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as yet adopt such a policy? Without attempting to lay down a rule
in regard to these matters, the person who is aware of the reality of
the divine forgiveness and
agape
and who in response to this love is
seeking unselfishly to meet his neighbor’s needs knows that whatever
is required by
agape
is acceptable in God’s sight as an offering of
love. This is all that God requires of man in relation to his fellow-
man, but He does require that this
agape
shall be genuine. The Chris-
tion knows that salvation—in the present life and in eternity—is
always dependent upon the divine goodness. As Paul and the Reform
ers expressed the matter, salvation is by grace through faith. This is
true without exception. And, while works of love will be the fruit
of a vital faith, one is free to
love
the neighbor according to the latter’s
concrete needs and in accordance with the demands and the possibili
ties of the specific situation in which the neighbor and the self are
placed. Moreover, one is forbidden by love to seek to maintain his
own personal purity at the cost of by-passing the neighbor.
The response of the Christian to the redemptive action and will of
God, therefore, is a double response. In the first place it involves
the work of alleviation of evil within a segregated social system, and
in the second place it involves the effort to reconstruct the present
order of society by the abolition of segregation and the establishment
of an order of equality and mutuality. Even when the system of
segregation has been abolished, there will still be need for both of
these responses of alleviation and of reconstruction, for no social
institution is—or is likely to be—completely just; all are subject to
corruption and all need to be continually readapted to changing social
conditions. But even in a corrupt system of segregation—whether or
not this is supported by local laws—there is room for the pursuit of
greater justice and the fuller expression of
agape
in numerous uncon
ventional ways without waiting for the removal of segregation; and
these acts have an important role in preparing the way for the elimina
tion of segregation itself. But, although much can be done within
the framework of a system of segregation, the achievement of genuine
equality and mutuality demands the abolition of this system. It is
through the outward relationships effected by integration that the
recovery of true interpersonal community—rather than the mere
meeting of Negro and white groups that remain self-conscious of their
own racial identity—can best be realized.25 It is in an integrated so-
25 Cf. Waldo Beach, “A Theological Analysis of Race Relations,” in Pau
Ramsey, ed.,
Faith and Ethics
, New York, Harper &Brothers, 1957, p. 224.
362
Biblical Faith and Social Ethics