Taiwan Church News
3223 Edition
November 25 – December 1, 2013
Editorial
Editorial: Seeking A Common Conviction In Plural Dialogues
Rev. Pan Dau-rong, General Editor of Taiwan Church News from 1933 to 1939, wrote a series of articles titled as “Ecclesiology – my points of view”, with a style schematic and easy to read. His view of church as “an complimentary institute to Christ”, requiring the future church to keep reforming, engendered some bitter criticisms that his remarks was too liberal and not worthy to perpetuate. Yet some pastors did not concur such response, a competing and fierce debate thus initiated and lasted about one year in the public letters through Taiwan Church News. This event demonstrated that contemporary church is plural and open to listen the public opinions. And this is also the tradition and spirit that Taiwan Church News inherited, seeking a common conviction in plural dialogues, in order to do our duty as a platform to exchange ideas.
Today, we also have different voices within our churches, be it our reflections of faith or any social issues. Take the example of the human rights: some thought human rights are given by God, so the sovereignty of God is dominant. Human should not conflate their human rights; some thought human rights are conceded through struggle, so we need to keep fighting against all discrimination; some thought human rights came from the image of God possessed by human, so the human rights need to be protected.
No matter what kinds of stance or opinions we took in faith or social issues, when we Christians engaged with our brothers and sisters in different opinions: First, we should always see the image of God inside them, and then we start to communicate our mutual difference. Within this way of communication, nobody could see him as the sole representative of truth, but humbly listen to God’s revelation to different people. This would protect us from our personal limitation, bias and recalcitrance, and help us to reach a common conviction within church community.
