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.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
35.4—Jul/Aug 2022
The Death Rattle of a Tradition
Contemporary Catholic Thinking on the Question of War by Andrew Latham
19.1—January/February 2006
on Death & Seven of the Last Words of Socrates by Graeme Hunter
32.2—March/April 2019
Flight from the Absolute: Cynical Observations on the Postmodern West, Volume II by Paul Gosselin by Louis Markos
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
