For many years before 1989, I had worked carefully with the Academies of Sciences in Central and Eastern Europe. Carefully, I say, meaning in part avoiding any contact with the peace movements or agencies strongly supported by the Soviet government. During these years occasionally I met in passing a professor from the sociology department of my own university, the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. In contrast to my practice, he was leading teams to Eastern Europe and working precisely with the Soviet-sponsored peace academies there. I was conscious at the time that the professor, Paul Peachey, was a member of a peace church and hence could engage the Soviets without being suspected of being complicit in the Cold War. Where the old saying held that "fools rush in where angels fear to tread," I felt that for Paul it was just the opposite: "Angels could go in where fools feared to tread." This book explains in depth not only his theory, which could still be incomplete, but his life, which moved bravely ahead. Professor Peachey grew out of a rigorous, classically rural Mennonite family background and was tested by the great call to militarism which was World War II. Even great religious leaders committed to nonviolence would conclude then that the evil of the times was an imperative for a military response. Yet Paul remained a stalwart conscientious objector (CO). Nevertheless, sensitive to the moral question this posed to his own sincerity, he willingly went off to serve in refugee work in Germany, followed by mission work in Japan. Passing the test of personal sincerity and now prepared by university studies in sociology, he was ready for a lifetime of work in the religious peace movement, which included reaching out to those on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Had he left it at that, this book would be the story of a rich and wonderfully dedicated life in the service of God and of peace on earth. The text goes further, however, to probe the deepest issues of religion and particularly of Christianity. These he confronts both historically and theoretically. Historically, he traces the education of Judaism, from temple as dwelling place of God and of sacrifices to synagogue as meeting place for the reading of the Scriptures and for prayer. He traces parallels in the history of the Christian church from the original coming of the Spirit upon the apostles at the first Pentecost to the achievement of state status with Constantine and again in the Reformation churches, then to the original meeting of the Anabaptist brethren to reestablish the pentecostal character of the church. Theologically, he articulates this in broader strokes as, on the one hand, the basic theme of creation and hence the development of the church as a natural social body. This meant its building as the ethically good community, which politically would be Christendom. On the other hand, he would note the fallen character of human freedom and hence the need for redemption and salvation by grace, seeing this not in political but in the personal terms of the free church tradition. In this context he would locate his own Mennonite community as an attempt to escape the characteristics of Christendom as renewed by the Reformation churches and their engagement in the responsibilities of state and power. He finds in Luther traces of a desire for a church that would be more clearly non-state but also a sense that this would require a level of holiness not yet experienced by a sufficient number of people. In this light it could be said that if there was a mistake in the Mennonite initiative to found a church in the spirit of redemptive grace and salvation, it lay not in being misguided but in being premature. Yet Professor Peachey may take us further. A contrast between creation and salvation and thus between Christendom and the Pentecostal or believers church would appear to move to the margins of human social life not only the conscientious objectors of the believers church but the work of the Spirit as well. Thus he does not call for the substitution of one by the other, but for a transcendence of both, thereby pointing beyond to a church for which we can long but in which we cannot yet live. Others have tried to bring the two more closely together. Thus, for example, Paul Tillich would see human nature, here understood in terms of creation, as subject to the Fall. What is here attributed to "salvation" or "redemption" as a response beyond human capabilities is hence a matter of grace. Humanity and philosophy, in other words, can constitute the question, but only God can provide the response. This would be his way of assimilating Luther’s interpretation of the term sola fide in Paul’s letter to the Romans. The Catholic communion would calibrate this even more closely by seeing the Fall not as corrupting but only as weakening human nature. In this case the continued study of society and its dynamics could yet provide a real ethic for human life, which in turn could help with the human effort to live its divine vocation and mission in this world. It will take more time to work out the deep theological issues with which Paul Peachey has grappled throughout his life and which he reflects in this work. Perhaps in God’s providence his work of creation and salvation are closer together than Luther thought. In any case he certainly was correct that those who would follow the path of Christ in reuniting both are too few in numbers. Paul Peachey, I feel, is one—a man before his time. —George F. McLean, Director
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