Editorial
What We're Doing Here
The Three-Way Conversation of Touchstone by S. M. Hutchens
At Touchstone we receive with fair frequency articles, and some very fine ones too, from authors who just don't seem to understand what we're about. It is obvious to such writers that "mere Christianity" applies exclusively to the communion to which they belong, so what they send us is based upon, or significantly laced with, anti-Orthodox, anti-Catholic, or anti-Protestant polemic, implied or explicit, as though any sensible reader will have no problems with it. I am not referring here to what is sent us by those good souls who don't really know what the dividing issues are, and write, often very well, from a standpoint within their church that they think all Christians who love Jesus and believe the Creed share. Rather, I am speaking about the more sophisticated ones in whose minds there is no real meeting place this side of eternity where such people can peaceably meet and speak with each other on that basis, looking forward from a perceived, presently existing unity to the final unity in which our eyes will be fully opened and our misperceptions (should we have any!) are corrected.
I would identify this latter attitude as an actual error of "realized eschatology" in which what is both present and yet to come have been mixed in favor of the former, so that a view of Christian life as a road or a way upon which one must move forward to deeper charity and greater understanding has been eclipsed by the equally authentic vision of the faith as something at which one has arrived, when these two aspects of Christian being need to be held together with the diminution of neither at the hands of the other. The irenicism for which we aim—meaning no disrespect for polemics, when rightly done—requires a truce with respect to what are believed to be the errors of other believers. The ecumenical project is a temporary thing: the need for it will pass away in the Morning, and I daresay, instantly.
Bread & Medicine
A project like Touchstone can only be pursued by those who both know the theological lay of the land and care about getting things right—but who also are unwilling to part company with those they sense to be on the same path as they are, and that means enforcing certain house rules about civility, especially among the polemically inclined. These rules are not, to be sure, the highest thing. There are times and places where incivility, or something more intense than that, is required. Our essential intuition carries with it a consciousness of an Enemy, and firm, shared convictions about the nature of his work and how he should be treated, something any longtime Touchstone reader will recognize from the peculiarities of the journal's development.
One "Gets It"—or Doesn't
From a skeptical point of view, there is nothing more here as a binding force than mere intuition—but we all have it, recognize others who do, and are willing to stand before the Lord and give him an unembarrassed apology for our ecumenical associations, should he require it. Those who firmly believe that the confession to which they belong is the True Church, or that their denominational beliefs are wholly true to the apostolic faith, so that those who do not yet believe what they do need to be corrected, are typically just the kind of people who bear the depth of conviction necessary to join this work. Convinced Orthodox and Catholics are a strong part of our fiber, as are Protestants who have certain points of dispute with them. But in Touchstone Christians must write to each other charitably and with knowledge and understanding, not assuming that, on traditionally disputed matters especially, those who disagree do so out of stupidity or willful rebellion—even when this may in fact be the case.
We operate by a "three-way conversation" rule—that whatever is published here must be, in the view of the editors, intelligible and potentially interesting to engaged Christians of all three of the larger communions we serve. Polemics, at least "polemical polemics" are filtered out for the same reason certain devotional or "household conversation" (Lewis: the business of the "rooms") is: they inhibit intelligibility—polemics because they tend to close the ears rather than open them.
I have taken the pains to write this because some authors need to be reminded of the character of our editorial mind. To them we must say, "The digs you don't seem able to resist making at Catholics or Protestants will get your article rejected—and you can't sneak these past us. Save them for other, more sympathetic, publications." I am not writing here about informed, charitable, reasoned, well-composed references to disputed points, or problems within or among the churches, particularly about matters that should concern every Christian—although we expect care and skill to be exercised on this ground. Read the magazine and you'll get the idea.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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