 The Confessing Church By Robert P. Mills The Presbyterian Layman Volume 34, Number 1 Posted January 24, 2001
That is the sentiment of a friend of mine, a Presbyterian elder who knows just how important it is that Christians know what they believe. In an increasingly secular world, Christians must be able to articulate “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), both for their own edification and to be able to fulfill the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19). And in the course of Christian living, few tools are more helpful than the historic creeds and confessions of our Christian faith. Who is God? Part I of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is the Book of Confessions, a collection of 10 confessional documents that span most of church history. The Nicene Creed is the first entry. Composed in the fourth century, well before the invention of bullets, it nonetheless emerged from a crucible of controversy. At stake was nothing less than the answer to the question “Who is God?” The flashpoint of this debate was Jesus’ nature: Was he both fully human and fully divine? The answer, worked out by a convocation of pastor-scholars in Nicea, was the use of a word not found in Scripture – homoousia, meaning “of the same substance, or essence” – to articulate the clear and consistent teaching of Scripture that the fully human Jesus eternally was, now is and forever will be fully God.
Church and state One has to look back past the two most recent additions to the Book of Confessions to reach a document written as bullets were flying, The Theological Declaration of Barmen. In July 1933, Germany’s new chancellor, Adolph Hitler, created a national German Protestant Church. In Edward Dowey’s words, this institution effectively harmonized “throne and altar, fatherland and church, gospel and patriotism, Christian hope and national destiny.” As a result, and in spite of its rich confessional heritage, the church in Germany largely lost its “critical perspective and prophetic power. The gospel was absorbed in the culture. The salt lost its savor, and the leaven its power to change the lump. The distortion of cross into swastika, which seemed obvious to wise men from afar, was clear in Germany to relatively few.” Some who did sense this diabolical transformation gathered in the Barmen section of the city of Wuppertal in May 1934. In a document unanimously approved, 133 ministers and church members (along with six professors) cited “errors of the ‘German Christians’ … which are devastating the Church.” In response, they confessed six “evangelical truths.” Each confession was followed by the articulation and rejection of a “false doctrine” being promoted by the politicized leadership of the German Protestant Church. Saying the same word Such confessions of faith are thoroughly Biblical. Paul taught that “if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). His teaching echoes Jesus’ words to his disciples, “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven” (Matt. 10:32). The Greek word translated “confess” and “acknowledge” is homologeo. Literally “to say the same thing,” in secular Greek it was used in the sense of “to agree to the statement, to accept the affirmation.” In Scripture, the term took on a technical, theological meaning, and was used both in reference to confessing sins to God and confessing faith in God. All who are in relationship with God share the joy and responsibility of publicly acknowledging that fellowship, and the beliefs that are a necessary part of that ongoing communion. As Thomas Gillespie notes, “Jesus is Lord” is equally “a confession of loyalty to the Lord Jesus [and] a confession of faith in the one who is Lord precisely because he is the crucified and exalted Jesus.” Of course, we are able to confess our faith in God only because God has first revealed himself to us; through his acts in history, his words in Holy Scripture and, supremely, in Jesus Christ. The priority of God’s self-revelation means that our confessions are a response to God’s gracious gift of saving faith. It also means that while our confessions may be intensely personal, they are never purely private. Rather, they express in our own words what God has revealed in his Word. ‘The arrogance of the modern’ In turn, the confessing Church is characterized by saying the same words about Jesus that Jesus said about himself in Scripture, the same words that have been said about Jesus by the Church in its creeds and confessions. As Karl Barth, who significantly influenced the Barmen Declaration, observed, “a real confession … will have the power to continue speaking even at a great distance from its own geographical and temporal and historical place in the church, to make itself directly intelligible and instructive in its application to the faith of a church in some quite different place, in spite of and even in the particularity of its theses and positions and negations.” That explains why the Nicene Creed and Barmen Declaration, firmly rooted as they are in their own historical situations, are so useful to the contemporary church. Questions about Jesus’ person and work, and concerns about the influence of the state on the church, are as pressing now as they were in the 1930s and the fourth century. And the answers offered by our theological ancestors are as faithful and true now as they were when they were written. Unfortunately, as David Hall notes, “Many Christians treat the past like a dead, and therefore irrelevant, ancestor. As a result, memory has little place in an age that has little vision. … That is the arrogance of the modern.” The confessing church The confessing church has no room for modern arrogance. Instead, it is characterized by a humility that allows it to recognize its place in God’s plan. The confessing church may, but need not, have a Book of Confessions. But it cannot do without the ability to convincingly articulate “the faith once delivered to the saints” in the language of its day. With the church throughout the ages, the confessing church today must be able to say, without hesitation or qualification, “Jesus is Lord.” |
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