[Dialogue] {Spam?} {Disarmed} Re: Prolegomena to the rule of the order

Fri Jul 20 21:50:58 EDT 2007

Thanks Paul.  Wow, this looks like something discovered in an  archeological 
dig from the past century.  

I wonder what the covenant would look like today, if we had one.  In  Journey 
to the East, there was much consternation in the Gorge of Morbio  Inferiore 
over the " League document"  They know it was important, but  could not 
remember why.

Dick Kroeger

In a message dated 7/20/2007 3:31:02 P.M. Central Daylight Time,  
PSchrijnen at aol.com writes:

Here is a  trans-cription of the scanned documents. The sentence that really 
struck me  was sentence three.  

THE 
PROLEGOMENA 
TO  THE 
RULE OF  THE ORDER 

A  MORAL COVENANT AND CORPORATE DISCIPLINE 

A  Prologue to Corporate Discipline 

I 
    1.  We, the __________  Community, by our free resolve, before the 
creator of our personal and  collective destinies and the name of Jesus Christ our 
Lord, take upon  ourselves the moral covenant and rule of life, for the sake of 
a particular  corporate mission within the total calling of the church, to 
which we have  been commonly elected.

II

    2.  We confess, in the first  place, that we can do so only because we 
have been seized by the word of the  love of God in Christ Jesus solely for the 
sake of the mission of being His  People in the world.  
    3.  We acknowledge, secondly,  that we can do so only because we find 
ourselves so historically situated  that we are commonly called to exercise this 
self-understanding and mission  in a particular time and place and endeavour.

III

    4.  We further acknowledge  and confess that we have been immediately 
prompted to this course by the  church’s new vision of the Gospel as the freedom 
to involve oneself utterly  in this world; and we believe that free 
involvement in the world demands a  disciplined life;  
    5.  By the church’s new image  of herself as mission: the bearer of the 
Word of Life in and to history  without which men do not live as historical 
beings; and we are persuaded  that historical mission calls for a disciplined  
people;  
    6.  By the church’s new  concern for her own radical renewal in our time 
which necessitates creative  experiments of many kinds and various forms; we 
deem this corporate  discipline to be one such experiment for the renewal of 
the  church;  
    7.  By the church’s new  confrontation by the Fathers with the fact that 
wherever authentic faith in  Jesus Christ has been recovered in the past, 
there has followed a new sense  of mission to the world and intentional discipline 
for the sake of that  mission;  
    8.  By the church’s new  awareness, born of the times, that all men live 
consciously or unconsciously  by some structure and that the self-aware man 
does and must exist in a  self-consciously ordered life. Discipline is a concern 
of our age both  inside and outside the church. 

IV

    9.  We must always remember  and ever remind one another that in our 
corporate discipline we begin with  Christ; we do no strive toward Him. Our 
covenant is a sign and symbol of our  immutable standing before the Lord; it must 
never be perverted into a means  to that end. God’s acceptance of us is 
accomplished forever and it is  utterly impossible and utterly unnecessary to gain our 
salvation through  this rule or any other pious work, so called.  
    10. This means, and let us  ever be clear about it, that our covenant is 
solely for the sake of the  common mission to which we have been called. 
By-productive consequences  there may be, but the rule is not directed toward the 
nourishment of our  religious life, the development of a sense of togetherness, 
the creation of  harmonious relationships, or the establishment of human 
community as such,  in any form. Our common rule thrusts us upon our task and 
exists only for  the sake of that task.  
    11. We must always remember  and ever remind one another that while our 
corporate discipline does and  must make explicit certain structures in which 
we labor, our common  existence is in no sense and at no time synonymous or 
reducible to  structures of any kind, hidden or disclosed, written or unwritten. 
Human  relationships remain mysteriously beyond the power of human reason to  
articulate and any order to contain.  
    12. Again, let us also be  aware that tough our covenant necessarily has 
a definite fixedness and a  certain rigidity, it must always be kept pliable, 
ready for adjustment or  the varying needs, situations and obligations of the 
different individuals  participating in it. Finally and most important, the 
total rule must  constantly be maintained as open for alteration, for continuing 
development  and indeed for complete discontinuation.  
    13. We must always remember  and ever remind one another that in our 
corporate discipline, we no longer  live and work alone as isolated individuals. 
Henceforth our historical  calling and mission, our corporate being and doing, 
our personal thinking  and acting, are embodied in a definite community itself 
incorporated into  the total life and mission of the historical church. All 
men hiddenly or  overly live our of some community; in our moral covenant we 
make our social  being explicitly intentional.  
    14. On the other hand, we  dare not forget that moral covenants are never 
for the purpose of escaping  the burden of selfhood. Authentic, 
self-consciously disciplined community  does not swallow the individual; it rather creates 
the very possibility of  personhood pushing the individual against the 
necessity to decide for  himself and then holding him accountable for the 
consequences of his own  actions. Genuine participation in the structures of community 
and authentic  individuality are two poles of the same reality.  
    15. We must always remember  and ever remind one another that in our 
corporate discipline we are both  responsible to and for one another. Not only 
must each one of us carry the  burden of his own relation to the rule, but we 
must each bear the loyalty  and disloyalty of our brothers under the rule. We 
must assume responsibility  for intruding into the other’s existence up to the 
point of his freedom, and  in turn, freely open ourselves to the other’s 
responsibility to intrude into  our life up to the point of our conscience before  
God.  
    16. Furthermore, let us never  forget that tough we are utterly bound by 
our covenant, we remain free at  any time and in any circumstance to break the 
covenant; never, to be sure,  by default in decision but by a self-conscious 
free resolve made in the  light of other claims which other covenants in life 
lay upon us. In one  sense, a rule was made to be broken and the disloyalty 
taken freely upon  ourselves. Our covenant thrusts upon us our freedom and 
responsibility.   
    17. We must always remember  and ever remind each other that though our 
corporate discipline necessarily  must include within it explicit ways and 
means of accounting before one  another and exposing ourselves to our fellows, it 
is never to the end of  maintaining the rule intact, never for the sake of 
judgment in and for  itself, but rather to provide the opportunity for taking 
upon ourselves  afresh our freedom to be responsible persons in our  mission.  
    18. Moreover, we must bear in  mind that such explicit opening of 
ourselves through our covenant to our  promises before the gaze of another, though 
not determining our objective  guilt, does bring many hidden guilts to the 
surface of our lives. Such  intensifying of our sensitivities to guilt in a 
community grounded in the  word of acceptance becomes a great gift. The releasing of 
hidden guilt and  the possibility of embracing the same, is that without which 
we cannot and  do not have life.  
    19. We must always remember  and ever remind each other that a corporate 
discipline involves a kind of  total commitment; he who enters into it 
therefore must do through his own  free resolve in such a fashion that the rule 
becomes his own life discipline  and not some demand thrust upon him by another. 
And if the covenant is to  remain an imperative from within ourselves rather 
than an alien pressure  from without, it must ever and again be renewed with an 
abandonment which  mixes our total being with it.  
    20. Nevertheless it is  utterly necessary that any covenant be understood 
and held as relative:  relative before our relation to God in Christ; 
relative to our effective  engagement in the world. For this reason it must 
continually be grasped as  open-ended; responsible discontinuation will then be an 
ever-present  possibility for everyone involved; our concrete concern for one 
another will  insure that such a course be taken only in the same sobriety and 
fear of God  that our entrance into the covenant demands.  

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