The General Synod of the NGK "decided in 1982 ‘that the synodical statement entitled: Human Relations and the South African Scene in the Light of Scripture, should be completely revised, for consideration by the next General Synod.’ (Acta Synodi p 1182)" (General Synodical Commission 1987, 1). This was revised, slightly condensed into two chapters, and reprinted as Church and Society 1990 (General Synodical Commission 1991).
The first chapter is entitled "Basic Scriptural Principles." It includes discussions on the doctrines of (1) Biblical authority, hermeneutics, and its kingdom-focus; (2) the church; and (3) "the church and group relationships." This review will refer to this section as the normative or principial section of the C&S document.
The second chapter is "Some Practical Implications." It includes four main divisions: The NGK and (1) "the ecclesiastical situation in Southern Africa," (2) practical matters such as membership, accreditation of ministers, visitors and joint meetings, (3) the mission and diaconal task, and (4) other spheres of life including the relationship of the NGK to the Afrikaner people (volk); to political models, civil government, society, "marriage in a multicultural society"; and to education (General Synodical Commission 1991, n.p.). This review will refer to the second chapter as the practical or application section of the C&S document.
This review of the literature concerning C&S will include a historical survey and analysis of the missiological and theological background literature of the C&S. It will discuss the relationship between the former General Synod decision, HRLS and the C&S, its revision. The review will survey the ecclesiastical pressure to abandon HRLS, the NGK’s movement towards consensus with the NGSK’s Belhar Confession and reintegration with the world conciliar movement.
The literature discusses several background factors that influenced the NGK’s decision to adopt Church and Society in the watershed synod of 1986. Apartheid social theology developed historically from missiological roots.
First of all, apartheid social theology did not reach the zenith of its development until the 1974 General Synod of the NGK, which approved Ras, Volk en Nasie en Volkereverhouding in die Lig van die Skrif, sometimes also called the report of the Landman Commission in the literature. The document was released to the world with the English title Human Relations in the Light of Scripture (HRLS) and gave a qualified approval of separate or parallel development (HRLS 13.6-7).
In response to severe worldwide criticism of this justification of a "separating" social theology, the 1982 General Synod mandated that a commission revise and update the 1974 document, HRLS. The decision to revise HRLS came several years too late to stop the severe ecumenical reaction to the General Synod’s official apartheid theology, moderate as it was. For example, HRLS was "the document that was responsible in large part for the action taken by the WARC in 1982 against the NGK" (Villa-Vicencio 1986, 9). Church and Society, adopted in 1986, was the NGK’s official response to the criticism of HRLS.
Second, it is necessary to put HRLS and its revision, C&S, in their proper missiological context. HRLS was a fairly comprehensive apologia for the NGK’s mission strategy. It provided a summary of the "theological apology for the philosophical concept of the diversity of nations." This apology then attempts "to state the theological case for ethnicity as the root order of humanity and thus also the root order for socio-political as well as ecclesiastical structures" (Kinghorn 1990b, 27).
HRLS was the crystallization of a long process of missiological and theological reflection. The process actually began in the early colonial days when the largely Dutch Reformed colonists in the Cape of Good Hope, under the influence of faulty views of the doctrine of the covenant, began to see themselves as exclusively Christian. The natives, on the other hand, were virtually non-convertible kaffirs, an Arabic term borrowed from Muslim slaves, meaning "infidel" or "heathen," but now used in Afrikaans in a derogatory sense. Jonathan N. Gerstner’s published dissertation, The Thousand Generation Covenant: Dutch Reformed Covenant Theology and Group Identity in Colonial South Africa, 1652-1814, describes this early process in great detail (Gerstner 1991; see review by Kreitzer 1994).
The published dissertation by NGSK missiology professor, J. C. Adonis, Die Afgebreekte Skeidsmuur weer Opgebou (The Broken Down Dividing Wall Rebuilt), is the classic critical documentation of the process of developing a separate mission church for Afrikaans-speaking "Cape Coloureds." The ecclesiastical process began in 1858. At that time, the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Cape decided to allow the separation of the "Creole" Afrikaner parishioners from the "Dutch" Afrikaner church members at the Lord’s Supper. This process culminated in the founding of the NG Sending Kerk in 1881 for the "Creole" Afrikaners (Adonis 1982).
By 1935 the policy of separate churches for distinct peoples had been solidified and shaped into a solid missiological doctrine adopted by the Federal Council of the NG Kerke, the forerunner of the present NGK.
This policy played an immeasurable role in the NGK. It was quickly used for more than merely a yardstick for missionary activities. Because of the lack of a social theological criteria in the church, it was also put into use in the judging of political ideas including, naturally, the question of apartheid. (Kinghorn 1986a, 87)
J. Kinghorn, charts this whole process of development in Die Groei van ‘n Teologie – van Sendingbeleid tot Verskeidenheidsteologie (The Growth of a Theology — from Mission Policy to a Theology of Diversity) (Kinghorn 1986a; see also Smith 1980; Botha 1984; Loubser 1987; see Van der Walt 1963 for a summary of this process from an indigenous church perspective).
HRLS was the apex of the NGK’s theological support for planting autochthonous, self-governing daughter churches for each ethno-racial group. After its adoption, HRLS’ opponents’ primary goal was to substitute a policy emphasizing one unified Reformed church for Southern Africa. Adonis, for one, summarizes the reasons for this goal. First, the older NGK mission policy was "synonymous with the ‘apartheid policy.’" Second, the relationship between the churches should no longer be one of mother to daughter but a relationship between mature sister churches. Therefore, the NGK should cease to control the younger churches as immature daughters but should be in relationship with them "in all circumstances as equally worthy of the status of the church" (Adonis 1982, 207; emphasis in original).
The implication, according to Adonis, is that if there is indeed only one church of Christ according to the Scripture, and if all younger churches equally possess the status of "the church," then there should be in fact as well as theory only one church of Christ. Thus there is no justification for the concept of mission churches or mother-daughter church relations. The NGK thus is mandated by Christ to unite into one structure with the churches they planted. This is Adonis’ proposal as well as that of his church’s Belhar Confession.
This conclusion seems to be an understandable reaction to the policy of a volk-based, apartheid missiology. Ironically, in most other sectors of the world following the Second World War, in the years of anti-colonial and liberation sentiment, many younger churches wanted exactly the opposite. These younger churches usually desired structural independence and equal status with the planting church, wanting the right to control their own theological, linguistic, cultural and financial direction under God (see Beyerhaus 1956, 1964).
Several Dutch missiologists and their Afrikaans-speaking disciples (see e.g., Hoekendijk 1948; Verkuyl 1978; Adonis 1982; Bosch 1991; see Padilla 1985 for Latin American perspective)
oppose independent ethno-churches on principle. Church growth (e.g., McGavran and Wagner), German (e.g., Warneck and Gutmann), and Afrikaner (e.g., HRLS) volk–based missiologies, they claim, divide the unity of the church, which is one in essence. Therefore, it should be structurally one in fact. Second, these non-ethnic missiologists claim that emphasizing the ethno-cultural distinctiveness in church planting is actually building upon the divisions of the fallen first creation. Hence it is not building on the unities of the eschaton, the New Creation.
They claim, thus, that any emphasis upon the created uniqueness of the peoples of the earth is exclusivistic. The gospel on the other hand is inclusivistic, breaking down gender, ethnic, class, and racial divisions. They conclude that no people has any New Testament authority to express their uniqueness within the universal church by means of ethno-linguistically distinct self-governing, self-financing, self-propagating, and self-theologizing ethno-church structures. To teach otherwise would be to teach an essentially heretical form of apartheid missiology. The NGSK’s Belhar Confession, the WARC decision on apartheid as heresy, supported their inclusivist perspective.
In conclusion, instead of divisive, creation-based structures, inclusivist missiologists teach that the church is one "new fellowship [that] . . . transcends every limit imposed by family, clan, tribe, ethnic group, nation, and culture. This new people is a seed of the new humanity" (Verkuyl 1978, 107). This one church is the harbinger of one new world. Therefore, the church should express its culture transcending newness (1) by unifying all ethnic branches into one universal structure in which (2) the church and mission distinctions cease to exist, and (3) social divisions should be leveled as much as is possible. This is the ideal of the world ecumenical movement represented by the WCC and WARC.
Some have interpreted Church and Society as only making moderate changes to the older divisive social theology of HRLS. That document, it is alleged, emphasizes Afrikaner interests and security above everything else (see Kinghorn 1990c; Villa-Vicencio 1986; Heideman 1988). As others have interpreted the situation, the commission preparing the C&S document actually abandoned the previous report and its justification of apartheid (see Schrotenboer 1986; Loubser 1987).
It was indeed a radical break with the past according to a group of protesters within the NGK who issued a manifesto in 1987 entitled Geloof en Protes (Faith and Protest) (Voortsettingskomitee 1987). The authors of F&P foresaw then that C&S was in principle a complete abandonment of racial separation and the acceptance of its corollary, an ethnically and racially unified church in a unified, pluralistic state:
Once again . . . [C&S] betrays the fact that it is absorbed up in a world climate that wishes to explain away "race" (a creation fact) for the sake of a borderless human community (and a multiracial, unitary state). (Die Voortsettingskomitee 1987, 29)
Kinghorn and others dispute the claim that C&S abandons ethno-racial exclusivity, saying that the claim is at best only partially true, depending on "how apartheid is defined" (Kinghorn 1990b, 22). Some such as Villa-Vicencio originally claimed that C&S (1986) only includes a mild shift or revision in the basic apartheid theology expressed in HRLS. To this he attributes mixed motives. C&S (1986) is merely a move "toward a more moderate stance on the points that made the NGK most unpalatable to the ecumenical church" (Villa-Vicencio 1986, 9).
The difference of opinion between the critics from the exclusivist and inclusivist points of view seems to have come about because different sections of the C&S document are emphasized by each group. The inclusivist critics appear to be mostly responding to the paragraphs in the moderate application section of C&S, with little reference to the logical outworking of the more radical paragraphs in the second, norm-giving "Scriptural Principle" sections (see König 1989). The Voortsettingskomitee, on the other hand, seems to focus most of its attention on the implications of the more socially and theologically radical paragraphs of the normative section(s) of C&S (1986).
However, in the midst of virtually rejecting the whole of the 1986 Synod’s decision, the radical inclusivist critic, Charles Villa-Vicencio, makes a crucial admission. The admission contradicts his criticism cited two paragraphs above. In his article, "Report from a Safe Synod," he claims that "many of the cardinal theological principles found in the report are acceptable and pleasing [from his inclusivist perspective]. But they are irreparably compromised when they are put to the hermeneutical service of the prevailing political dispensation [in the practical sections]" (Villa-Vicencio 1986, 10). From Villa-Vicencio’s perspective, the privileges and prejudices of the white Afrikaner oppressor class are coddled to in the practical sections. This compromised the radical, structure-overturning principles in the normative section.
The moderate, evolutionary perspective of Paul Schrotenboer (then REC moderator) sheds light on the impatient and radical tone of Villa-Vicencio. In a specific reply to Villa-Vicencio’s report on the 1986 NGK Synod, he says: "The backwaters of apartheid have, in my view, begun to recede and the trend is irreversible. But there are always recurring, weaker waves until the tide is fully out" (Schrotenboer 1987, 10). He notes that at crucial points, such as that of the call for church unity, the document shows a compromise between norms and applications. The acceptable and unacceptable parts of the compromise "may be expected to exist side by side until a resolution is reached" (Schrotenboer 1987, 10).
A resolution of the internal conflict within the NGK and within the C&S document is occurring. This is an implication of what the NGK delegation stated to the 1993 WARC consultation in Johannesburg, at which the NGK requested readmission to WARC:
We recognize that, in view of changing circumstances as well as of criticisms received, the policy document [C&S] will probably have to be rewritten in the future. We, however, hope that this exercise will not be undertaken by the DRC [NGK] on its own, but as a joint venture of the DRC family. (Réamonn 1994, 75)
Former Moderator Johan Heyns candidly admits the same. He wishes that the commentators had taken into account the "historical development" within the NGK, that is "what is said now over against what was earlier said. [C&S (1990), is] . . . a further attempt at self-positioning" (Heyns 1991a, 256). These are clear acknowledgments that C&S is an evolving document.
John De Gruchy updates the account of this struggle to abandon the older separating social theology. He demonstrates the gradual paradigm shift in the NGK and its emerging convergence with the SACC’s social theology, up to the WCC sponsored Rustenburg conference in 1990 (De Gruchy 1991b). This conference was virtually a repeat of the earlier WCC sponsored Cottesloe conference in the early sixties, but this time it occurred in the midst of a rapid change process in which the ecclesiastical and civil government pressure was exactly the opposite of that which occurred after the original conference. The Rustenburg conference was held just after the NGK General Synod that approved the revised C&S (1990).
As it did in the first ecumenical Cottesloe conference, the NGK leadership again fully participated in the conference. They signed the following confession, with some reservations:
We confess our own sin and acknowledge our heretical part in the policy of apartheid which had led to such extreme suffering for so many of our land. We denounce apartheid in its intention, its implementation and its consequences as an evil policy. The practice and defense of apartheid as though it were biblically and theologically legitimated was an act of disobedience to God, a denial of the gospel of Jesus Christ and a sin against our unity in the Holy Spirit. (Potter 1994, 123-124)
Pieter Potgieter, then Moderator of the General Synod, expressed objections to this and other statements as excessively "one-sided." However, he stated that "on this one issue all agreed, the unequivocal rejection of apartheid" (Alberts and Chikane 1991, 92, 100; note criticism of the NGK for equivocating on the Rustenburg declaration [Villa-Vicencio 1991]).
In retrospect, even such a longtime apartheid critic as UNISA missiologist J. J. (Dons) Kritzinger could admit in 1994 that C&S (1986) "was a radical break with the previous efforts to base racial policies on scripture" (Kritzinger 1994, 11). NGK pastor and apartheid critic, J. A. Loubser, agrees. Concerning C&S (1986), he claimed: "In general one can thus say that the DRC has finally closed its ‘apartheid bible’" (Loubser 1987, 114).
Both C&S (1986 and 1990) seem to be a finely tuned compromise between an older and newer school of thought concerning the relationship of church to society. This balance has been steadily tilting in the direction of the verligte, inclusivist wing of the NGK up to the 1990 revision of C&S and afterwards. Thus C&S seems to be an evolving transitional document helping move the church (and perhaps through it the former civil government dominated by NGK members) away from the separating apartheid social theology represented by HRLS, and towards a reunion with the world theological and social consensus.
The international and internal pressure put on the NGK to modify their social theological doctrine had been massive and very painful (see Jordaan 1994). After the WCC sponsored conference at Cottesloo, the NGK resigned from that organization. Lückhoff’s account, entitled Cottesloe, carefully documents the conference and the surrounding events (Lückhoff 1978; see also, WCC 1961). The NGK leadership who had attended the conference accepted the joint conference resolution criticizing certain aspects of apartheid. Ironically, the resolution "was largely based on the preparatory documents [the NGK leaders themselves] . . . had produced for the consultation" (De Gruchy 1966, 66). However, all the NGK regional synods, under political pressure from the National Party and its constituency, rejected the document. This led to incrementally increasing ecumenical pressure upon the church from all parts of the world.
After the Cottesloe conference, various sources in the international and South African ecumenical movement as well as several internal NGK sources published documents that were critical of apartheid social theology (including its missiology). The tempo of negative criticism increased after the approval of HRLS in 1974.
One important example of an ecumenical critique of HRLS’ social theology is Theologie zwischen Rechtfertigung und Kritik der Apartheid (Theology – Advocate or Critic of Apartheid: A Critical Study of the "Landman Report" [HRLS] (1974) of the Dutch Reformed Church [South Africa]) (Von Allman 1977 [English], 1978 [German]), published by and for the Institute for Social Ethics of the Swiss Federation of Protestant Churches. Von Allman is especially critical of the hermeneutical and exegetical principles used in the HRLS. He claims that in spite of careful denial that the Bible can be used as a handbook for sociology or ethnology, the HRLS does indeed use the quasi-ethnological concepts of ras and volk as the, to paraphrase the German, interpretive grid(s) (Leitmotiven) through which the Scripture should be read:
Genauso, wie es andernorts Versuch einer atheistischen oder
materialistischen oder marxistischen Bibelauslegung gibt, finden wir hier eine Bibelauslegung vor, die die Begriffe des Volkes (ethnologisch verstanden) und der Rasse zu ihren Leitmotiven erhebt. Kein Wunder, wenn das Ergebnis in den Augen des Aussenstehenden rassistische Züge aufweist. (Von Allman 1978, 5)
Von Allman is certainly correct in stating that an extra-biblical criteria should not be used as the glasses through which to read Scripture. He correctly asserts that HRLS justifies the separate existence of volk-groups and makes this the guiding motif in developing a scriptural doctrine of interethnic relations. While certainly a very relevant motif, its focus is too narrow to develop a comprehensive social-ethical doctrine. At least, the multitude of passages in the Pentateuch speaking of the just treatment of the ger (permanent resident alien) needed to be taken into account, as well as a correct understanding of the redemptive historical development of the people of God in the new covenant.
However, HRLS tried to take seriously the biblical material on ethnicity, which C&S refuses to do. That was commendable. All Scripture is God-created and applicable to all of life (2Ti 3:16-17). However, HRLS’ shortcoming was, at critical points in the argument, equating ethnic identity with race, using skin-color as a crude ethnic demarcation indicator. That identification is nowhere to be found in the biblical material analyzed by the study but seems to have been derived from the racial prejudice of the well documented Afrikaner ideological history and culture (see Moodie 1975; De Klerk 1975; Hexham 1981; Templin 1984; Gerstner 1991). Thus HRLS at this point was clearly syncretistic.
In answer to the critical studies by the ecumenical movement of HRLS, the NGK released official replies of its own. The purpose was usually to defend the practice of apartheid, not the biblical exegesis upon which the church tried to support apartheid theology and missiology. For example, A Plea for Understanding: A Reply to the Reformed Church in America, by NGK Scriba (Stated Clerk) W. A. Landman, carefully documented the genuine misinformation and distortions in the RCA’s criticism of apartheid. He attempted to fend off criticism by showing how much the South African government was actually doing for the Bantu. He defended apartheid by claiming that according to the doctrine of separate development whites would only dominate others in the so-called white areas. Non-whites were analogous to foreign guest workers there, albeit under white "guidance" for a long while (Landman 1967, 135).
Landman, in this reviewer’s perspective, lacked a scriptural evaluation of apartheid’s paternalistic guardianship based on the love Yahweh commanded his people to show the ethnic alien living in their midst. Thus, to a great extent the criticism Landman was reacting to had genuine elements of justice in it. It seems that Afrikaners could have had more gentle sensitivity to Afro-ethnic feelings because of their feelings of oppression by British imperialism. Their perception of themselves as having been serfs of the British should have sensitized them to their enserfment of the "Bantu" (see Ex 23:9; Dt 5:15, 15:15, 24:18, 22). The apartheid system’s paternalism and lack of legal impartiality was a violation of biblical justice: "The same laws and regulations will apply both to you and to the alien living among you" (Nu 15:16; see Nu 15:29; Lev 19:15, 33-34; 24:22; Dt 1:16-17; Ro 2:5-11; 1Ti 5:21; Jas 2:9).
1982 marked the decision by the NGK General Assembly to revise HRLS. NGK church history professor P. J. Strauss writes that HRLS had been the "culmination of a Kuyperian support of apartheid [with]in the DRC [NGK]" (Strauss 1995, 22). After the publication of the HRLS document, "particularly at the non-official level the debate on the role of the church in society was stimulated. The church’s standpoints were increasingly questioned" (Meiring 1983, 309). As already discussed, the theological consensus in the NGK was rapidly breaking up under the leadership of the newer generation of scholars influenced by the theology of Karl Barth.
The decade of the seventies, with its long and divisive debate, was closed on Reformation Day (31 October 1980) when "eight professors from [the prestigious Universities of] Stellenbosch and Pretoria (six of them lecturers at the two [NGK] theological faculties) participated" in the publication of a mildly critical Reformation Day Testimony urging the NGK to change its social theological justification for apartheid (Meiring 1983, 309; see
Serfontein 1982, 270 for full text).
As the eighties dawned, the NGK was shaken by several book-length internal documents that were critical of apartheid social theology and the dogmatic theories under-girding it
First appeared a collection of essays titled Storm Compass: In the Search of a True Direction in the South African Context of the Eighties (Smith and others 1981; see Serfontein 1982, 271-274). The editors were two prominent NGK missiologists, Nico J. Smith and Pieter G. J. Meiring, and an ecumenicist, F. E. O’Brien Geldenhuys. Storm-Kompas, consisting of articles written by well-respected church bureaucrats and professors, was a cannon-shot across the bow of the NGK. These men rejected the isolationist social theology of the church and its Kuyperian view of Scripture and were in favor of reunification with the world ecumenical movement. The book was a warning of the strong resistance building in the church against apartheid.
The next volley was the Ope Brief (Open Letter) signed eventually by 148 influential pastors and individuals in the NGK. The subsequent volume commenting on it elicited much discussion. It was edited by UNISA theologians David Bosch and Adrio König, as well as NGK pastor Willem Nicol (Bosch and others 1982; see Serfontein 1982, 275-278 for text). The volume is dominated by
non-Kuyperian scholars educated in the 1960s and 1970s who have rejected Kuyper’s creation ordinances as well as his doctrine of Scripture.
Third, F. E. O’Brien Geldenhuys, the influential director of the NGK’s ecumenical affairs in the 1970s, wrote a commentary on the development of the NGK’s social theology, in 1982 after his retirement (Geldenhuys 1982). One key implication Geldenhuys makes is that the inerrantist, Kuyperian scholars were the developers of apartheid theology. In rejecting the Kuyperian support for apartheid, Geldenhuys rejects the Kuyperian doctrine of Scripture and creation.
As reviewed above, the inter-church conflict over HRLS social theology, both within southern Africa and in the international arena, had been growing increasingly painful. This was especially true even for the designers and proponents of the C&S document who
sincerely desir[ed] to return slowly to the international church scene as a respected church, and also genuinely believ[ed] that . . . [C&S] would satisfy the conditions which the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) and the Reformed Ecumenical Synod (RES) had set for the re-entry of the . . . [NGK] into ecumenical relations. (Kinghorn 1990a, 22)
The LWC (1977) and the WARC (1982) had earlier taken a strong initiative in the theological war against the HRLS’ justification of apartheid by officially proclaiming, "Apartheid is a heresy" (see De Gruchy and Villa-Vicencio, 1983). Apartheid, they declared, was a violation of their mutual confessions of faith. In other words, apartheid in all of its ecclesiastical, ideological, social, and civil aspects, along with its theological justification, outrages the very essence of the gospel of reconciliation. The two ecumenical bodies, therefore, declared the South African situation to be one necessitating the confession of a theology stressing the unity of humankind over any apartheid ethnic or racial division.
A status confessionis context, thus, had arrived, that is a "situation had arisen within the . . . [South African church] requiring the [universal] church to confess its faith anew against an ideology that was subverting the gospel and its proclamation" (De Gruchy 1991, 210; see De Gruchy and Villa-Vicencio 1983; Nordholt 1983). Many other denominations in South Africa and the world followed, including the Reformed Ecumenical Synod, Gereformeerde Kerke in Nederland, Reformierte Bund in Germany, the Christian Reformed Church in America, the Evangelische Kirche in Germany and the Federation of Protestant Churches in Switzerland (Meiring 1983, 313-314; see also Marais 1983).
The WARC suspended the membership of the NGK with the conditions for readmission threefold: (1) "Black Christians are [to be] no longer excluded from holy communion;" (2) "Concrete support in word and deed is given to those who suffer under the system of apartheid (‘separate development’);" (3) "Unequivocal synod resolutions are [to be] made which reject apartheid and commit the Church to dismantling this system in both church and politics" (Réamonn 1994, 83).
In short, the WARC was requiring the NGK to agree with their declaration that "apartheid is a sin" and the "theological justification of it . . . is a theological heresy" (Heideman 1988, 7).
In direct response to LWF and the WARC declarations, the synod of the NGK’s largest mission church, the NG Sending Kerk (NGSK), presented the Belhar Confession in 1982 to the NGSK’s General Synod (see Cloete and Smit 1984). It was officially approved the same year (1986) as was C&S by the mother church, the NGK. It was to be a fourth confessional statement binding the ministers and officers of the church alongside of and on equal par with the Three Forms of Unity. The Belhar Confession adopted the WARC and LWF’s perspective that apartheid in all of its manifestations is so evil and heretical that a status confessionis situation existed (see De Gruchy 1991; Cloete and Smit 1984; cf. the North American, CRC dissenting opinion, Vander Goot 1986).
John De Gruchy was quite candid about the Belhar Confession. It "connect[s] Reformed and Liberation Theology," reinterpreting "the confession of Jesus Christ from the liberatory perspective of a commitment to the poor." Ethnically or racially separated denominations break the unity of the church in its mission to the world. The confession "affirms the true nature of the church’s unity and mission: a confession of Jesus as Lord and a commitment to the struggle for God’s justice in the world" (De Gruchy 1991, 214-215).
De Gruchy clearly sees the implications of the Belhar Confession’s emphasis upon structural unity of the church in the struggle against social injustice, racism, and poverty. The church situation and the societal situation are parallel, he claims:
Here . . . we see the extent to which church order and unity in turn impinge upon the social and political situation in South Africa. For if black and white are baptized into the same Christ they are part of the same church, privileged to
share in the same Eucharist, and this means that there can no longer be any theological grounds for segregation in society.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A true understanding of baptism not only undermines apartheid in the church; it should also undermine apartheid in society; and all other forms of oppression as Paul indicates in Galations 3:27-28. For baptism is a sign of human solidarity redeemed in Christ. (De Gruchy 1991, 215-216; emphasis added)
All those who confess the unity of believers in the Church — symbolized in baptism — must stand with God, who himself stands "against injustice and with the wronged" (Belhar Confession; Cloete and Smit 1984, 4). Thus to know God is to side with him and all others who struggle against racism and any other structures causing poverty and social divisions.
The October 1994 NGK General Synod has now decided to take steps to join the Uniting Reformed Church (Verenigende Gereformeerde Kerk). This forming church is made up of the NGSK (Afrikaans-speaking) and the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk in Afrika (NGKA) (primarily Nguni and Sotho-speaking Afro-ethnics). Both have accepted the Belhar Confession. To join this new church, the NGK must accept Belhar as well. Accepting Belhar and joining the Uniting Reformed Church are key prerequisites for rejoining the world reformed movement.
As preparation for this step, the October 1990 General Synod declared that Belhar is "not in itself contradictory to the [NGK’s doctrinal standard, the] Three Forms of Unity and that it need not bring any distance between the churches" (see Kerkbode, 1 November 1991). The process of demonstrating that the Belhar Confession is not in conflict with Church and Society is proceeding. For example, the Western Cape Regional Synod took the initiative in 1991 by declaring that Belhar is a stumbling block that can be overcome in the striving towards unity in the family of churches planted by the NGK (Kerkbode, 1 November 1991). The NGK regional synod in Namibia also has clearly identified several themes in the C&S which are compatible with Belhar and the demands of the world conciliar movement.
The Kerkbode dated 1 November 1991, the official organ of the NGK, reported that the Namibia synod approved a report to be spread among their congregations that states or implies among other things:
1. "It is good that churches confess the sin of apartheid. This is precisely the point upon which a new (hopefully!) more just future can be built." Belhar also clearly calls apartheid a sin and injustice.
2. "For the Church of Christ the ‘service of Reconciliation has special meaning.’" It is hoped that reconciliation resulting from confession of the sin of apartheid will lead to greater cooperation between the Council of Churches of Namibia (CCN) and the NGK in Namibia. Reconciliation and unification of the whole church of Christ is a central theme of the Belhar Confession.
3. Confession of the sin of apartheid will bring restitution in deeds not just words. This will be part of the process of making whole, bringing shalom, "a comprehensive healing in a sick society . . . in order to help undo the division and damage caused by apartheid, in order to proclaim a comprehensive message of the kingdom."
4. In practice, reconciliation and proclaiming the kingdom of shalom will ask the NGK of Namibia "to help liberate her members from the sins of racism and apartheid and to actively take part in the national struggle again poverty, unemployment," etc.
5. It will also demand that the church "begin to reflect afresh on making the ideal of one, visible, church structure [kerkverband] among the NGK family in Namibia." These both are clearly compatible with the demands of the NGSK’s Belhar Confession.
Another example of the process is a recently printed article by well-respected, NGK ruling elder and UNISA theologian Adrio König. Significantly, the prominent Kerkbode article was entitled: "Belhar – Uniting or Dividing Factor?" (Belhar — Verenigende of Verdelende Faktor?). He demonstrates at several crucial points "a large agreement" between Belhar and Church and Society (König 1995, 7): (1) Both Belhar and C&S "confess that faith in Jesus Christ is the only prerequisite for membership in the [institutional] church and that heredity or any other human or social factor may not be a co-determining [factor of such membership]" (König 1995, 7). (2) There is also a "remarkable agreement in the passage in which the Belhar Confession and Church and Society confess the unity of the church" (König 1995, 7). (3) Both claim that "in the Bible, God places diversity in the service of unity (1 Cor 12)" (König 1995, 7). In other words, both refuse to "absolutize" diversity, that is put diversity on an equal par with unity as equally ultimate and important.
In addition to mentioning that there are "many more such striking agreements between the two documents" (König 1995, 7), he cites two more crucially important ones: (1) The two documents agree that God is "in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor, and the wronged and that he calls his Church to follow him in this" (Belhar Confession). König cites several passages in the 1986 and 1990 editions of C&S which are very similar (König 1995, 7). (2) Both documents "show agreement in the statements about apartheid" (König 1995, 7).
König then summarizes: "There are no theological objections to accepting it in the future as a confession" (König 1995, 7). Loubser agrees that C&S has a "high degree of theological agreement with the Confession of the DR Mission Church [NGSK]" (Loubser 1987, 115, bold in original).
As Kinghorn stated above, many church officials and several professors of theology, missiology and ecumenics at NGK seminaries have been very vocal in the need to abandon apartheid social theology, unify the NGK with the younger churches of southern Africa, and rejoin the world ecumenical movement (WARC, REC, and the WCC/SACC).
NGK Theology professor, C. F. A. Borchardt (Borchardt 1987a) and NGK missiologist, Pieter G. J. Meiring (Meiring 1983) summarize the inter- and intra-church struggle against apartheid from an inclusivist NGK standpoint. Meiring is in favor of rejoining the world ecumenical movements and bemoans the isolation that HRLS in large part solidified. Gous and Crafford, Meiring’s colleagues at the NGK Seminary (UP), have recently edited an important volume, Een Liggaam -- Baie Lede: Die kerk se Ekumeniese Roeping Wêreldwyd en in Suid-Afrika, pleading strongly for a reunification with the world ecumenical movement (Gous and Crafford 1993).
Two important collections of articles appeared in the late seventies and eighties by dissidents in the NGK and its daughter churches on this specific theme: Die Eenheid van die Kerk (The Unity of the Church) (Meiring and Lederle 1979) and Die Eenheid van die Kerk van Christus (The Unity of the Church of Christ), which included essays by Professors from UNISA and the NGK theological faculties at the Universities of Pretoria and Stellenbosch — P. van der Watt, J. A. Heyns, W. Jonker and D. J. Bosch (Borchardt 1987b; see also Crafford and Gous 1993). Christo Heiberg, from a non-apartheid, inerrantist perspective, also demonstrates this desire in an important section "Oor Kerkeenheid en Ekumene" (On Church Unity and Ecumenism), in his heavily criticized critique of "theological instruction by lecturers at the [NGK] . . . faculty . . . [of] the University of Pretoria" (Heiberg 1992, i, see 82-99). The theologians and pastors who supported social apartheid had virtually lost control of the church by the 1986 General Synod, leading to dissension and schism, as already discussed (see Kinghorn 1990b).
However, to re-enter the ecumenical fold, the church will need to convince them that their Synod Policy documents meet the conditions for re-entry. For example, Nothnagel, writing for the NGK theological faculty in Bloemfontein (Nothnagel 1994), has done a careful study showing the "large number of [points of] agreement" (as well as some points of disagreement) between the the WCC document, Church and World (1990) and C&S (1990) (Nothnagel 1994, 45). He concludes his study with the exhortation that since the two documents are speaking language and making sounds that are mutually understandable,
perhaps it is necessary to once again open our ears and eyes for one another in order to get the ecumenical discussion going across all borders because Christ wants his message to be heard across every border. (Nothnagel 1994, 67)
Notwithstanding the movement in NGK circles, the SACC has been continually pressuring the NGK to unequivocally repudiate the complete system of apartheid as well as the theology that justified it. Thus in 1992 the SACC denied even observer status in the council to the NGK because the SACC "believe[s] that the white church has not done enough to repudiate apartheid." The SACC severely criticized even C&S 1990, which included a paragraph moderating the NGK condemnation of apartheid. That paragraph reads as follows: "It would also be unreasonable to brand as wrong and bad everything which took place within the political structure of apartheid and to deny the positive developments achieved in various fields" (see Christian Century 1992, 579).
In response to this ecumenical pressure, the NGK delegation unreservedly identified themselves at the Reformed Ecumenical Synod in Athens (June 1992) with the following:
Apartheid is an oppressive political system that is unacceptable in the light of Scriptures. All our churches condemn apartheid unequivocally in all its ideological, politico-economic and religious manifestations as essentially and fundamentally a sin. (Réamonn 1994, 34)
There exists a virtual consensus that a theological paradigm shift does seem to have taken place in the NGK theology over the past twenty years. At the 1993 WARC consultation in Johannesburg, Beyers Naudé, a dissident NGK theologian much respected in world ecumenical circles, summarizes what has occurred in the years since 1986:
Over [the] past seven years, especially since 1986, a fundamental shift (sometimes not clearly visible or acknowledged) has taken place within the DRC [NGK] regarding the issue of apartheid. The DRC has stated that apartheid is a sin and the theological justification of apartheid is a heresy. This admission, in different forms, was made in B[r]oeder[s]troom, Athens [REC assembly], and Bloemfontein [1990 NGK General Synod]. The DRC has expressed its longing to become one with the other three Dutch Reformed churches [in the NGK family]. . . . (Naudé 1994, 73)
The response of the official NGK delegation at this consultation is revealing:
We want to assure this consultation that the DRC is committed to the unity of the DRC family. We agree with the statement that this is the acid test whether the DRC has finally distanced itself from the racism of apartheid and we are willing to be part of this process.
We hope that these answers will satisfy the consultation . . . and that it will be possible for WARC to restore this church as a full member of the Alliance. (Réamonn 1994, 77)
Ferdinand Deist, influential NGK member and head of the department of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at US, summarizes the changes in the science of biblical research in the NGK. This science has gone through various dramatic changes in direction in the last twenty years, he concludes.
In more than one respect it was a confusing time that was especially marked by a one hundred and eighty degree reversal in the church’s opinion on what the Bible has to say about the South African social, political and economic scene [social theology]. Many people are shocked that the Bible now suddenly says precisely the opposite as what it has always said. (Deist 1994, iii; emphasis added)
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