. Just consider the implications of such statements as these:
“Any pressing of viewpoints that tend to undermine the life of the Church as a whole is by that fact…contraband.” “Within the one Church there must be room for many viewpoints, but these viewpoints must be held within the one Church.”
Are they not a repudiation of every controversy, of every doctrinal issue that has ever given rise to division or separations in the church? Was Athanasius wrong when he insisted on the deity of Christ in spite of the controversy that arose with those who denied it? Did Augustine err in his adamant opposition to the teachings of Pelagius? Were Luther, Calvin, and the rest of the Reformers all mistaken? Has everyone who ever insisted on a truth of the gospel when the consequence of that insistence turned out to be II break in the organizational unity of the church been wrong? Must such a point of view not allow every heresy that has ever arisen or will ever arise to remain within the church? Can a church committed to such unity at the expense of truth ever continue to stand for and promote the gospel in a world so full of false teachings within and outside of the church as ours is? God’s Word always tells us to oppose false teachings, never to welcome and help spread them! Our Lord prayed that his church might be one, but always and only in the truth of his Word (John 17:17,20,21). He commanded his church in its missionary outreach to teach men “to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20), not just as much or little as might command wide agreement or might seem suited to the social and political conditions of each time or place! The Apostle Paul had to warn men “not to teach a different doctrine” (1 Tim. 1:3) and even made that warning so emphatic as to say, “Though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema” (Gal. 1:8, 9). He said he “shrank not from declaring. the whole counsel of God” and warned church leadership to be on guard against all who would appear from within the church speaking perverse things (Acts 20:27–29). The unity he taught the church to seek was always a “unity of the faith”—one that opposed all kinds of false doctrines—and insisted on “speaking truth in love” (Eph. 4:13–15). How different is this unity Christ commanded us to seek from the modern type of unity at the expense of truth which our missionary seems to be promoting.
Is it possible that the statements quoted by Mr. Grimley are an unfortunate slip at variance from Dr. Boer’s usual point of view? A little acquaintance with his writings makes it plain that this emphasis is characteristic of most of what he has published in recent years. I n fact, these are the settled convictions on which his sponsorship and promotion of the TCNN is based. One finds this point of view reflected in his doctoral thesis, Pentecost and tile Missionary Witness of the Church (1955). In it he intimates, for example, that the Protestant Reformation was a mistake:
“Can we say that the hard to measure spiritual unity in the midst of Protestant fragmentation constitutes a closer approximation to the unity Christ desired than does the outward unity of the Roman Catholic Church in the midst of her spiritual deformation? Only the chauvinistic will give an unhesitatingly affirmative answer to this question” (p. 192).
With this attitude toward the Reformation it is not surprising to find him arguing that the fundamental issue on which our church existence is based was the refusal of the Dutch immigrants to Americanize ( Proposition XII), or that he should advocate membership in the World Council of Churches (Proposition XI).
In his 1957 book That My House May Be Filled he held that our churches erred in asking that converts be committed to the Reformed faith when they become members. 1n the same year he wrote in favor of the TCNN (Reformed Journal, Nov. 1957) that we are Reformed because of our four-hundred-year Reformed history. The African churches, not having our history, cannot be expected to appreciate or take over the same doctrines. I had to reply at that time that following this basic argument with any degree of consistency must lead to the conclusion not only that the Africans should not be Reformed but that they, because of their African history, should remain pagans! Such historical relativism must inevitably destroy the Christian faith. Everyone knows that our lives are deeply influenced by circumstances, but if one regards this as the all-important consideration—as Dr. Boer’s arguments increasingly do—he loses sight of the fact that every Christian’s faith must rest not on changing circumstances but on the unchanging Word of God. Our forebears saw that clearly and were ready when God’s Word directed them to do so to break with more than one thousand years of historical tradition in the Reformation. To one who loses sight of that, the Reformation loses its meaning. It is startling, even to one acquainted with all of the foregoing, to see to what lengths Dr. Boer’s devaluation of the term “Reformed” has gone in his recent writing against the request for a Reformed seminary (Reformed Journal, Dec. 1967, p. 13):
“There is no uniform and unchanging pattern within which the Reformed faith must be expressed. The reason for this is that there is no uniform and unchanging pattern within which the gospel must be expressed. To be truly Reformed, in my judgment, means to express our witness within the context into which God’s Providence through the years has led us” (italics, mine).
Notice how “Reformed” has lost its meaning. It is no longer defined by church confessions. These are merely historical statements. See the way in which doctrines of the Canons of Dordt are subjected to criticism on the basis of missionary opinion about their utility in Africa (Reformed Journal, March 1965, pp. I3ff.). The Bible itself is not immune from this historical criticism. Consider the way in which Dr. Boer ( Reformed Journal, Feb. 1961) supported critical views of it in the “infallibility debate.” Let Dr. Boer himself state his views: “To be truly Reformed, in my judgment, means to express our witness within the context into which God’s Providence through the years has led us.” From this point of view the earnest request of the Tiv church for a truly Reformed seminary to train its ministry, and the convictions of all at home who feel this need, are simply “to put our own historically conditioned framework of theological education above the interests of the Lord Christ in Nigeria.” The thing Dr. Boer is concerned about is church unity; concern for the doctrines the Lord taught are dismissed as mere “tribalism”!
MISSION VERSUS CHURCH
When the only theological seminary available is one that arises from and is imhued with such principles one can readily understand that the Tiv church, taught for forty years by a mission that refused to compromise its Reformed convictions, should come to us with the plea for help to get a Reformed seminary. Is it not speaking simple truth when it says it must have such a school if it is to be able to help rather than be swept along with errors of other Christians, when it says, “If we do not have this seminary we will be lost among them and other teachings will swallow us up; we will not have roots to stand firm”?
It is plain from such writing as that of Rev. T. Monsma that not all of our missionaries push their ecumenical ideals to the lengths that Dr. Boer does. Rev. Monsma expresses his appreciation of Reformed teaching as Dr. Boer does not. But the significant thing is that Rev. T. Monsma and other of our missionaries have been persuaded by circumstances and missionary arguments to support the TCNN against the Tiv church, the TCNN being a school headed by Dr. Boer and its students taught his views of Reformed doctrine.
Further light is shed on this tragic rift between the Tiv church and our mission by author Grimley. Reflecting the critical comments of one of our missionaries, E. R. Rubingh, he says (p. 166):
“In the Tiv Church we see evidence of this evolutionary character of developing relationships drawn in exceptionally bold lines because of the situation caused by the turnover of one mission’s work into the care of another. A rather unique ‘step-parent’ relationship has emerged that calls for a shifting of loyalties not always accomplished smoothly. The opportunity created for the emergence of strong independent, indigenous leadership is very desirable, but the attendant tendency to ignore the ‘step-parent,’ while natural enough, may prove detrimental to the Church.
“Attitudes and procedures learned over a long period of time from a conservative and paternalistic ‘parent’ cannot be changed in a moment of time, especially when this conservatism strengthens the traditionally conservative tribal position.”
Tn other words the “parent” mission, as we have seen, insisted on a policy of being independent and uncompromisingly Reformed. Now the Tiv church reared in such a conviction is not showing itself too ready to change its views to suit those of our more ecumenically minded missionaries who are willing to sacrifice Reformed teaching to promote church unity.
“TRIBALISM”
Our missionaries brand the independent views of the Tiv church as “tribalism,” an evil they feel they must oppose as inimical to Christian unity. Mr. Grimley in his book points out that this tribal character of the Tiv church also has a favorable side as far as its bearing on missions is concerned.
“The Tiv Church has a tremendous advantage here in having one cultural background, one language, one ‘life-way.’ Each person understands every other within the context of one pattern. The hopes and fears, the temptations and victories -all are in similar patterns for all. Preaching, Bible songbook, Christian literature and study courses, all in the Tiv language, enhance the Tiv Christian’s feeling that the Church is his Church. All this is a powerful attraction to the Tiv people not yet in the Church” (p. 173).
His co-author, G. E. Robinson, stresses the same fact and answers those who oppose this recognition of the missionary advantages of working along tribal lines “because it seems to ignore the Christian ideal of oneness in Christ of all nations and tribes and peoples.” To them he replies that “recognition that close personal ties of family, clan and tribe are the most fertile avenues for spreading the gospel does not imply bigotry or attitudes of superiority toward others. Indeed the church doors must be open to all who would enter. At the same time the advantage of high receptivity within homogeneous units must not be ignored. . Their language and forms of expression can be employed. The people ‘feel at home’ in such a church” (p. 357). In the light of all this, is it not becoming evident that some of our missionaries in their undue preoccupation with organizational unity at the expense of everything else are opposing both Christ’s concern for maintaining his Word and the sovereign way in which he has chosen to work through this “tribal witness” to make the Tiv church the “fastest-growing church in the world”?
It appears we must come to recognize the difference between a right and wrong kind of “tribalism.” There is a right or wholesome kind of tribalism which, when it is to the advantage of the gospel, works within the tribe to extend that gospel witness. A wrong kind of tribalism appears, not in the African church which wants to be true to the gospel and reach its hundreds of thousands of fellow-tribesmen as effectively and extensively as possible, but in the missionary reaction which says, “We Christian Reformed missionaries must stand together against that narrow African church (which didn’t even come from our work ) and support Our decisions for TCNN.” That kind of “tribalism” also now appeals to us with the argument, “Aren’t you going to back up your own missionaries ‘drawn from the whole spectrum of the Christian Reformed Church?’” (Reformed Journal, Dec. 1967, p. 13). Is not letting ourselves be swayed by such considerations the very opposite of the attitude taught by the Scriptures? In the same spirit must we not be ready to support that Tiv church when it begs for help to be true to its faith, even though personal considerations may be advanced to prevent our doing so?
When the Tiv church with its 163,000 attendants and only 30 ministers and 10,000 members asks us for help to establish a school to give Reformed training to pastors to meet its enormous and increasing need, what shall we answer? Shall we let personal attachments, arguments about social and political expediency and the notion that a united front is more important to Christ’s Church than sound doctrine move us to refuse its request? Or shall we, putting God’s Word and our commitment to that Word ahead of all such considerations, help that church train men in the Reformed faith we share?
The question confronts us in a very concrete way. The large and fast-growing Tiv church in Africa is asking for a Reformed seminary to train desperately needed ministers. Our missionary leadership refuses to support their request, saying they must be satisfied with and we must support a united school teaching Baptist, Anglican, Brethren, Lutheran and Methodist as well as Reformed students. The majority of our mission board has been persuaded by the missionary leadership to support the united school (TCNN) and to refuse the request of the African church, but a substantial minority in our board are protesting this decision, Now the synod must decide what we shall do.
Should there be any question about how this will be decided? Will our churches hesitate in answering whether they will abandon or teach the Reformed faith? Previous synods after very extensive study have decided this question. In 1959 the synod stated that although it would he willing to loan a teacher to a united school, in view of its total commitment to the Reformed faith it cannot see its way clear to he co-responsible for the college which may present many different doctrines,” and instructed its missionaries to work toward “establishing a Reformed Theological Seminary” (Acts 1959, pp. 46, 47). And thus Synod laid down a policy to be followed by subsequent synods. How does it come about that such a basic and clear question now arises again?
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OUR MISSIONARIES’ VIEW
The fact is that our missionary leadership in Africa has opposed these decisions and in practice defied them. Dr. H. Boer wrote in the December Reformed Journal (p. 14) of the 1959 decision, “It has never been observed… We do not in fact, and we cannot in good conscience and with a sense of missionary responsibility live any longer by 1959.” By-passing the question of the morality of such persistent defiance of the carefully considered and prayerfully made policy of their sending churches, let us consider why our missionary leadership insists on supporting a union school and denying a Reformed church the right to have a Reformed school. Do they ~ant to abandon the Reformed faith? The answer given ten years ago and again today is that they maintain that the TCNN docs not abandon the Reformed faith but provides us with a way to spread it more widely. Some of them claim that the Tiv request for a Reformed seminary is not motivated by concern for the-Reformed faith but by a desire to get something for nothing, a reflection of that church’s narrow, selfish preoccupation with its own tribe. This charge against the Tiv church is contradicted by the request of that church, which bases its plea for a Reformed seminary not just on its own great need but also on its responsibility toward fellow Christians who are misled by false doctrines. In the February Torch and Trumpet Rev. T. Monsma, who has been working among the Tiv, in a very informative article also refutes the charge of insincerity against the Tiv church. He writes, “I feel…that the reasons that the Tiv church has given for this request are sensible and should be taken at face value” (p. 20).
Despite his sympathetic attitude toward the Tiv church he somewhat hesitantly agrees with others of our missionaries who say that especially the political and social conditions in badly divided Nigeria should prompt us to support the TCNN. He admits that “it is obvious that instruction at TCNN is not as thoroughly Reformed as it might be at a denominational institution,” but in view of the generally “evangelical nature of the school” and the freedom it gives to a Reformed teacher to “teach as he sees fit,” he allows the practical considerations advanced by other missionaries to persuade him to agree to support TCNN instead of the Reformed school asked by the Tiv church.
Docs this claim of Rev. T. Monsma, and of others, that the TCNN is an evangelical school and that a Reformed teacher is free to “teach as he sees fit” justify our churches’ reversing the decision of our 1959 synod that “in view of its total commitment to the Reformed faith it cannot see its way clear to be co-responsible for the college which may present many different doctrines”? Does it justify our denying a Reformed church the right to a Reformed seminary which our churches have repeatedly said we should seek to establish? Does it make such decisions anything less than an abandonment of the Reformed faith? It does nothing of the kind. While it may be possible for a Reformed teacher to teach in a union school without denying his commitment to the Reformed faith, a Reformed church’s taking responsibility for and supporting a school that is designed to teach doctrines contrary to the Reformed faith is a quite different matter. That cannot by any stretch of imagination be made to harmonize with our form of subscription in which we promise to “refute and contradict” and “exert ourselves in keeping the Church free from such errors.” Ten years ago our missionaries were persuaded to support and to ask us to support a school which must teach doctrines which our Biblical, Reformed faith compels us to oppose. This our church refused to do. Now we are asked to do something even worse—to oppose a Reformed school and to override the convictions of a Reformed church that asks for it.
These arguments of our missionaries reveal in a startling way the degree to which missionary thinking on the field has been shifting from a commitment to the Reformed faith of their sending church to supporting a more broadly ecumenical way of thinking. Even more significant than the necessarily compromising character of the TCNN is the kind of missionary thinking which puts the maintenance of a common front ahead of preaching God’s truth.
The beginnings of this attitude appear far back in the history of that mission. As I mentioned in the February article, our missionaries in Nigeria first worked under the Sudan United Mission and it was not until 1939 that our churches which were supporting them took over the administration of their part of the field. Our synod decided this with the understanding that we would continue to cooperate with the SUM but also with the condition that this did not imply “any curtailment whatever of our authority to conduct mission work along the Reformed lines which we consider essential.” Later synods also expressed this willingness to cooperate, but repeatedly insisted that the Reformed character of our work must not be compromised.
On the field, however, there were indications of a tendency in the mission to stress cooperation at the expense of our Reformed character. In a very illuminating survey entitled Church Growth it in Central and Southern Nigeria, by John B. Grimley and Gordon E. Robinson (Eerdmans, 1966), author Grimley, crediting our missionary E. H. Smith as his informant, states that—unlike some other missions—“When the Christian Reformed Church later took fuller responsibility, it insisted upon being a hnlnch of the Sudan United Mission without its denominational name” (p. 49). This seems the more remarkable when one observes on the previous page the statement that the Dutch Reformed Church Mission (the South African parent mission of the Tiv churches which worked among them for forty years before the Tiv field was turned over to us) “after its early associations with the Sudan United Mission became a completely separate denominational mission. In other words, while the neighboring Dutch Reformed Mission early determined to be independent and uncompromisingly Reformed, our mission, as becomes apparent also from its later development, tended to stress ecumenical relationships at the expense of remaining distinctly Reformed.
DR. BOER’S LEADING ROLE
One of the most vocal and influential men in promoting this point of view has been Dr. H. Boer. Loaned first to a Baptist mission to help in pastoral training, he developed and promoted the ideal of a union school and became its head. Accordingly, the school became an embodiment of his ideas. He also, as the only Reformed representative on its staff, became responsible for the Reformed training of trainees from the Reformed churches. In this unique situation it should be obvious that it is impossible to understand and evaluate either the nature of the school or the kind of “Reformed” training being given to men from our fields without giving serious attention to his point of view. If it be objected that this is injecting a personal element into the discussion, our reply must he that, though it may be regrettable, this can hardly be avoided. When an institution having only a brief, broad, confessional statement is so largely the product of and so extensively under the influence of its head, one can hardly exclude from a discussion of it careful consideration of what he has said about and in defense of it. Dr. Boer, head of the TCNN and Reformed representative on its staff, is an outspoken exponent of the idea that we must stress church unity and not permit our or others’ doctrines to endanger it! This comes out in a remarkable way in the book just mentioned. In it Dr. Boer is quoted:
“The Church in Africa has lying before it the great opportunity of following new paths that are unencumbered by the antipathies engendered by theological debate, religious wars, and ecclesiastical splits and schisms. That she should explore these paths is not only a clear command of Scripture; it is no less a requirement of her present situation.”
The big issue in Nigerian Christianity is not whether the Church will be predominantly Lutheran or Reformed or Baptist or Anglican, but whether it will survive as Christian. The first duty of missionaries is to found the Church. The second duty of missionaries is to nurture the Church. This nurture must always take into consideration the nature of the Church’s situation. The missionary message should not be a colorless, creedless Christianity. It should come in the form of a convinced and convincing presentation of historical Christianity in which the missionary and his Church grew up. But this type of presentation must never go off the deep end so that the Church’s unity in Christ is endangered. Any pressing of viewpoints that tend to undermine the life of the Church as a whole is by that fact suspect, is by that fact contraband.” “Within the one Church there must be room for many viewpoints, but these viewpoints must be held within the one Church” (pp. 164, 165, quoted from H. Boer, “The Year of the Elephant,” The Reformed Journal, Nov. 1962, pp. 4,5).
Apparently such a one-sided emphasis on unity aroused some apprehensions in the mind of author Grimley for he interjects this observation between the quotations:
“On the commercial, educational, engineering, medical and other technical levels there is no indication that Nigeria desires to start from scratch nor to proceed on purely indigenous lines. On the spiritual and ecclesiastical level, while Nigerians rightly desire Nigerian ways of doing and thinking, yet Nigerian Christians can hardly be satis6ed with less than the fullest, truest, and most universal Christianity. Christianity is not provincial or national or bound to any culture–West or East—but meets the needs of man everywhere. Western missionaries, because of the universality of the Christian faith, need to be aware of the danger of Americanisms or Englishisms, but Nigerians must surely wish to assimilate truth regardless of origin into the indigenous pattern of church life.”
In other words, Baptist Grimley feels that he must remind the reader that in Nigeria as everywhere else we must be concerned not only about unity but about the unchanging truth of the gospel, which our missionary in his zeal for unity seems to be losing from sight! This is exactly the point that strikes the reader of many more of Dr. Boer’s writings. The emphasis on church unity becomes so strong that truth no longer seems to matter. And such an emphasis must threaten not only the Reformed faith but just as certainly the faith of every evangelical Baptist, or Lutheran or any other Christian who is concerned about the integrity of the gospel. Just consider the implications of such statements as these:
“Any pressing of viewpoints that tend to undermine the life of the Church as a whole is by that fact…contraband.” “Within the one Church there must be room for many viewpoints, but these viewpoints must be held within the one Church.”
Are they not a repudiation of every controversy, of every doctrinal issue that has ever given rise to division or separations in the church? Was Athanasius wrong when he insisted on the deity of Christ in spite of the controversy that arose with those who denied it? Did Augustine err in his adamant opposition to the teachings of Pelagius? Were Luther, Calvin, and the rest of the Reformers all mistaken? Has everyone who ever insisted on a truth of the gospel when the consequence of that insistence turned out to be II break in the organizational unity of the church been wrong? Must such a point of view not allow every heresy that has ever arisen or will ever arise to remain within the church? Can a church committed to such unity at the expense of truth ever continue to stand for and promote the gospel in a world so full of false teachings within and outside of the church as ours is? God’s Word always tells us to oppose false teachings, never to welcome and help spread them! Our Lord prayed that his church might be one, but always and only in the truth of his Word (John 17:17,20,21). He commanded his church in its missionary outreach to teach men “to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20), not just as much or little as might command wide agreement or might seem suited to the social and political conditions of each time or place! The Apostle Paul had to warn men “not to teach a different doctrine” (1 Tim. 1:3) and even made that warning so emphatic as to say, “Though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema” (Gal. 1:8, 9). He said he “shrank not from declaring. the whole counsel of God” and warned church leadership to be on guard against all who would appear from within the church speaking perverse things (Acts 20:27–29). The unity he taught the church to seek was always a “unity of the faith”—one that opposed all kinds of false doctrines—and insisted on “speaking truth in love” (Eph. 4:13–15). How different is this unity Christ commanded us to seek from the modern type of unity at the expense of truth which our missionary seems to be promoting.
Is it possible that the statements quoted by Mr. Grimley are an unfortunate slip at variance from Dr. Boer’s usual point of view? A little acquaintance with his writings makes it plain that this emphasis is characteristic of most of what he has published in recent years. I n fact, these are the settled convictions on which his sponsorship and promotion of the TCNN is based. One finds this point of view reflected in his doctoral thesis, Pentecost and tile Missionary Witness of the Church (1955). In it he intimates, for example, that the Protestant Reformation was a mistake:
“Can we say that the hard to measure spiritual unity in the midst of Protestant fragmentation constitutes a closer approximation to the unity Christ desired than does the outward unity of the Roman Catholic Church in the midst of her spiritual deformation? Only the chauvinistic will give an unhesitatingly affirmative answer to this question” (p. 192).
With this attitude toward the Reformation it is not surprising to find him arguing that the fundamental issue on which our church existence is based was the refusal of the Dutch immigrants to Americanize ( Proposition XII), or that he should advocate membership in the World Council of Churches (Proposition XI).
In his 1957 book That My House May Be Filled he held that our churches erred in asking that converts be committed to the Reformed faith when they become members. 1n the same year he wrote in favor of the TCNN (Reformed Journal, Nov. 1957) that we are Reformed because of our four-hundred-year Reformed history. The African churches, not having our history, cannot be expected to appreciate or take over the same doctrines. I had to reply at that time that following this basic argument with any degree of consistency must lead to the conclusion not only that the Africans should not be Reformed but that they, because of their African history, should remain pagans! Such historical relativism must inevitably destroy the Christian faith. Everyone knows that our lives are deeply influenced by circumstances, but if one regards this as the all-important consideration—as Dr. Boer’s arguments increasingly do—he loses sight of the fact that every Christian’s faith must rest not on changing circumstances but on the unchanging Word of God. Our forebears saw that clearly and were ready when God’s Word directed them to do so to break with more than one thousand years of historical tradition in the Reformation. To one who loses sight of that, the Reformation loses its meaning. It is startling, even to one acquainted with all of the foregoing, to see to what lengths Dr. Boer’s devaluation of the term “Reformed” has gone in his recent writing against the request for a Reformed seminary (Reformed Journal, Dec. 1967, p. 13):
“There is no uniform and unchanging pattern within which the Reformed faith must be expressed. The reason for this is that there is no uniform and unchanging pattern within which the gospel must be expressed. To be truly Reformed, in my judgment, means to express our witness within the context into which God’s Providence through the years has led us” (italics, mine).
Notice how “Reformed” has lost its meaning. It is no longer defined by church confessions. These are merely historical statements. See the way in which doctrines of the Canons of Dordt are subjected to criticism on the basis of missionary opinion about their utility in Africa (Reformed Journal, March 1965, pp. I3ff.). The Bible itself is not immune from this historical criticism. Consider the way in which Dr. Boer ( Reformed Journal, Feb. 1961) supported critical views of it in the “infallibility debate.” Let Dr. Boer himself state his views: “To be truly Reformed, in my judgment, means to express our witness within the context into which God’s Providence through the years has led us.” From this point of view the earnest request of the Tiv church for a truly Reformed seminary to train its ministry, and the convictions of all at home who feel this need, are simply “to put our own historically conditioned framework of theological education above the interests of the Lord Christ in Nigeria.” The thing Dr. Boer is concerned about is church unity; concern for the doctrines the Lord taught are dismissed as mere “tribalism”!
MISSION VERSUS CHURCH
When the only theological seminary available is one that arises from and is imhued with such principles one can readily understand that the Tiv church, taught for forty years by a mission that refused to compromise its Reformed convictions, should come to us with the plea for help to get a Reformed seminary. Is it not speaking simple truth when it says it must have such a school if it is to be able to help rather than be swept along with errors of other Christians, when it says, “If we do not have this seminary we will be lost among them and other teachings will swallow us up; we will not have roots to stand firm”?
It is plain from such writing as that of Rev. T. Monsma that not all of our missionaries push their ecumenical ideals to the lengths that Dr. Boer does. Rev. Monsma expresses his appreciation of Reformed teaching as Dr. Boer does not. But the significant thing is that Rev. T. Monsma and other of our missionaries have been persuaded by circumstances and missionary arguments to support the TCNN against the Tiv church, the TCNN being a school headed by Dr. Boer and its students taught his views of Reformed doctrine.
Further light is shed on this tragic rift between the Tiv church and our mission by author Grimley. Reflecting the critical comments of one of our missionaries, E. R. Rubingh, he says (p. 166):
“In the Tiv Church we see evidence of this evolutionary character of developing relationships drawn in exceptionally bold lines because of the situation caused by the turnover of one mission’s work into the care of another. A rather unique ‘step-parent’ relationship has emerged that calls for a shifting of loyalties not always accomplished smoothly. The opportunity created for the emergence of strong independent, indigenous leadership is very desirable, but the attendant tendency to ignore the ‘step-parent,’ while natural enough, may prove detrimental to the Church.
“Attitudes and procedures learned over a long period of time from a conservative and paternalistic ‘parent’ cannot be changed in a moment of time, especially when this conservatism strengthens the traditionally conservative tribal position.”
Tn other words the “parent” mission, as we have seen, insisted on a policy of being independent and uncompromisingly Reformed. Now the Tiv church reared in such a conviction is not showing itself too ready to change its views to suit those of our more ecumenically minded missionaries who are willing to sacrifice Reformed teaching to promote church unity.
“TRIBALISM”
Our missionaries brand the independent views of the Tiv church as “tribalism,” an evil they feel they must oppose as inimical to Christian unity. Mr. Grimley in his book points out that this tribal character of the Tiv church also has a favorable side as far as its bearing on missions is concerned.
“The Tiv Church has a tremendous advantage here in having one cultural background, one language, one ‘life-way.’ Each person understands every other within the context of one pattern. The hopes and fears, the temptations and victories -all are in similar patterns for all. Preaching, Bible songbook, Christian literature and study courses, all in the Tiv language, enhance the Tiv Christian’s feeling that the Church is his Church. All this is a powerful attraction to the Tiv people not yet in the Church” (p. 173).
His co-author, G. E. Robinson, stresses the same fact and answers those who oppose this recognition of the missionary advantages of working along tribal lines “because it seems to ignore the Christian ideal of oneness in Christ of all nations and tribes and peoples.” To them he replies that “recognition that close personal ties of family, clan and tribe are the most fertile avenues for spreading the gospel does not imply bigotry or attitudes of superiority toward others. Indeed the church doors must be open to all who would enter. At the same time the advantage of high receptivity within homogeneous units must not be ignored. . Their language and forms of expression can be employed. The people ‘feel at home’ in such a church” (p. 357). In the light of all this, is it not becoming evident that some of our missionaries in their undue preoccupation with organizational unity at the expense of everything else are opposing both Christ’s concern for maintaining his Word and the sovereign way in which he has chosen to work through this “tribal witness” to make the Tiv church the “fastest-growing church in the world”?
It appears we must come to recognize the difference between a right and wrong kind of “tribalism.” There is a right or wholesome kind of tribalism which, when it is to the advantage of the gospel, works within the tribe to extend that gospel witness. A wrong kind of tribalism appears, not in the African church which wants to be true to the gospel and reach its hundreds of thousands of fellow-tribesmen as effectively and extensively as possible, but in the missionary reaction which says, “We Christian Reformed missionaries must stand together against that narrow African church (which didn’t even come from our work ) and support Our decisions for TCNN.” That kind of “tribalism” also now appeals to us with the argument, “Aren’t you going to back up your own missionaries ‘drawn from the whole spectrum of the Christian Reformed Church?’” (Reformed Journal, Dec. 1967, p. 13). Is not letting ourselves be swayed by such considerations the very opposite of the attitude taught by the Scriptures? In the same spirit must we not be ready to support that Tiv church when it begs for help to be true to its faith, even though personal considerations may be advanced to prevent our doing so?
When the Tiv church with its 163,000 attendants and only 30 ministers and 10,000 members asks us for help to establish a school to give Reformed training to pastors to meet its enormous and increasing need, what shall we answer? Shall we let personal attachments, arguments about social and political expediency and the notion that a united front is more important to Christ’s Church than sound doctrine move us to refuse its request? Or shall we, putting God’s Word and our commitment to that Word ahead of all such considerations, help that church train men in the Reformed faith we share?