Signs of the Times

Carl Leiden

Christian Herald

Prof. Carl Leiden
University of Texas
in the Christian Herald
New York, New York

We should ask ourselves, I think, what it was that made early Christianity acceptable to the first converts, what features of Christian belief there were that appealed to historical man, and what aspects there have been that have allowed it to live for so very long....

Christianity has not lived because of the philosophical nature of the Trinity or the debates it engendered. It has not lived because baptism, necessary or otherwise, proved to be appealing. Indeed it has not lived at all because of the great bulk of the theological debates on the nature of God and man that have characterized it for the last two thousand years. It has lived because in that early message there was a hope for man. The truth of God is simple and pure and comprehensible; its complications are the work of man. It is this kernel of simplicity that has lived. The complications are forever coming off like the dead bark of an old tree.

We need once again to find the Christian message. I doubt if it is to be found wholly in the wild gymnastics of revivalism or in the stately ritual of social church attendance. Instead of a concern with salvation, which seems to bother so many of us; or the concern with community approbation which drives such a large number to church occasionally; or even the concern with the meaning of life, which thrusts many a soul into the seminary and beyond; instead of all of these concerns, why can we not concentrate on what really makes a Christian?...

It seems to me that a Christian can be identified by his conduct, by the manner with which he faces life and its crises, by the quality of his understanding of his fellow men and their problems.

We cannot say of history that the Christian spirit has failed for it has too rarely been tried. Isolated individuals and groups of people have led the Christian life. Their failure has been that of not being able to get others to do likewise. They have been all too few. Perhaps this is because most of us have never really understood the Christian message.

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August 24, 1963

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