Forum.” The theological forum is to engage in dialogue with the German United Evangelical Church and promote a denomination-wide theological conversation within the UCC. The resolution also affirmed that the preamble of the UCC constitution calls for a continuing theological conversation.
The United Church of Christ acknowledges as its sole Head, Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior. It acknowledges as kindred in Christ all who share in this confession. It looks to the Word of God in the Scriptures, and to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, to prosper its creative and redemptive work in the world. It claims as its own the faith of the historic Church expressed in the ancient creeds and reclaimed in the basic insights of the Protestant Reformers. It affirms the responsibility of the Church in each generation to make this faith its own in reality of worship, in honesty of thought and expression, and in purity of heart before God.
Every Christian community has to decide what beliefs its members need to hold in common and what beliefs are left to the individual conscience. The common beliefs of a community of faith are that community’s confession of faith. “A confession of faith may be defined more precisely as a public declaration before God and the world of what a church believes. Individual Christians may and should confess their own personal faith, but a confession of faith is more than a personal affirmation of faith. It is an officially adopted statement of what a community of Christians believe.” (Presbyterian Church USA Book of Confessions)
Ways of SpeakingWhen we dialogue about our faith, our choice of language and our expectations of outcome depend on the nature of our dialogue partners. Discussing my Evangelical and Reformed faith with a Muslim is quite different from a discussion with a Catholic, which is in turn quite different from a discussion with a Mormon. These are discussions with members of other faith communities. These dialogues do not necessarily lead to agreement and the strengthening of mutual bonds. They should lead to mutual respect, but can also serve to sharpen differences.
However, when we dialogue within a community that shares a confession of faith, the expectation is that it will lead to agreement around a common faith, a stronger faith community, and a commitment to action in ministry and mission. When new conditions in the Church and the world challenge the Church’s confessions, God calls the Church back to an encounter with the Holy Scripture. This leads to a statement of a new and authoritative explication and application of the Holy Scripture: a Church confession. Theological Dialogue and Church Confessions
Although inter-confessional dialogue can be beneficial, I believe that intra-confessional dialogue is much more important to the life of the church. For theological dialogue to have weight and importance in the life of the church, it must be part of the building up of the Body of Christ. In other words, dialogue needs to unite rather than divide the church. In the Evangelical and Reformed tradition, one of the most important ways in which dialogue united the church was through the development of church confessions.
“To confess means openly to affirm, declare, acknowledge, or take a stand for what one believes to be true.” “A confession of faith is an officially adopted statement that spells out a church’s understanding of the meaning and implications of the one basic confession of the lordship of Christ.” “A confession of faith may be defined more precisely as a public declaration before God and the world of what a church believes. Individual Christians may and should confess their own personal faith, but a confession of faith is more than a personal affirmation of faith. It is an officially adopted statement of what a community of Christians believe.” (Quotes are from the Presbyterian Book of Confessions.)
These confessions have appeared under the names of creeds, confessions, catechisms, and declarations. These confessions have many uses, including:
· Worship
· Defense of orthodoxy
· Instruction
· Rallying-point in times of danger and persecution
· Church order and discipline
Church confessions can and do reflect a broad range of Biblical interpretation and theological thinking. Some church confessions carefully refer to and interpret the Bible. These confessions usually support each statement of belief with Biblical references. Newer confessions do not directly refer to the Bible and may reflect beliefs and concerns such as gender equality and social justice that are only loosely supported by specific passages of scripture. Confessions can be radical, liberal, moderate, or conservative in orientation. They reflect the diversity within Christianity today.
Church confessions in the Evangelical and Reformed tradition are primarily statements of Biblical interpretation. This includes all the historic confessions including the 1934 Theological Declaration of Barmen. In a confession, the Evangelical and reformed church comes to agreement about how Holy Scripture should be explained and applied in their branch of the Body of Christ. Although confessions have authority, that authority is derived from the Bible. Confessions always respond to the needs of the time in which they were developed. They may be a response to a specific threat to the church. Because of this they also often say what the church does not believe, a “no” as well as a “yes.” To the extent they represent sound interpretation of Scripture, confessions are timeless. However, they also always have elements that over time become outdated and even irrelevant to the life of the church. A confessing church is united by its confessions and engages in a continuing theological dialogue with the possibility of creating new confessions of faith. A confessing church is a church that lives by its confessions and continues to make new confessions in response to new conditions.
The Presbyterian Book of Confessions
Those denominations with an Evangelical and Reformed Heritage, including Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Baptist denominations remain confessing churches to varying degrees. A confessing church can be progressive, moderate, or conservative. The Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) is mainline denomination that gives confessions a prominent place in its faith life.
PCUSA has a Book of Confessions that begins with the Nicene Creed, includes the Heidelberg Catechism, the Westminster Confession, and the Theological Declaration of Barmen, and ends with a brief statement of faith from the 1980s. Some of the debate between progressives and conservatives within the PCUSA began with a confession adopted in 1967, which conservatives condemned as “filled with ambiguities, undefined statements ... and obscure language that it becomes possible to rationalize almost any point of view the reader seeks to establish.” These and other disputes led some conservatives to leave the PCUSA and found a new denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), in 1973.
On the positive side, the PCUSA “Book of Confessions” is a living document. In fact, the denomination is currently debating on whether to add a 1986 confession from South Africa on racism to the Book of Confessions. On the negative side, my broad experience as an active PCUSA member and deacon in the 1990s found no evidence that the Book of Confessions is widely used in local churches for teaching, worship, or spiritual development. The older confessions, especially, were rarely read or discussed.
In contrast, the conservative Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) appears to actively use its confession—The Westminster Confession of Faith—in the life of the church. However, this single confession was developed in the 1640s. The PCA is a church that lives by a confession, but not a church that makes new confessions.
My general conclusion is that true confessional dialogue does not exist within either the PCUSA or PCA. In the progressive denominations, the old confessions are ignored and Biblical authority no longer binds the new confessions. In conservative denominations, the old confessions are taught and revered, but there is no free confessional debate on how the Bible can be explained and applied to contemporary problems. In general, it seems that the time has passed for confessional dialogue within US Christian denominations.
The UCC and Confessions
The UCC chose to be a uniting church rather than a confessing church. The UCC website includes a broad range of historic confessions, but qualifies their presentation with this statement:
The UCC has roots in the "covenantal" tradition—meaning there is no centralized authority or hierarchy that can impose any doctrine or form of worship on its members. Christ alone is Head of the church. We seek a balance between freedom of conscience and accountability to the apostolic faith. The UCC therefore receives the historic creeds and confessions of our ancestors as testimonies, but not tests of the faith.
Although the confessions are respected, they no longer play their historic role of unifying worship, defending of orthodoxy, instructing the faithful, rallying the Church in times of danger and persecution, and enforcing Church order and discipline. The “unit of belief” in the UCC is not the denomination, but the individual. Our requirements for belief are minimal. Everyone who wants to be in the UCC is welcome, regardless of what they believe.
However, in practice, I believe that the UCC has an implicit confession of Faith, one that reflects the values of 19th and 20th century progressive Protestantism. This implicit confession appears to unify the national bodies of the UCC—the national office and the General Synod—the Open and Affirming Congregations, and the larger urban churches under the progressive banner. Many moderate and conservative small town and rural congregations constitute another smaller, less vocal, less active, and less organized confessing community. Besides a shared denominational history, progressives and moderates/conservatives have few shared beliefs. To put it plainly, a UCC progressive has more common ground with Presbyterian and Lutheran progressives than they have with UCC moderates/conservatives. Similarly, a UCC moderate/conservative may find more common ground with Presbyterian and Lutheran moderates/conservatives than with UCC progressives. Although we are one denomination, we are not a single confessing community.
A great example of the majority’s implicit confession of faith is the recent decision of the UCC leadership to change the definition of a local church by removing “God as heavenly Father” and replacing it with “triune God.” This change expresses the belief of UCC leaders that inclusive language is more important than speaking “carefully and biblically about who God is and how he has revealed himself to us.” (John Starke, “The Curious Case of How the United Church of Christ Lost Jesus”)
ARTICLE V. LOCAL CHURCHES 80
9 The basic unit of the life and organization of the United Church of Christ is the Local Church. 81
10 A Local Church is composed of persons who, believing in the [triune] God as heavenly Father, 82 and accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and depending on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, 83 are organized for Christian worship, for the furtherance of Christian fellowship, and for the 84 ongoing work of Christian witness.
My Ground Rules for Theological Conversation
My personal starting point for theological reflection and conversation has to be the broad Evangelical and Reformed tradition. The Evangelical and Reformed tradition combines both Lutheran (Evangelical) and Calvinist (Reformed) beliefs and theology. This is quite different from the identification of most conservative US churches as evangelical (small “e”). When I engage in conversation with those who share my Evangelical and Reformed faith, I assume that they share my basic ground rules for theological reflection and conversation. These ground rules reflect the faith claims of the preamble to the UCC constitution.
· Any discussion must reflect that Jesus rules the Church. The Church is not a democracy. In a theological discussion, our sole purpose is to discern his will for the Church in our time.
· Jesus’ sovereignty over the Church is enacted through the Word of God in our Bible. The power of the Holy Scriptures over the Church is absolute, complete, and unconditional.
· Consequently, a theological discussion must therefore be an act of Biblical interpretation, governed by the power of the Holy Spirit. We must interpret scripture in obedience to the Spirit’s commands as given in the Bible.
· No foreign standards, whether scientific, historical, sociological, political, or literary can govern our Biblical interpretation. We can use the tools provided by our culture, but they cannot determine our interpretation. Instead, scripture is interpreted against scripture with due respect to the authority of the prophets and apostles who witnessed the mighty acts of God.
· A theological dialogue in the Church must always include a respectful consideration of our great ancestors in the faith as expressed in creeds, confessions, and theological classics.
o All Christians should acknowledge the wisdom of the historic creeds of the Church. There creeds are magnificent statements of Biblical interpretation that should not be casually dismissed.
o The reformation guarded against divisions in the Church by producing a long list of catechisms and confessions. Our congregation’s constitution specifically mentions “The Confessio Augustana,” “Luther’s Catechism,” and the “Heidelberg Catechism.”
o All the founding denominations of the UCC have roots in the Protestant Reformation. For those of us in the Evangelical and Reformed tradition a theological dialogue must include serious and respectful consideration of the works of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Barth.
The implication of these ground rules is that those who wish to engage in theological reflection need to bypass the popular religion section at the bookstore and begin with the Holy Scripture and the rich heritage of our Evangelical and Reformed tradition. It is time for some serious study, reflection, and prayer.
Confessions for Today
My argument is that theological dialogue is most valuable when it takes place within a community that shares a confession of faith. The purpose of the dialogue should be to interpret and apply Holy Scripture in order develop new confessions that respond to the contemporary concerns and challenges faced by the Church. These confessions then provide a basis for uniting around a common set of beliefs as a foundation for ministry and mission.
Currently, the best new confessions of faith are coming from informal, ecumenical networks rather than the mainline denominations. For example, the Presbyterian Church USA has not added a new confession to its Book of Confessions for more than 20 years. Instead, informal cross-denominational groups that share common beliefs and interests meet to formulate a confession, publish that confession, and invite those who share all or some of their beliefs to dialogue. My favorite example is the Gospel Coalition. The Gospel Coalition is an ecumenical group of evangelical and reformed pastors that holds conferences, publishes educational materials, and is organizing a network of regional chapters throughout the USA. [Notice the small “e” in evangelical.] The coalition describes itself as follows:
We are a fellowship of evangelical churches deeply committed to renewing our faith in the gospel of Christ and to reforming our ministry practices to conform fully to the Scriptures…. We have committed ourselves to invigorating churches with new hope and compelling joy based on the promises received by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
One of the first things this group did after formation was to publish a 13-point confessional statement. This statement focuses on beliefs held in common by conservative evangelical and reformed pastors and churches, while passing over some controversies such as the mode of baptism, infant baptism, and the exact nature of the Lord’s Supper. A self-selected group of pastors who shared common beliefs and interests prepared the confession. This group has the sole right to revise the confession.
Becoming a Confessing Church
Karl Barth argued that a confessing Church is one that not only respects its old confessions, but also makes new confessions of faith. When controversies occur and the “existing confession of the common faith and therefore the existing exposition and application of Holy Scripture is called into question” the Church must preserve its unity by giving its faith a more accurate confession. This confession may choose between competing doctrines or create a new doctrine that mediates between them. Regardless, this new confession is a definite statement of what the Church believes (Yes) and does not believe (No).
The failure of our denominations and congregations to maintain the unity of the visible Church is due to our unwillingness to do the hard work of making and living by confessions of faith. We have tried to maintain the unity of the Church by enlarging “the tent to make it as big as possible, while diluting the content to the thinnest gruel so that as few as possible are excluded. The downside is that pretty soon there are scores of things no one is allowed to talk about because those within the boundaries have agreed that the only requirement for being “in” is this lowest-common-denominator set of beliefs or principles.” (Quote from the Gospel Coalition Network Rationale).
The paradox is that well-meaning efforts to preserve the unity of our denominations by sweeping fundamental differences under the rug have killed the vitality of our denominations. Both those who deny the need for confessions and those who inflexibly cling to historic confessions render themselves irrelevant. Moreover, they tend to become followers of whatever social and theological trend dominates the broader culture. Instead of transforming the world, these churches become mirrors of the world. This is a problem in both the progressive and conservative denominations. The Gospel Coalition sees this problem among American evangelicals:
We have become deeply concerned about some movements within traditional evangelicalism that seem to be diminishing the church’s life and leading us away from our historic beliefs and practices. On the one hand, we are troubled by the idolatry of personal consumerism and the politicization of faith; on the other hand, we are distressed by the unchallenged acceptance of theological and moral relativism. These movements have led to the easy abandonment of both biblical truth and the transformed living mandated by our historic faith. We not only hear of these influences, we see their effects.
I believe that meaningful theological reflection by the Church, as opposed to reflection by private individuals, always leads to confessions of faith. Karl Barth believed that Church confession is the result of an encounter of the Church with the Holy Scripture. Because the Son, seated at the right hand of the Father, rules both heaven and earth and the Holy Spirit continues to teach his Church, the task of Biblical exposition and application in Church confession is the duty of the Christ’s Church until the end of the age.
John 16t:13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14 He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.
New International Version (NIV) Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica
