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MODERN REFORMATION CELEBRATING

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VOL.26 | NO.3 | MAY-JUNE 2017 | $6.95

CREED OR CHAOS?

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FEATURES 24

Creeds and Confessions B Y J U S T I N S. H O L C O M B

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“We Confess, Unless…”

Modern Creeds and Confessions

BY RICK RITCHIE

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A Plea for a New Confession

BY R. SCOTT CLARK

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Why Historical Theology Matters: The Trinity and the Dangers of Biblicism B Y M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY JOE CAVAZOS

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EQUIPPED TO ANSWER Right now, we are waiting for Christ’s return, but you don’t have to wait to help Christians have joy, hope, and confidence in their faith and share it with others. Help people answer fundamental questions: Who is Jesus? Why do we worship the Trinity? If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world?

Purchase a leader’s guide and start your group study today.

C O R E C H R I S T I A N I T Y. C O M / B I B L E S T U D I E S

V O L .2 6 | N O. 3 | M AY-J U N E 2 0 17

DEPARTMENTS

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63

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BOOK REVIEWS

GEEK SQUAD

Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical

A Timeline of Creeds and Confessions

INTERVIEW

With This Faith Q&A WITH LEON BROWN AND ERIC CHAPPELL

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Seek the Good of the City A C O N V E R S AT I O N B E T W E E N E K E M I N I U WA N A N D M AT T H E W T U I N I N G A

18 T H E O LO GY

Creed or Chaos?

B Y D O R O T H Y L . S AY E R S

BY MR EDITORS

REVIEWED BY ANDY SMITH

Confessions of Sin and Assurances of Pardon: A Pocket Resource REVIEWED BY ERIC LANDRY

Augustine: Conversions to Confessions

72 B A C K PA G E

A Cross-Cultural Community B Y M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N

R E V I E W E D B Y J. G . A M AT O

Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life R E V I E W E D B Y N I C H O L A S DAV I S

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Patricia Anders Associate Editor Brooke Ventura Marketing Director Michele Tedrick

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Creative Direction & Design Metaleap Creative Review Editor Ryan Glomsrud Copy Editor Elizabeth Isaac Proofreader Ann Smith

Modern Reformation © 2017. All rights reserved.

ISSN-1076-7169

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LETTER from the EDITOR

to simply interpret and apply the Bible—even among those who were trained and mentored in many cases by the very same man.

A creed or confession is more than a statement of faith. It goes into greater detail on key Christian doctrines, and it functions as a sort of constitution of the church. Rather than one person being responsible for articulating the beliefs of the church, a creed or confession is written by representatives from many churches.

Rather than one man expecting people to fall in line with pronouncements he makes on every aspect of doctrine or practice, a creed or confesgrew up in a branch of evangelicalism sion finds unity on central issues of the faith, that centered on the teachings of one while allowing liberty in areas that shouldn’t particular pastor who helped start a feldivide Christians from one another. lowship of churches, now numbering Merely having a creed or confession, howmore than twelve hundred around the world. ever, is no guarantee that a church will be free As the father of these churches, this pastor was from error or controversy. After all, creeds and highly respected. In fact, to end most theologiconfessions are not inspired. Even the best of cal arguments in our churches, we only needed them were written by mere mortals, and so to appeal to this pastor and his they must be subject to Scripture. views, which were widely dissemiIn many circles, though, problems nated through his radio program, arise when creeds and confessions books, and tape ministry. Most are ignored or reinterpreted. This “ A CREED OR of our churches had simple statehappens in all kinds of churches CONFESSION ments of faith in the back of our across the theological spectrum, IS MORE THAN bulletins, but on the whole we and it has led to even deeper divibelieved that God had raised up sions in the body of Christ.

A STATEMENT our founding pastor and our felFor this issue, we’re borrowing OF FAITH.” lowship to restore the way the early the well-known title of English church worshipped and believed. essayist Dorothy Sayers, “Creed We were getting back to the basic or Chaos?” The choice she first message of the Bible and didn’t want to fall into set before the church in 1940 is still relevant to the old divisions that creeds and confessions us today. In this issue, we hope you’ll find the created between churches. resources you need to recognize the value and Now that this pastor is dead and the large usefulness of the creeds, confessions, and catassociation of churches he founded is led by echisms of the church. more than a thousand other pastors, the foolishness of a noncreedal, nonconfessional approach is bearing the obvious fruit. Infighting has erupted between groups that claim loyalty to the founding pastor, forcing these churches to take sides. Accusations of heresy and betrayal fly easily across the Internet. I guess it’s not so easy ERIC LANDRY exec utive editor

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INTERVIEW

With This Faith Q & A with Leon Brown and Eric Chappell

e hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by t h e i r C r e a t o r w i t h ce r t a i n unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” —The Declaration of Independence

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Despite the nobility of the sentiment, it is a tragic and uncomfortable fact that the history of our beloved country is written over with stories of how some people have not been treated as equitably as others, and the “unalienable rights” endowed to all of God’s image-bearers have been withheld from those deemed unworthy of them.

“It was such a long time ago,” we say. “What are we supposed to do about it now?” We asked two

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of our friends, Leon Brown (the black pastor of Crown and Joy Presbyterian Church in South Richmond, Virginia) and Eric Chappell (the white associate pastor of New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, California) to discuss the significance of racial diversity in the American church, why it’s important, and how brothers and sisters of all races should work together toward genuine unity in diversity.

EC: Leon, tell me how you became a Christian and how you were introduced to Reformed theology.

LB: In Reformed and Presbyterian circles, my story is a bit unusual. I was raised in a singleparent home, surrounded by drugs and gang

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INTERVIEW

violence, and was only later introduced to Christ and his church. While I was stationed about five hours south of London, a navy hospital corpsman invited me to his church. There, I was saved. About six years later, I was introduced to Reformed theology. I was on the beach in San Diego, street-preaching and passing out tracts, when a Christian, whom I had never met, challenged my theology. That caused me to question what I believed and why I believed it. After a time of further study, my wife and I embraced the doctrines of grace and began attending a church that believed likewise.

What was immediately recognizable about our new church and other Reformed churches we attended was that they were ethnically homogeneous. What about you?

EC: I am born and bred Presbyterian/Reformed.

My parents had me baptized as an infant. I was catechized, raised, and discipled in Reformation theology; grew up in largely suburban, middle-class,

“For most of my life, I have been surrounded by a predominantly religious, social, and ethnic homogenous tribe.

It’s interesting that I’m only just beginning to understand the affect that has had on my way of looking at life and faith.”

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conservative churches; and am a product of small, Christian schools in the Reformed tradition. Pretty much the exact opposite of your experience! I professed faith in high school, but it wasn’t actually until college that I felt I really began to understand grace. It was largely through the ministry of the local church, several influential professors, and the White Horse Inn that I began to see more of the fullness of the gospel.

For most of my life, I have been surrounded by a predominantly religious, social, and ethnic homogeneous tribe. It’s interesting that I’m only just beginning to understand the effect that has had on my way of looking at life and faith. The way I grew up felt normal at the time, but I’ve been awakened to the fact that this is not normal and, quite frankly, it was easy.

Leon, you mentioned that the demographics of Reformed denominations stood out to you. Did you feel like you stood out at the Reformed churches you attended? What was that experience like for you and your family?

LB: If you take a perfectly white sheet and, using a black marker, place a dot the size of a penny on it, it stands out. We notice what is different. In many ways, that’s terrific; in some ways, it’s burdensome. I recall visiting an Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Southern California.

Since my family arrived early, we sat down near the front of the worship auditorium. After a short time, people began trickling into the room to prepare for the service. One man approached us and introduced himself. He then walked me over to another black person in the congregation. (The black person was African.) Oddly, the man who initially introduced himself to me immediately walked away after he connected me with the African man. That day, there were two black dots on the white sheet. Apparently the man recognized this and wanted to make sure we met. Introductions like that happened on more than one occasion.

Eric, have you ever done something like that?

In light of my experience, how would you teach your people to respond differently?

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“Loving means knowing my joys, my hurts, my questions, my issues. I’ve found that as people—who are different from me racially, socioeconomically, and ecclesiastically— invite me into their lives, my view of the world and the God who made it is enlarged.”

EC: Until recently, the churches where I wor-

shipped were pretty solidly racially homogenous.

It wasn’t until seminary that I began to see this as strange. Even then, I incorrectly thought that merely preaching the gospel would naturally make a church racially and socially inclusive. Several years ago, I was able to serve a church plant in Milan, Italy. I’m neither Italian, nor do I speak Italian.

The church literally embraced me with open arms, and it was the first time I experienced being a cultural minority. I loved the intentionality of those brothers and sisters: they asked me questions, worked through language barriers, spoke my language, opened their homes and dinner table to me, and became my friends.

For me, helping homogenous churches lovingly respond to our neighbors who are different necessarily involves a robust theology of the incarnation.

Jesus, who was the ultimate Other, crossed a cosmic and ontological boundary to know us, embrace us, love us. If Jesus did that cosmically difficult work for me, how can I not move toward my neighbors and family in Christ who are not from my tribe?

Loving means knowing my joys, my hurts, my questions, my issues. I’ve found that as people—who are different from me racially, socioeconomically, and ecclesiastically—invite me into their lives, my view of the world and the God who made it is enlarged.

Ultimately, it’s not about me; it’s about the costly call of following Jesus in moving toward the other.

Leon, how do you think church leaders can best equip and disciple Christians to think about race, racial justice, and racial reconciliation?

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LB: As you can imagine, that’s a question that requires a multilayered response. Is “race” a category we should use? Is it a biblical term?

Although I believe “race” is a biblical category, we’ve distorted its meaning. My answer will be overly simplistic, but I believe it may be helpful.

When thinking about race, racial justice, and racial reconciliation, we must start with the gospel. The gospel is the great leveler. It demonstrates that regardless of race, class, political affiliation, and gender, we all have a problem—both spiritual and physical—and we need a Savior and Lord who can address that problem. Further, in the gospel (i.e., the good news that God is for his people), we have been given tools that address the aforementioned issues. In Christ, there should no longer be hostility between image-bearers. The violence that exists between people groups was crucified at Calvary, and we are newly reconciled one to another as a result (Eph. 2:11–18). And now, by the Holy Spirit, we live in light of that good news by loving our neighbor as ourselves (Matt.

22:39; Gal. 5:14). This love does not cause us to eliminate our distinctions (Acts 6:1–7; Rev. 7:9). Rather, it allows us to operate in the midst of those differences.

Interestingly, some people believe the solution to race and racial reconciliation is to jettison the idea of race, but terminating the category won’t get rid of the problem. If we operated under that notion with gospel distinctives, then we would no longer have good news. Within

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INTERVIEW

“It seems that loving our neighbor as ourselves, in light of the good news, would help us move toward a fuller expression of equality both inside and outside the church.”

the gospel itself, there are distinctions we must maintain. The Father wasn’t sent; the Son was.

We must learn to embrace the beauty of differences instead of running from them.

What about racial justice? Well, it seems that loving our neighbor as ourselves, in light of the good news, would help us move toward a fuller expression of equality both inside and outside the church. As you explore this further, surround yourself with people who are unlike you. As conversations about race, justice, and reconciliation emerge, be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger (James 1:19). Enter the dialogue in humility, recognizing you have more to learn than you think.

What about church leaders? They should continually encourage their people to love. This will require us to engage everyone in our communities. It should also press us beyond the walls of our neighborhoods. In doing so, we will encounter people who are dissimilar to us. Develop a relationship with them; invite them into your home. At some point, these topics will arise.

Lastly, I suggest we attend conferences we might not otherwise attend. I imagine those reading this article are familiar with conferences hosted by Ligonier Ministries and White Horse Inn. Try a conference such as Frequency in Philadelphia, Legacy in Chicago, or similar

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venues where the majority of those in attendance are minorities who embrace the Canons of Dort and the five solas. There, you will learn more about the fullness of God’s love and how his law and gospel direct our love.

Eric, tell me about some of the difficulties you, as a white male, have as you consider the topics of race and injustice. Are you considered odd by your friends? Does anyone suggest you should just get over it? Why do you believe preaching the gospel isn’t good enough?

EC: As I mentioned, I’m significantly late to this

conversation. It just was not a part of the communities I was raised in. An interesting observation for me is that I normally run in circles that tend to reinforce my cultural and ethnic predispositions rather than challenge them. It wasn’t until I had relationships with people not like me, read more broadly (fiction and nonfiction), and listened to preaching outside my tribe that I began to see how I largely assumed that my way of living, thinking, and feeling was the correct way or the only acceptable way.

I feel odd about bringing up race. I can’t prove it, but I get the sense that because I bring up issues of race, I’m labeled and ignored. The funny thing is that I know people have a lot of opinions, ideas, and feelings about race. We live in a racialized society—you

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cannot not have convictions about race. But I do feel that many of my white friends simply choose to ignore the broader cultural conversation because they don’t think it’s worth having.

Right out of seminary, I believed that if preachers merely preached the gospel, then all the nations would be drawn into the local church. Today, I think that’s a bit naive. I know this is a sensitive issue, but I really do believe the church needs to be intentional about what it’s doing and why, when it comes to race.

Jesus didn’t have to go through Samaria (John 4), but he did—crossing the ethnic, gender, and moral boundary. As Christians and as the church of Jesus, we’re called to be just as intentional.

Leon, as an ethnic minority in a white majority Presbyterian denomination, what particular challenges or blind spots do you see? Is there anything about Reformed theology in particular or changes taking place that make you hopeful for a more multiracial church and witness?

LB: I think we all have blind spots. That’s one of the blessings of being around people who are unlike us. They sometimes perceive and process events differently and can help us see our circumstances more clearly.

As a Reformed pastor in a predominantly white denomination, the blind spots I perceive venture beyond the ethos of Lord’s Day worship. Often, when we speak of a diverse church, we think of having people in our congregation whose skin hue differs. That is, we desire a multicolored church, but we don’t often want a multicultural church. This costs us. It sometimes requires changing the music, allowing people to be demonstrative in service, examining the homogeneity of the leadership, and a host of other things. We should not stop there.

One of the larger blind spots that goes unmentioned is exegesis. While teaching at a church retreat on politics, race, and the gospel, I asked the people how many African-American friendships they maintained. I was careful to distinguish between Facebook friends, acquaintances, and employment relationships. After they revealed that they did not have many,

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I asked them what they were missing by not having those relationships. The answers largely amounted to missing out on diverse cultures. I then asked them to read a certain Bible passage and interpret it.

Once they had done so, I provided my interpretation, which was quite different. Those in attendance asked how I managed that interpretation, which they determined was accurate.

I responded by saying that throughout the Scriptures, the people of God were sometimes oppressed and often minorities. Those who have lived in those circumstances bring a level of understanding to the Bible that others in dominant positions won’t. It’s like asking a male to describe childbirth. He can only say so much. Women who have experienced it can say so much more and explain it with a conviction that men cannot. Similarly, oppressed minorities can exegete biblical passages in a way that those who have never experienced oppression and being in the minority can’t.

I am hopeful about change in Reformed and Presbyterian settings. My hope is that the Holy Spirit changes hearts. You’re a great example!

I believe we must first be open to the conversation and be willing to pray that God helps us through it. We should also consider the words of the Lord’s Prayer. As you know, we ask for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

What’s heaven like?

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev. 7:9–10) This is why I have hope.

Eric, what are some things that make you feel uncomfortable when African Americans and other minorities talk about race?

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INTERVIEW

“It’s only after the Spirit reforms our thinking, beliefs, and attitudes to the word of Christ that I think we can even begin to respond mercifully, justly, and humbly.”

Facebook. I kept feeling uncomfortable because I felt like I wasn’t doing enough, or doing the right things. It was essentially the uncomfortableness that the law brings—guilt. For me, part of the sanctification process in thinking about race is that I don’t need to jump to solutions and fixes immediately. I also don’t need to respond out of guilt (white or otherwise). Rather, I need to see how the gospel changes all my patterns of thinking and feeling. Often, I think the Holy Spirit first needs to spend a great deal of time renewing our minds on issues like race. It’s only after the Spirit reforms our thinking, beliefs, and attitudes to the word of Christ that I think we can even begin to respond mercifully, justly, and humbly.

Leon, as I’m trying to disciple people in this area of the Christian life, I often find that part of the difficulty is the complexity of this issue and the many competing voices across the spectrum. What counsel would you give people as they seek to wade through all the opinions, statistics, and conflicting blog posts? How do we do this wisely?

LB: Interestingly, textual criticism may be help-

EC: Two things come to mind. The first is that it’s

difficult to identify with conversations surrounding race. I don’t ever consciously think about my ethnicity or race. So when friends and neighbors talk about race, the conversation itself is uncomfortable because it’s not part of my lived experience.

It’s like what you said about childbirth: I can read about the experience, and maybe intellectually get it, but there’s a certain barrier in my understanding that’s difficult, maybe even impossible, to overcome. For me, that’s one reason why it’s important to talk with people of color and to read books such as Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin or, more recently, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The second is my individualist American zeal to fix problems. Early on, I found I was trying to think of solutions to the problems of race: start a Bible study to address it, join a protest, post about it on

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ful. As scholars study biblical manuscripts, they make choices regarding which variant is most likely linked to the original autographs. At times, the more difficult reading is preferred.

That may seem counterintuitive and have no application for conversations regarding race, justice, and the gospel, but it does. When discussing so-called controversial topics, we often select those in the echo chamber of our present disposition. There may be times, however, when we need to consider the more difficult conclusion. Take up a study of that position and bathe what you read in prayer. After reflecting on it, compare how that position is different from your own. What similarities does it have? Then, gather with Christians who are ethnically, culturally, and socioeconomically different from you to study the topic. Be sure that within the group there are people whom you love and trust, yet who maintain a position different from yours. The collective study of the Bible will help sharpen your conclusions.

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C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

Seek the Good of the City A Conversation between Ekemini Uwan and Matthew Tuininga

hus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jer. 29:4–7)

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The local church doesn’t experience its exile in precisely the same way as theocratic Israel, but Jeremiah’s admonition still applies: Jesus

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commanded his disciples (and us) to love their enemies and pray for those who persecuted them, since the Father causes the sun to rise on the just and unjust alike; Peter exhorted the church to honor the emperor as well as to worship the Triune God; and Paul admonished the Thessalonian church to seek to do good.

But what do we do when the actions of the unjust become intolerable? If it becomes clear that injustice is being systematically perpetrated against a group of people, are Christians under obligation to fight that injustice? If so, how? How can we live peacefully among ourselves when the peace of our neighbor is disrupted by violence and aggression? We asked friends and colleagues Matthew Tuininga, assistant professor of moral theology at Calvin

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Theological Seminary, and Ekemini Uwan, an anti-racism writer and speaker and recipient of the 2015 Greene Prize in Apologetics Award, to talk about how the church can love its neighbor while seeking the good of the city.

EU: The mandate to seek the good of the city

is found in Jeremiah 29:7. At that time in redemptive history, the Israelites were in exile in Babylon, and they anxiously awaited God’s deliverance from captivity. The Lord, speaking through Jeremiah, commanded the Israelites to settle in Babylon by entering into the covenant of marriage, bearing children, building houses, praying on behalf of the city, and seeking its welfare. Like Israel, the church is also in exile as we await Christ’s return and our deliverance from the sin, death, and misery of this fallen world (Heb. 11:13–16). As Christians, we are Christ’s representatives on the earth, so we are not to be found idle as we await our deliverance. We are to seek the good of the city by praying for it and seeking the welfare of the city. In light of the Black Lives Matter movement, a few ways Christians can do the latter might include attending local civilian oversight meetings that hold police officers accountable, or creating an independent police review board if your city does not have one.

On this side of the cross, the second greatest commandment that Jesus gave us is to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39). We cannot seek the good of the city without first loving our neighbors comprehensively, in both soul and body. With regard to the soul, we share the gospel with unbelievers in our respective spheres and urge them to be reconciled to God. With regard to the body, we seek the welfare of our neighbors in every way possible, which includes seeking justice on their behalf.

With the in-breaking of the new age, we experience its attendant blessings of joy, peace, righteousness, and justice, which are just a foretaste of the many blessings of the new age that will be consummated upon Christ’s return. As Christians, we have access to these blessings,

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and we ought to bring them to bear in the lives of our neighbors during this present evil age.

In essence, people should experience some measure of relief from suffering. Notice that I said some measure of relief, because although the new age has broken in, the present evil age is a reality we must contend with until Christ returns and consummates his kingdom.

In addition to my earlier suggestion about attending local civilian oversight meetings, the church should support families whose loved ones have been killed by the police. There are countless family members who have been left behind, devastated and stigmatized by the death of their loved ones. In this way, the church can be the hands and feet of Jesus by seeking out the surviving family members and giving emotional, spiritual, and financial support.

This same principle can be applied to those who have lost a family member to the prison system.

These are some basic ways we can love our neighbors and seek the good of the city.

“The second greatest commandment that Jesus gave us is to ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ (Matt. 22:39).

We cannot seek the good of the city without first loving our neighbors comprehensively, in both soul and body.”

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“It seems to me that the need of the hour for many Christians—in light of police brutality, systemic racism, Black Lives Matter, and the election of Donald Trump to the presidency—is to rediscover who our neighbors are.”

MT: I agree with everything you say here. But, although I think our situation is analogous to that of the Israelite exiles in Babylon, I do not think it is exactly the same. And that is because we live in light of what Christ has already accomplished in his reconciliation of all things and in his ascension to lordship over all things (Col. 1:18–20; Eph. 1:19–23). To be sure, we experience this in the context of the dynamic tension and overlap between the present evil age and the age to come, the already and the not yet. Thus we should not confuse the kingdom of Christ with the institutions of the present age. At the same time, our calling is to witness to the righteousness of Christ’s kingdom in every area of life; and I think the gospel calls us to do that in a more aggressive way than Jeremiah’s exhortation to the Israelite exiles, who were simply called to seek Babylon’s welfare while awaiting their deliverance from it. In that sense, I would say it is the gospel of the resurrected and ascended Christ that should guide the way in which we seek the welfare of the city we inhabit.

Calvin points out that when Jesus proclaimed kingdom blessings on “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” and on those who “are persecuted because of righteousness” (Matt. 5:6, 10), he was not just thinking about our witness to or suffering for the gospel. He was thinking of our hungering and suffering with respect to any

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just cause. As Calvin puts it in his commentary on Matthew 5:10, This is descriptive of those who inflame the hatred and provoke the rage of wicked men against them because through an earnest desire to do what is good and right they oppose bad causes and defend good ones, as far as lies in their power.

For Christians, witnessing to the kingdom and witnessing to its righteousness and justice go hand in hand. They are inseparable from each other. We cannot love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength unless we also love our neighbors as ourselves.

It seems to me that the need of the hour for many Christians—in light of police brutality, systemic racism, Black Lives Matter, and the election of Donald Trump to the presidency— is to rediscover who our neighbors are. Many white Christians, for instance, are known for their hunger and thirst for justice for the unborn or for religious liberty for Christians, but they are less known for their determination to stand in solidarity with their brothers and sisters of color when they experience poverty and oppression. That’s why many of these brothers and sisters experienced the overwhelming white evangelical support of Donald Trump as a

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“To devote ourselves to the cause of our suffering neighbors is not to abandon our fidelity to the spiritual kingdom but to make the righteousness of that kingdom a reality in our lives.”

betrayal—an exchange of the welfare of ethnic minority Christians for the causes near and dear to white evangelicals.

Yet in my experience, black and white evangelicals don’t often understand one another very well. And the reason for this, for the most part, is that we don’t have much to do with one another.

We aren’t worshipping together, let alone listening to one another’s cries or bearing one another’s burdens. Perhaps the primary question facing Christians is not, how should I love my neighbor, but who do I regard as my neighbor?

And here Jesus’ answer is quite clear. We show who we truly regard as our neighbor through the actions that demonstrate who we really love.

To devote ourselves to the cause of our suffering neighbors is not to abandon our fidelity to the spiritual kingdom but to make the righteousness of that kingdom a reality in our lives.

To speak out against a government that dehumanizes those made in the image of God is not to dishonor that government but to call it to its highest purpose and meaning under the lordship of the ascended Christ. To do all of this while maintaining respect for those in authority, seeking peace and reconciliation where there is conflict and alienation, and suffering violence rather than inflicting it is to witness to the gospel in the best possible way.

EU: Matthew, I am in complete agreement with you. For the sake of clarity, I am not saying the Babylonian exile the Israelites were subjected

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to is identical to the exile the church is currently experiencing. There are parallels, but they are not identical for several reasons; the salient one is that the church is in a different epoch of redemptive history.

That quote from Calvin serves as a strong indictment against the evangelical church.

When was the last time the evangelical church truly inflamed the hatred of the wicked for the sake of the good? In light of Calvin’s words and your mention of white evangelicals’ overwhelming support of Trump, this presidential election presented the perfect opportunity for white evangelicals to do the very thing Calvin spoke of. Sadly, 81 percent of white evangelicals chose to align themselves with Trump, instead of standing with women, immigrants, African Americans, Muslims, Hispanics, immigrants, and other marginalized people on the receiving end of his hateful words and actions.

In a discussion of God’s communicable attributes, Herman Bavinck wrote: Righteousness is and remains a forensic term; but in the Old Testament it was viewed as the most important task of people and the strongest proof of righteousness for them to protect the oppressed and to save the wretched from the injustice and persecution to which they are exposed.

(Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, God and Creation [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004], 225)

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In light of this Old Testament reality, The Westminster Larger Catechism Question 136 says this about the sixth commandment (“You shall not murder”): What are the sins forbidden in the sixth commandment?

A. The sins forbidden in the sixth commandment are, all taking away the life of ourselves, or of others, except in case of public justice, lawful war, or necessary defense; the neglecting or withdrawing the lawful and necessary means of preservation of life; sinful anger, hatred, envy, desire of revenge; all excessive passions, distracting cares; immoderate use of meat, drink, labor, and recreations; provoking words, oppression, quarreling, striking, wounding, and whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any.

If white evangelicals adopted a full-orbed view of justice that involves correcting oppression (Isa. 1:17) in all forms—including abortion, threats to religious liberty, the school-to-prison pipeline, education inequality, unequal pay for women, housing segregation, the absence of paid family medical leave, mass incarceration, and police brutality, to name a few justice issues—then they would ignite the hatred of the world (Matt. 10:22; John 15:18–19), including those on the political Left and Right. Then the evangelical church would truly be the city that shines on a hill (Matt.

5:14), showing that the kingdom to which she belongs is not of this world (John 18:36).

MT: I sympathize with what you are saying about

the white evangelical vote for Trump. I and many other evangelical leaders made our opposition to Trump clear during the months leading up to the election. At the same time, I think we need to be careful when judging the votes of our brothers and sisters, whether Democrats or Republicans.

A vote for a presidential candidate is an enormously complex thing.

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“If white evangelicals adopted a full-orbed view of justice that involves correcting oppression (Isa. 1:17) in all forms… then they would ignite the hatred of the world.”

Many evangelicals who voted for Hillary Clinton due to concern about Donald Trump’s racism, misogyny, or incompetence found themselves voting for the most pro-choice candidate in American history. Clinton did not defend the legality of abortion as a necessary evil; she praised it as a positive good that should receive federal funding. Yet they supported her because they felt her to be the lesser of two evils.

For their part, evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump due to concern about Clinton’s views on abortion, same-sex marriage, or lack of trustworthiness found themselves voting for a candidate whom many of their own brothers and sisters experienced as an existential threat.

Many of them had opposed him throughout the primary process precisely because of his racism and misogyny and only voted for him out of desperation as the lesser of two evils.

I see no moral high ground here on either side. At the very least we owe each other charity, humility, and the effort to sympathize with and understand one another. As John Witvliet, my colleague at Calvin Seminary, puts it, “I mourn

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C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

for a world in which we are forced to choose which part of what we believe to be a consistent life-affirming ethic that will guide us as we engage the political process.”

And that’s why a healthy two-kingdom theology is so necessary to guide the church in the way we stand for righteousness. What should define the church is not who we voted for on one particular election day when the choices were horrific, but how we witness to the righteousness and justice of the kingdom each and every day, as individuals and as communities. And it is here, where we can do so much, that we are doing so little.

Our churches, by and large, are as segregated as ever. Far too often we are entirely disconnected from our communities, unable to sympathize with (let alone help bear) the burdens of the poor and oppressed within our midst. We usually treat the diaconate as an afterthought to the more important work of the pastors and elders, forgetting that teaching, worship, and prayer are sheer hypocrisy apart from an active ministry of righteousness (Isa. 58). And our proclivity to division has turned our denominations into mere affinity groups, even

“What should define the church is…how we witness to the righteousness and justice of the kingdom each and every day, as individuals and as communities.”

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ethno-cultural groups, in which we are never challenged by those who are different from us.

If we are going to witness faithfully to the righteousness of the kingdom, then we are going to have to begin breaking down these barriers, investing in our communities, and building relationships with those who are different from us, in order that we might truly learn to bear one another’s burdens and so understand one another’s concerns. Only when we become one body again, knit together in love, will we together— white, black, Hispanic, Democrat, Republican, rich, or poor—be able to lift up the cause of righteousness for those who have no voice.

I’m not talking primarily about denominational organization, as if ecumenical efforts must precede our witness to justice (which would be an excuse never to do anything). I’m talking about the church’s life at an organic level. Only when we truly love one another, across denominational and theological lines, do we demonstrate to the world in a meaningful way that we are Christ’s disciples. Attempting to witness to the righteousness of the kingdom through political activism is mere hypocrisy when we aren’t even practicing it in the church.

Until we commit ourselves to practicing the gospel among ourselves as Christians—across ethnic, economic, political, and cultural barriers—as the Spirit teaches so thoroughly in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we will have nothing to offer a world desperately in need of reconciliation.

EU: The suggestion that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were equally bad candidates is a false equivalency. To be sure, both candidates were flawed and neither was ideal. However, Trump’s behavior is already sending shockwaves around the globe with his call to the president of Taiwan and his invitation to the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, to visit Washington, DC—not to mention his praise of Vladimir Putin’s questionable leadership and the US intelligence community’s revelation that Russia interfered with the US elections.

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“I bring up the unconscionable deaths of these two African-American men in order to demonstrate that the existential threat Trump’s presidency poses to my livelihood and that of my kinsmen is an objective reality.”

Based on her previous behavior, it’s unlikely that Hillary Clinton would have committed the same inappropriate actions.

Clinton certainly holds a lamentable view of the unborn, but Trump’s rather recent “pro-life” stance hardly inspires confidence, as he said that overturning Roe v. Wade “has a long, long way to go.” Concerning same-sex marriage, Trump said that “it’s the law” and he is “fine with that.” Trump’s campaign language was frequently punctuated with bigoted, racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic remarks, so we cannot exclude those sentiments as a nonfactor in white evangelicals’ decision to vote for Trump.

Trump’s language and behavior have acted as a catalyst for the latent bigotry that still infects our country. On November 21, 2016, fifteen-year-old James Means was murdered by sixty-two-year-old William Pulliam, and his killer referred to him as a “piece of trash.” Will Sims was the victim of a hate crime and suffered the same fate as James Means on November 12, 2016, at the hands of three white men. I bring up the unconscionable deaths of these two AfricanAmerican men in order to demonstrate that the existential threat Trump’s presidency poses to my livelihood and that of my kinsmen is an objective reality.

Two-kingdom theology marks the point of our theological departure, for I subscribe to neither two-kingdom theology nor transformationalism.

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Instead, I stand firmly rooted in the eschatological reality of the already/not yet while affirming that the church as an institution and organism is to make disciples, bear witness to the gospel, and proclaim the gospel to those who are perishing, which requires cultural, political, and social engagement.

MT: Thanks, Ekemini. I would only add that in my view, this is precisely what a Calvinist twokingdom theology is: it is a theology of the way in which the kingdom of the “age to come” breaks into the “present evil age.” The church witnesses to its power in every area of life, including politics, in ways appropriate to its gospel mission, always mindful of the tension between the already and the not yet.

EKEMINI UWAN (MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary)

has written for The Huffington Post, Black Voices, Christianity Today, and the Reformed African American Network to name a few. Her insights have been quoted by the New York Times, The Washington Post, Mashable, and The Huffington Post Religion. Visit her website: www.sistamatictheology.com.

MATTHEW J. TUININGA (PhD, Emory University) is the author

of Calvin’s Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church: Christ’s Two Kingdoms (Cambridge University Press, March 2017). He has written numerous articles and reviews for academic publications, and also writes regularly in popular magazines and online. You can follow his online writings at his website: www.matthewtuininga.wordpress.com.

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THEOLOGY

Creed or Chaos?

by Dorothy L. Sayers

f Christian dogma is irrelevant to life, to what, in Heaven’s name, is it relevant?—since religious dogma is in fact nothing but a statement of doctrines concerning the nature of life and the universe. If Christian ministers really believe it is only an intellectual game for theologians and has no bearing upon human life, it is no wonder that their congregations are ignorant, bored, and bewildered. And, indeed, in the very next paragraph, Dr. Selbie recognizes the relation of Christian dogma to life:

I

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...peace can come about only through a practical application of Christian principles and values. But this must have behind it something more than a reaction against that pagan humanism that has been found wanting.

The “something more” is dogma, and cannot be anything else, for between humanism and Christianity and between paganism and theism there is no distinction whatever except a distinction of dogma. That you cannot have Christian principles without Christ is becoming

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increasingly clear because their validity as principles depends on Christ’s authority; and as we have seen, the totalitarian states, having ceased to believe in Christ’s authority, are logically quite justified in repudiating Christian principles. If the average man is required to believe in Christ and accept His authority for Christian principles, it is surely relevant to inquire who or what Christ is, and why His authority should be accepted. But the question, “What think ye of Christ?” lands the average man at once in the very knottiest kind of dogmatic riddle. It is quite useless to say that it doesn’t matter particularly who or what Christ was or by what authority he did those things, and that even if he was only a man, he was a very nice man and we ought to live by his principles; for that is merely humanism, and if the average man in Germany chooses to think that Hitler is a nicer sort of man with still more attractive principles, the Christian humanist has no answer to make. It is not true at all that dogma is hopelessly irrelevant to the life and thought of the average man. What is true is that ministers of the Christian religion often assert that it is, present it for consideration as though it were, and, in fact, by their faulty exposition of it make it so. The central dogma of the Incarnation is that by which relevance stands or falls. If Christ were only man, then he is entirely irrelevant to any thought about God; if he is only God, then he is entirely irrelevant to any experience of human life. It is, in the strictest sense, necessary to the salvation of relevance that a man should believe rightly the Incarnation of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. Unless he believes rightly, there is not the faintest reason why he should believe at all. And in that case, it is wholly irrelevant to chatter about Christian principles.

If the average man is going to be interested in Christ at all, it is the dogma that will provide the interest. The trouble is that, in nine cases out of ten, he has never been offered the dogma. What he has been offered is a set of technical theological terms that nobody has taken the trouble to translate into language relevant to ordinary life. “... Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and

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“If Christ were only man, then he is entirely irrelevant to any thought about God; if he is only God, then he is entirely irrelevant to any experience of human life.”

man.” What does this suggest, except that God the Creator (the irritable, old gentleman with the beard) in some mysterious manner fathered upon the Virgin Mary something amphibious, neither one thing nor t’other, like a merman?

And, like human sons, wholly distinct from and (with some excuse) probably antagonistic to the father? And what, in any case, has this remarkable hybrid to do with John Doe or Jane Doe? This attitude of mind is that called by theologians Nestorianism, or perhaps a debased form of Arianism. But we really cannot just give it a technical label and brush it aside as something irrelevant to the thought of the average man.

The average man produced it. It is, in fact, an immediate and unsophisticated expression of the thought of the average man. And at the risk of plunging him into the abominable heresy of the Patripassians or the Theopaschites, we must unite with Athanasius to assure John and Jane Doe that the God who lived and died in the world was the same God who made the world, and that, therefore, God himself has the best possible

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reasons for understanding and sympathizing with John and Jane’s personal troubles. “But,” John Doe and Jane Doe will instantly object, “it can’t have mattered very much to him if he was God. A god can’t really suffer like you and me.

Besides, the parson says we are to try and be like Christ; but that’s all nonsense—we can’t be God, and it’s silly to ask us to try.” This able exposition of the Eutychian heresy can scarcely be dismissed as merely “interesting to theologians”; it appears to interest John and Jane to the point of irritation. Willy-nilly, we are forced to involve ourselves further in dogmatic theology and insist that Christ is perfect God and perfect man. At this point, language will trip us up.

The average man is not to be restrained from thinking that “perfect God” implies a comparison with gods less perfect, and that “perfect man” means “the best kind of man you can possibly have.” While both these propositions are quite true, they are not precisely what we want to convey. It will perhaps be better to say,

“We must be quite firm about ‘equal to the Father as touching his Godhead and inferior to the Father as touching his manhood.’”

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“altogether God and altogether man”—God and man at the same time, in every respect and completely; God from eternity to eternity and from the womb to the grave, a man also from the womb to the grave and now. “That,” replies John Doe, “is all very well, but it leaves me cold.

Because, if he was God all the time, he must have known that his sufferings and death and so on wouldn’t last, and he could have stopped them by a miracle if he had liked, so his pretending to be an ordinary man was nothing but playacting.” And Jane Doe adds, “You can’t call a person ‘altogether man’ if he was God and didn’t want to do anything wrong. It was easy enough for him to be good, but it’s not at all the same thing for me. How about all that temptation stuff?

Playacting again. It doesn’t help me to live what you call a Christian life.” John and Jane are now on the way to becoming convinced Apollinarians, a fact which, however interesting to theologians, has a distinct relevance also to the lives of those average men, since they propose, on the strength of it, to dismiss Christian principles as impracticable. There is no help for it. We must insist upon Christ’s possession of a reasonable soul as well as human flesh; we must admit the human limitations of knowledge and intellect; we must take a hint from Christ himself and suggest that miracles belong to the Son of Man as well as to the Son of God; we must postulate a human will liable to temptation; and we must be quite firm about “equal to the Father as touching his Godhead and inferior to the Father as touching his manhood.” Complicated as the theology is, the average man has walked straight into the heart of the Athanasian Creed, and we are bound to follow. Teachers and preachers never, I think, make it sufficiently clear that dogmas are not a set of arbitrary regulations invented a priori by a committee of theologians enjoying a bout of all-in dialectical wrestling. Most of them were hammered out under pressure of urgent practical necessity to provide an answer to heresy. And heresy is, as I have tried to show, largely the expression of opinion of the untutored average man, trying

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“Heresy is…largely the expression of opinion of the untutored average man, trying to grapple with the problems of the universe at the point where they begin to interfere with daily life and thought.”

to grapple with the problems of the universe at the point where they begin to interfere with daily life and thought. To me, engaged in my diabolical occupation of going to and fro in the world and walking up and down in it, conversations and correspondence bring daily a magnificent crop of all the standard heresies. I am extremely well familiar with them as practical examples of the life and thought of the average man, though I had to hunt through the encyclopedia to fit them with their proper theological titles for the purposes of this address.

For the answers I need not go so far; they are compendiously set forth in the creeds. But an interesting fact is this: that nine out of ten of my heretics are exceedingly surprised to discover that the creeds contain any statements that bear a practical and comprehensible meaning. If I tell them it is an article of faith that the same God who made the world endured the suffering of the world, they ask in perfect good faith what connection there is between that statement and the story of Jesus. If I draw their

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attention to the dogma that the same Jesus who was the divine love was also the light of light, the divine wisdom, they are surprised. Some of them thank me very heartily for this entirely novel and original interpretation of Scripture, which they never heard of before and suppose me to have invented. Others say irritably that they don’t like to think that wisdom and religion have anything to do with each other, and that I should do much better to cut out the wisdom and reason and intelligence and stick to a simple gospel of love. But whether they are pleased or annoyed, they are interested; and the thing that interests them, whether or not they suppose it to be my invention, is the resolute assertion of the dogma.

DOROTHY L. SAYERS (1893–1957) was an English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator, and Christian humanist.

The above material was extracted from the essay entitled “Creed or Chaos?” from Sayers’ book Letters to a Diminished Church (2004). Reprinted by permission. Thomas Nelson Inc., Nashville, Tennessee. All rights reserved.

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FEATURES

Christians of the past were no less concerned with being faithful to God than we are, and they sought to fit together all that Scripture has to say about the mysteries of the Christian faith… with the intellectual power of their times.”

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CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS

“WE CONFESS, UNLESS…” MODERN CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS

A PLEA FOR A NEW CONFESSION

WHY HISTORICAL THEOLOGY MATTERS: THE TRINITY AND THE DANGERS OF BIBLICISM

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by

JUSTIN S. HOLC OMB

CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS

illustration by MLC

Tradition is the fruit of the Spirit’s teaching activity from the ages as God’s people have sought understanding of Scripture. It is not infallible, but neither is it negligible, and we impoverish ourselves if we disregard it.

1 — J. I. Packer

Obviously, Christianity did not begin when it was born, nor did our generation invent Christian thought. We live two thousand years removed from the time of our founder, and— for better or for worse—we are the recipients of a long line of Christian insights, mistakes, and ways of speaking about God and the Christian faith. Today’s Christianity is directly affected by what earlier Christians chose to do and to believe.

The fact that Christianity developed over time (as opposed to having spontaneously appeared)—that the sixteenth century, for instance, looked very different from the third, and that both look very different from the twenty-first—can sometimes lead us to wonder what the essential core of Christianity is. As a result, some people decide to ignore history altogether, and they try to reconstruct “real Christianity” with nothing more than a Bible. But this approach misses a great deal. Christians of the past were no less concerned with being faithful to God than we are, and they sought to fit together all that Scripture has to say about the mysteries of the Christian faith—the incarnation, the Trinity, predestination, and more—with the intellectual power of their times. To ignore these insights is to attempt to reinvent the wheel and to risk reinventing it badly.

Thankfully, the church of the past has given us a wealth of creeds, councils, confessions, and catechisms. These are tools the church has used to speak about God clearly and faithfully, to guide its members closer to God, and sometimes to distinguish authentic Christianity from the innovations, heresies, and false teachings the New Testament warns of.

While their purposes differ, all try to communicate complex theological ideas to people who do not have sophisticated theological backgrounds (in some cases, to people who are illiterate).

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Once the divine authority and sufficiency of Scripture are properly understood and established, we should regard the church’s ministerial authority (the theological statements from the tradition) as very useful tools. John Calvin writes: Thus councils would come to have the majesty that is their due; yet in the meantime Scripture would stand out in the higher place with everything subject to its standard. In this way, we willingly embrace and reverence as holy the early councils, such as those of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus 1, Chalcedon, and the like, which were concerned with refuting errors—in so far as they relate to the things of faith.

(Institutes of the Christian Religion 4.9.1)

WHAT IS A CREED? The English word creed comes from the Latin word credo, which means “I believe.” Church historian J. N. D. Kelly says that a creed is “a fixed formula summarizing the essential articles of the Christian religion and enjoying the sanction of ecclesiastical [church] authority.”2 More simply, the creeds set forth the basic beliefs of the church that have been handed down from earliest times, what the New Testament calls “the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3). When teachers throughout history called parts of this faith into question (usually the parts that were taken for granted or less well-defined), the early church reaffirmed the essentials in ways that honored the traditional teaching.

Arguably, the earliest creeds are to be found in Scripture itself. In Deuteronomy 6:4, what is known as the Shema (“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one”) is a creed-like statement. While there are no official, full-blown creeds in the New Testament, scholar Ralph Martin has suggested that the beginnings of creeds are already present in the New Testament and were developed by early Christians to defend against subtle pagan influences and to establish key beliefs.3 Many scholars believe that Paul recites an early creed in his letter to the

Corinthians when he summarizes the facts that he taught as “of first importance”: “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared [to the apostles and many others]” (1 Cor. 15:3– 7). Furthermore, in the church’s acts of baptism, Eucharist, and worship, certain prayers and early creed-like statements of belief were developed, such as “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor. 12:3) and the Trinitarian baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” While there is no formal creed in the pages of Scripture, the idea of a central, basic teaching of Christianity certainly is.

After the age of the apostles, the early church possessed what is known as “the rule of faith” or “the tradition,” which theologian Bruce Demarest describes as “brief summaries of essential Christian truths.”4 Early church fathers such as Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Hippolytus all assume this “rule of faith,” an unwritten set of beliefs that had been passed down from the apostles and taught to Christian converts. In the second century, Irenaeus described it in this way: One God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and all things therein, by means of Christ Jesus, the Son of God; who, because of His surpassing love towards His creation, condescended to be born of the virgin, He Himself uniting man through Himself to God, and having suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rising again, and having been received up in splendor, shall come in glory, the Savior of those who are saved, and the Judge of those who are judged, and sending into eternal fire those who transform the truth, and despise 5 His Father and His advent.

Irenaeus’s rule of faith sounds quite similar to later formal creeds and contains the essence of the gospel. As the early Christian community dealt with new heretical movements, the rule of faith gave birth to more precise statements of the essentials of the faith, such as the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed.6

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As theologian John Webster says, “We may think of the creed as an aspect of the church’s exegetical fellowship, of learning alongside the saints and doctors and martyrs how to give ear to the gospel.”

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USE OF CREEDS In individualist cultures, we pick and choose whatever aspects of whichever religion we like best. More than that, we sometimes combine parts of different denominations or religions to make something entirely new—whatever works for us personally. For the early Christians, however, creeds were meant to be used by groups—not just a summary of what everyone in the room agreed upon, but a promise made and kept as a group.

Creeds were initially used in baptism, during which the baptismal candidate recited a formula or responded to questions, thereby publicly confessing belief in Jesus Christ. As time passed, however, the creeds also were used to teach new converts the basic elements of the Christian faith. Since the creeds were relatively short summaries of Christian doctrine, they were easy to learn. The creeds were also used in church liturgies (the set of actions and rituals in a worship service that illustrates Christian beliefs and mysteries), uniting the congregation in common confession. Far from being a device of the ivory tower, creeds were the way ordinary tradespeople and farmers could learn about and pledge their lives to the God of the Bible.

Nowadays, we have a largely literate population and an ample supply of Bibles, and so it’s easy to wonder whether creeds are necessary.

Some may even think that the creeds stand in opposition to (or at least in tension with) the authority of Holy Scripture. However, as theologian John Webster says, “We may think of the creed as an aspect of the church’s exegetical fellowship, of learning alongside the saints and doctors and martyrs how to give ear to the gospel.”7 Creeds are not dogmas that are imposed on Scripture, but are statements drawn from the Bible to provide a touchstone to the faith for Christians of all times and places.

WHAT IS A CONFESSION? What about confessions? In contrast to creeds, which are basic statements of belief, confessions

represent more detailed articulations of the things of God. C. S. Lewis gave the following illustration to show the value of having confessions as well as creeds: I hope no reader will suppose that ‘mere’ Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the [confessions] of the existing communions—as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall [creeds], I have done what I attempted.

But it is in the rooms [confessions], not the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals.8 As Lewis’s illustration suggests, the creeds are the boundaries of the faith that separate orthodoxy from heresy (the hallway), while the confessions (the rooms) color in the picture, tying theology to everyday life in all sorts of ways. Because creeds are bare-bones structures (the outlines of the sketch), it makes sense that the earliest statements of the church are creeds, while later statements of particular denominations are confessions. Creeds distinguish orthodoxy from heresy (or Christian faith from non-Christian faith). Confessions define denominational distinctives (or one type of Christian faith from another type of Christian faith).

Christian confessions often define a particular group’s belief on secondary issues such as infant baptism, the end times, predestination, the Lord’s Supper, and the order of salvation.

As a rule, Christian confessions addressed the immediate needs and concerns of those who wrote them. (That is, while the creeds strove to preserve “the faith delivered for all time,” confessions tried to apply the faith to the church’s present situation.) Because confessions often arose out of theological debate, the issues emphasized in any particular confession may say more about cross-denominational arguments than anything else. Although those issues may still be relevant today, they may

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not be of the same importance as they were long ago.

USE OF CONFESSIONS While confessions have not been as relevant to worship services as creeds have (it’s rare to find a congregation reciting the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion on a given Sunday), they still play an important role in the life of the church. First, confessional statements form the basis of catechisms, which are used to introduce new believers and children to the basic teachings of the church. Second, confessions help a denomination maintain doctrinal unity by providing a standard to which the teaching of individual congregations should adhere.

This standard helps maintain denominational integrity and preserves the ideals of the group against cultural trends or the doctrinal innovations of an individual leader.

Some may worry that church confessions are archaic, that they undermine the overarching unity of the body of Christ, or that they nitpick over relatively insignificant issues of doctrine.

While there may be some legitimacy to these critiques, it is important to keep in mind that confessions are meant to be worshipful responses to a truly gracious God. It is not enough for believers to stop at a basic knowledge of God, as Lewis so shrewdly noted, even though the basics tie together all the variations within orthodox Christianity. God has given us a lot of information about himself that a creed does not cover; it is within confessions that churches interpret that information and show believers how it can help them know God better. Seen in this light, the confessions of the church take on a new beauty, a beauty that finds its origin in the God of the gospel and in the salvation he offers to his people.

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Even the finer points of Christian theology have an influence in our worship and lives.

The humanity and deity of Jesus, the Trinity, the trust that we know we can put in Scripture are all beside us in our services on Sunday and impact the way we honor God in our daily lives.

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is the one word by which to live and die; in making its confession, the church lifts up its voice to do what it must do—speak with amazement of the goodness and truth of the gospel and the gospel’s God.10

WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS? What are we to make of the role of a human church in creating written documents about God? Are we better off relying on the sense that we ourselves can make of the Bible or the experiences that we have?

Even the finer points of Christian theology have an influence in our worship and lives.

The humanity and deity of Jesus, the Trinity, the trust that we know we can put in Scripture are all beside us in our services on Sunday and impact the way we honor God in our daily lives.

If that’s the case, then we ought to tackle theology the same way we tackle sin and the needs of the Christian community—as a body of Christ, using the parts of the body best suited to the task. The various creeds and confessions from the traditions of the church are the fruit of parts of the body that God gathered to proclaim and explain his gospel, stretching nearly two thousand years into the past. The gifts and tools given to us by the tradition of the church are acts of confession. John Webster explains: “Confession is a cry of acknowledgement of the unstoppable miracle of God’s mercy….To confess is to cry out in acknowledgement of the sheer gratuity of what the gospel declares.”9 Seeing the theological statements of the church as specific instances of the Christian act of confession is significant, because it helps us remember that they are not solely about doctrine and theology; they are ultimately about worship. Lest we think that fine points of doctrine and the minutiae of theological debate are merely intellectual exercises, the fact that confession is about praise helps ground the way we view and use these documents.

John Webster looks at the way creeds and confessions function in church life, arguing that they “properly emerge out of one of the primary defining activities of the church, the act of confession.” In the very act of confession, says Webster, “the church binds itself to the gospel.”

Webster’s point is to help us remember that confession is a central and primary act of the church’s life, and that the creeds and confessions exist only secondarily as documents that are particular instances of the act of confession. Additionally, learning about and knowing creeds and confessions is important, so we do not repeat the mistakes of the past or exhibit our natural tendency for, as C. S. Lewis dubs it, “chronological snobbery.”

Learning how Christians throughout history have wrestled with the tough questions of our faith gives us a valuable perspective that deepens our understanding of the Christian faith, increases our dependence on God’s revelation in Jesus Christ and the Holy Scriptures, fuels our worship of God, increases our love for one another, and motivates our mission to the world.

JUSTIN S. HOLCOMB serves as Canon for Vocations in The Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida. He also teaches at Reformed Theological Seminary and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

1 J. I. Packer, “Upholding the Unity of Scripture Today,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 25 no. 4 (December 1982).

2 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 3rd ed. (New York: Continuum, 1972), 1.

3 R. P. Martin, “Creed,” in New Bible Dictionary, ed. D. R. W. Wood et al.

(Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996). Martin writes, “There are clear indications that what appear as creedal fragments, set in the context of the church’s missionary preaching, cultic worship and defense against paganism, are already detectable in the NT” (241).

4 Bruce Demarest, “Heresy,” in New Dictionary of Theology, ed. Sinclair B. Ferguson, David F. Wright, and J. I. Packer (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1988), 293.

5 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.4.1–2.

6 Demarest, 292.

7 John Webster, “Confession and Confessions,” in Confessing God: Essays in Christian Dogmatics II (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 76.

8 Where the reader sees “confessions” in brackets, Lewis originally used “creeds.” His intention was a denominational statement of faith rather than a general orthodox one, however, and I have made the change here to avoid confusion. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), xv.

[It] is the act of astonished, fearful and grateful acknowledgement that the gospel

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9 Webster, 71.

10 Webster, 69.

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by

RICK RITCHIE

“We Confess, Unless…”

Modern Creeds and Confessions

illustrations by

THOMAS HED GER

W When people hear reformational Christians claim to be confessional, they wonder what that means exactly: “Do you go to confession?”

This is not as mistaken a question as we might think—the words for “confessing” faith and “confessing” sins have been the same for centuries. At the time of the Reformation, debates about the nature of penance changed the understanding of both the confessional and other 1 doctrines we confess when we confess the faith.

Our beliefs formed an organic whole, so that changes in understanding one area of doctrine led to changes in another.

The early church had its baptismal candidates confess the Apostles’ Creed. Heresies arose, and the details of the creed had to be elaborated to ensure against error. Medieval councils further defined beliefs, including transubstantiation and priestly celibacy. Whatever the Reformers believed concerning the accuracy of the work of the medieval councils, they all considered the writing of confessions a legitimate practice.

The first of the Reformation confessions—the Augsburg Confession—was actually written as an appeal to the pope and the emperor to tolerate (or even themselves confess!) the doctrine taught in the Lutheran churches. Reformed confessions were similar. The Reformed churches

did not hesitate to require subscription to its confessions (i.e., that pastors and teachers agree to teach in accordance with the confessions) as later churches often have, even when those churches themselves have written confessions.

In later years, we have seen all these reasons serve as motivation for churches to write even more documents. Such documents might include a statement of belief for an individual to join the group, a new catechism, a device to correct pastors and teachers, an updated statement reflecting changes in belief or new understandings, a statement that can be appealed to with the civil authorities so that their practice may receive protection, or a document cementing the union of previously separate church bodies.

A SURVEY OF MODERN CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS It will be helpful to survey some modern confessional developments to see both continuities and discontinuities between older and newer understandings of confessionalism. This is a small but broad sample.

The Baptist Faith and Message (1925, 1963, and 2000) The Baptist Faith and Message was first adopted in 1925, with revised versions adopted in 1963 and 2000. E. Y. Mullins, a famous churchman whom Harold Bloom saw as a paradigm of 2 American religiosity, drafted the first version with a preface. The Baptists held to a doctrine called “soul competency,” which meant something along the lines of each individual being able to discern what God was saying in Scripture without any intermediary. Ironically, this made the Baptists somewhat averse to the whole confessional process, and it was adopted with lots of caveats. One has to do with the limitations of human documents: 2. That we do not regard them as complete statements of our faith, having any quality of finality or infallibility. As in the past so in

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the future, Baptists should hold themselves free to revise their statements of faith as may seem to them wise and expedient at any time.

The good side of this is that the procedure for rectifying error is revision. This exemplifies a uniquely American principle of government: there is no finality in the founding document.

The Constitution is subject to revision and amendment—the people have the right to change or abolish their governments—but the written document establishing that form of government must not be ignored or reinterpreted.

When Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, he anguished over the fact that no such power was articulated in the Constitution, because he saw the danger of ignoring its specifications, even for a good cause. I have been heartened to see that some schools are teaching “The Constitution Is a Living Document—It Can Be Amended.” Revision, not reinterpretation, is the right way to change course.

Another caveat in the Baptist Faith and Message has to do with conscience: 4. That the sole authority for faith and practice among Baptists is the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Confessions are only guides in interpretation, having no authority over the conscience.

I have to wonder whether this means a teacher is not to feel a twinge of conscience for teaching contrary to the confession. It doesn’t say a teacher cannot be disciplined, but it does seem to imply that one is guilty only if one is caught.

At the Diet of Worms, Luther stood against pope and emperor. He appealed to conscience, but he qualified that to refer to the conscience that was captive to the word of God. This has implications for confessions: we may not adopt those that violate the word of God, but we ought to wholeheartedly adopt those confessions when they uphold and clarify the teachings of Scripture, holding accountable those who submit to its mandates by joining a confessional church.

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At the Diet of Worms, Luther stood against pope and emperor. He appealed to conscience, but he qualified that to refer to the conscience that was captive to the word of God.

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“Soul competency” is affirmed by name in the 1963 and 2000 prefaces, though the 2000 preface also mentions how “Baptist churches, associations, and general bodies have adopted confessions of faith as a witness to the world, and as instruments of doctrinal accountability.” The new preface also makes mention of the new threats it has faced over time and the hostility of the world to the very notion of truth. It appears that the recent committee saw that earlier versions weren’t explicit enough in mentioning the possibility of discipline.

The Barmen Declaration (1934) The Theological Declaration of Barmen was written by Karl Barth as a response to the Nazification program that threatened the German Evangelical Church. Hitler’s primary interest was in promoting a renewed paganism based on ancient sources containing revela3 tions to those of Aryan stock. But a program to Nazify the church could only help to weaken a rival institution. Germany was installing in the church its own authorities who wanted to make the church conform to the state. As Dr. Jaeger, the civil administrator of the church, said of the Lutheran confessions, Confessions can change. The confession must in the course of time absorb new elements. As our final purpose and before us is the surmounting of the confession and the overcoming of religious differences within the German nation. At the end of the present line of development is the German 4 national church.

The Barmen Declaration rejected the idea that the church opposed the unity of the nation: We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation. (8.12)

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This declaration, while having little direct political power, was a rare public statement of resistance.

Whatever it achieved for its own generation, the German Evangelical Church’s stand is a welcome counterexample to the narrative of the church’s willing assimilation into the Third Reich. Further instances of resistance in the German Church are hinted at in New York Times article headings from that era: 6,000 Reich Pastors Defy Nazis, Saying They Will Not Be ‘Muzzled’ / Lutheran Ministers Rebel against Dictatorship Set Up by Reich Bishop Mueller—Base Right to Disobey on the Augsburg Confession—Police Arrest Sunday School Leaders (January 8, 1934) Religious Freedom Defended in Reich / Free Synod, in Barmen, Adopts Confession That Is Designed to Preserve Doctrine / ‘DICTATORSHIP’ ASSAILED / Erlangen Theological Faculty Warns Mueller Methods Are a Peril to Church (June 1, 1934) REBEL CLERGY WAR ON NAZI SCHOOLING / Confessional Syno d Declare Regime Systematically Seeking to De-Christianize Youth / BIDS PARENTS FIGHT IDEAS / Commission Formed to Combat Anti-Religious Influence of Hitler Youth Leaders (June 13, 1937) Current accounts tend to downplay the existence of ecclesiastic resistance to the Third Reich. While it is probably accurate to say that the majority of Christians in Germany did coop5 erate with the state either out of conviction or fear, this makes the courage and sacrifice of those who did oppose the regime, whether congregations or individual pastors or laypeople, even more remarkable.

Confession of 1967 The Confession of 1967 was a confession of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, a body that had been formed

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by a merger in 1958 of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America with the United Presbyterian Church of North America. The original plan was to draft an updated catechism to replace the Westminster Larger Catechism, but somewhere in the process, a decision was made to draft an updated confession of faith instead.

Whatever else could be said of the Confession of 1967, it made a hash of authority within the church. In the preface, we are told that “confessions and declarations are subordinate standards in the church, subject to the authority of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, as the Scriptures bear witness to him.” This sounds nice: Jesus Christ is more central to us than our written confession of faith. Isn’t that true for all Christians?

Think of how other legal documents work— say, a custody arrangement between divorced parents. I would hope that Jesus Christ mattered more to the parents than any custody arrangement; but what would happen if, at the beginning of such an arrangement, it was stated that Jesus Christ had authority beyond the written agreement? The two parents would now begin to appeal to him against the written agreement: “Why did you keep Michael over Monday night when you were supposed to return him Monday afternoon?”

“I talked to Jesus, and he said I could keep Michael on Monday night.”

The statement that looked so idealistic is now the grounds for all kinds of new disputes, and a display of piety will be the strongest argument.

If my reading of what the preface did to the authority of the confessions sounds theoretical, the text gets worse: The Scriptures, given under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are nevertheless the words of men, conditioned by the language, thought forms, and literary fashions of the places and times at which they were

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written. They reflect views of life, history, 6 and the cosmos which were then current.

An argument can develop where one side cites Scripture and the other side cites the Confession of 1967 to show how the Scripture cited is irrelevant because of its dated cultural understandings: “That made sense then, but we know better now.”

The Confession of 1967 contains a lot of discussion about reconciliation that seems more appropriate to the modern catechism that the committee was first called to write, rather than a confession.

This confession of faith is held by not just the liberal PC(USA) but by the more conservative break-off body, ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. (This may be so that they are seen as the continuing body of the national church, an understandable conservative impulse.) Perhaps in the future, they can strike out the dangerous sections or take a chapter from the Episcopalian playbook and relegate it to a “Historical Documents of the Church” appendix, as the 1979 Book of Common Prayer did to the Thirty-Nine Articles.

Calvary Chapel Distinctives (1993) The Calvary Chapel movement began in 1965 with one congregation—Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, California—which was led by Chuck Smith and which became a major focus of the Jesus Movement. Chuck Smith had grown up in the Foursquare denomination, at Angelus Temple, founded by Aimee Semple McPherson.

He studied at LIFE Bible College, and while Calvary Chapel is not affiliated directly with the Foursquare Church, it does share a common lineage and distinctive teachings.

Calvary Chapel’s beliefs can be found in Calvary Chapel Distinctives: The Foundational Principles of the Calvary Chapel Movement (Word for Today, 1993), written by Chuck Smith himself. It sets forth a sort of doctrine of the ministry and could easily serve as a catechism for pastors.

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Scripture leaves us with options. When we choose on the basis of experience, we should look beyond our own personal experience with its limited set of circumstances.

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Smith writes: “In Scripture we find three basic forms of church government.” He finds the Presbyterian (elder-led) and Episcopal (bishop-led) in the New Testament and says the Congregational (congregation-led) form developed in church history, but noted that in Scripture, the congregation is never right (his examples tend to be Old Testament, with the congregation of Israel). He also mentions theocracy as a divine form of government in the Old Testament, where God is in charge and one man listens to God and has elders helping him.

He says that Calvary Chapel was not founded with a Presbyterian but a more episkopos form of church government.

The chief practical example he gives of weakness in the Presbyterian model is in the denomination he was in before Calvary Chapel.

He had once set chairs up in a circle rather than rows, and the worship time ended up being very dynamic. (If this document were in force in the Lutheran Church, nobody could ever put chairs in rows again!) He felt like the elders who tried to rein this in were quenching the Spirit. I can imagine the situation he describes as being convincing on some level—everyone knows what it is like to have authority figures micromanage and find fault with something that went well.

The question is how well this model would work in a different context.

Scripture leaves us with options. When we choose on the basis of experience, we should look beyond our own personal experience with its limited set of circumstances. It might well be that a pastor is better at deciding such things for a smaller number of members, while past a certain size, policy cannot be decided so informally.

The Calvary Chapel movement has faced problems in recent decades—like child abuse allegations against pastors in the association— that were not foreseen in its early years. While boards can, at their worst, manifest dysfunctions that are “Spirit-quenching,” they can also represent a greater array of stakeholders, and create public policies that circumvent favoritism and protect the weak. If they don’t have that, then they will be completely defined by their episkopos.

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North American Lutheran Church Common Confession (2005) Drafted by the Lutheran Coalition for Renewal (Lutheran CORE), this confession was adopted by the North American Lutheran Church when it formed as a break-off from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Much of the material is a restatement of what can be found in the other Lutheran confessions. One notable section (6) is the one on marriage and family, which reads:

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We believe and confess that the marriage of male and female is an institution created and blessed by God. From marriage, God forms families to serve as the building blocks of all human civilization and community.

We teach and practice that sexual activity belongs exclusively within the biblical boundaries of a faithful marriage between one man and one woman.

This section has more recently been suggested by the church body for inclusion in all church constitutions, for the sake of preserving religious liberty. Recent changes in civil law have put churches under heavier scrutiny with regard to discrimination against the LGBT community. Because of First Amendment protections, they are generally safe from legal sanctions if their activities are the result of stated doctrines. If, however, they have not stated these doctrines in clear language, the same actions may be deemed individual or group prejudice, with no religious reason.

(This is a modern example of a ver y old practice of including matters in a church confession to seek the protections afforded by CONTINUED ON PAGE 41 civil law.)

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TEACH THEM DILIGENTLY

A CONVERSATION ON CATECHESIS WITH KENDA CREASY DEAN

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)

E

asier said than done, right? What exactly constitutes “training”? Matthew 28:19 gives us a bit of help: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” The baptism part is pretty straightforward, but the teaching clause has fallen on hard times. It seems that either we use it as a proof-text for indoctrination or we chuck it altogether for a “deeds, not creeds” philosophy. A few years ago, our friends at the White Horse Inn interviewed Kenda Creasy Dean, the Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church and Culture at Princeton Theology Seminary and author of Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church (Oxford University Press, 2010), on what catechesis looks like in the American church, and how we might take a helpful leaf from the Church of Latter-Day Saints’ book. (Not The Pearl of Great Price—or The Book of Mormon—but you get it.)

KCD: I heard Tony Campolo say once that we’re not going to lose this generation because we ask too much; we’re going to lose them because we ask too little. I think he’s dead on about that. We talked to a lot of Mormon teenagers, and they were the most articulate about their faith; they knew more about it, they talked more about their faith in their families.

It was a common subject of conversation.

If you talk to Mormons, they’re crazed about how they’re going to help their

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kids have faith in the same way that everybody else is, because fewer kids are going to seminary.

Seminary is a fascinating phenomenon among the Mormons: for four years, every morning before school, you participate in this small group that meets in a home, so there’s the solidarity of parents. It’s a huge commitment, but you see there’s an urgency in Mormon practices that a lot of Christian communities don’t have, and that’s this: on the other end of high school, Mormon kids are going to do something

immediately that will have consequences for their faith. If you’re a guy, you’re probably going to be involved in a mission assignment (although Mormons complain that there aren’t enough people doing that—still, a lot of them do). If you’re a girl, you’re very likely to get married young—if not right out of high school, then often before college—and you become the primary catechist of your family.

There’s an urgency to get these teenagers trained in the faith. These parents will get up at the crack of

dawn to get their kids to seminary, because they care that their kids have the tools to take on these tasks that are quite imminent.

I think a lot of Protestants tend to think (and I tend to think this way myself), that even if my kids don’t get this instruction in high school, there’s still plenty of time—they’ll get it eventually. Mormon urgency doesn’t allow for that.

WHI: You quote extensively from the preface to CONTINUED ON PAGE 40

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TEACH THEM DILIGENTLY

Martin Luther’s Small Catechism of 1529, in which he says: The common man knows practically nothing of Christian doctrine, and many of the pastors are almost entirely incompetent and unable to teach; yet all the people who are supposed to be Christians have been baptized and receive the holy sacrament, yet they do not know the Lord’s Prayer, the creed or the Ten Commandments.

Do you think we’re living in a similar situation, and if so, do you think a recovery of catechism is one of the ways we can help glue together what happens in church with what happens in the home?

Will making catechism not just something that we do on the church nickel but

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something that we do in our homes as families help ground the faith in which we raise our children? It’s ironic to think that this is being done almost exclusively by Mormons and a few smaller confessional groups.

KCD: Definitely that’s a way to begin to get at this.

Now, you have to be careful, because a lot of people understand catechism as a very inert document. Of course, that’s not the way it was understood in the Reformation. The way Martin Luther talked about catechism was that it was one of those things you hung on the dining room wall; and the idea was that the parents, specifically the fathers, were supposed to talk about it in the presence of their children and their servants— it was a way of catechizing the whole household. I don’t actually think that just sitting down and teaching

A CONVERSATION ON CATECHESIS WITH KENDA CREASY DEAN

people anything codified in a document is going to do the trick.

What catechisms do offer is a common language, and one of the things that has been lost—and this was striking in the national study of youth and religion—is that young people have very, very few language resources when it comes to faith. Even if they hold some faith belief, they don’t know how to talk about it; they don’t feel safe talking about it, or they actually don’t have a language to lay claim to it.

A friend of mine put it this way: part of the problem is that we’ve become a generation of mules. He said that what happened was the marriage between Protestantism and consumer culture. A generation ago, people’s faith might have been healthy, but because they couldn’t talk about it,

they couldn’t “reproduce.”

They don’t have a way of talking about their faith— it’s not something they received, so they can’t pass it on to their children.

One of the points I hoped to make in this book was that people may talk about the problem with youth and youth ministry and adolescent faith, but this is a problem for all of us. This is something that starts with parents, with adults, with a generation of people who just plain never learned the basic tools to communicate about faith. Even if they have questions about faith, they don’t know how to ask those questions.

WHI: So we need to recover the grammar before we can pass the language on to our kids.

KCD: Well said—I wish I’d said it that way!

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The current situation has some parallels with older discussions of the church and war.

Conscientious objector laws do allow an individual to cite church teaching as a reason for not serving in combat, but these are all-ornothing policies. A church with consistent pacifist teachings will be able to shield a member from serving. A church with a justwar teaching, in which some wars are justified and some are not, will not be able to shield a member from serving.

Similarly in the past, some church bodies tried to hold to a conservative morality, but with some pastoral leeway. This is now seen as discriminatory. A church may excommunicate a member whose behavior violates church law, but it must treat all members the same.

The scrutiny of civil law has the church writing confessions differently from how it might write them if it did not have these constraints.

This situation that faces the NALC faces all church bodies. It will be interesting to see the various ways in which church bodies respond to this matter.

FUTURE CONFESSIONALISM There are two mistakes to avoid in assessing modern creeds and confessions. The first is to miss the continuity of purpose they have with older documents. The second is to allow this continuity to obscure what being confessional means for reformational Christians.

When we talk of being confessional, we are pointing to something specific. Church bodies have written and used confessions before and after the Reformation for a variety of purposes, which we shall discuss below. Modern creeds are written for several purposes common to Christendom; but to be confessional in a reformational sense, they have to do more.

First and foremost, they have to treat their teachings as a body of doctrine (corpus doctrinae), where teachings are organically related, with the gospel as its beating heart. We see this in the Augsburg Confession. While many articles address abuses that have arisen in the

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church (e.g., Article XXVI regarding foods), others lay out key doctrines. Article IV speaks of justification, where human beings are “justified as a gift on account of Christ’s sake through faith,” while Article V speaks of the office of preaching: “To obtain such faith God instituted the office of preaching, giving the gospel and the sacraments. Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, where and when he wills, in those who hear the gospel.” There is a similar organic sense expressed in the Reformed Heidelberg Catechism, whose first answer regards belonging to Jesus Christ, sets the tone of the whole document. Seeing how doctrines relate to each other is crucial. Where this cannot be seen in a confession, the doctrines listed can look like a smorgasbord of teachings chosen by whim, perhaps a mere reflection of the times.

Second, they should be more careful in expressing reservations about our ability to come to truth. When a modern confession makes too much of our inability to say anything final, it allows a foothold for those who wish to deny they are under its authority—how can a bunch of erring humans tell me I’m wrong?

Earlier confessions were more successful in avoiding this kind of challenge.

RICK RITCHIE is a long-time contributor to MR. 1 In The Reformation of the Keys: Confession, Conscience, and Authority in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Harvard University Press, 2004), Ronald K. Rittgers offers us a social history of the Reformation in Nuremberg, where churchly authority had abused laypeople who were interested in seeing to it that reforms addressed their problems. Going to the pastor for confession became voluntary (despite some heated protests) and focused on proper confession of faith more than confession of sins. Absolution was granted in the service after a general confession (a carryover from the medieval practice of absolving “little sins” committed in the days following confession to the priest.) The Reformation brought a new understanding of how this worked, and the sermon itself was considered an absolution.

2 Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the PostChristian Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992).

3 See Karla Poewe, New Religions and the Nazis. Dr. Poewe recounts letters exchanged between Nazis after the war where they encouraged each other to “keep the faith,” by which they meant not Christianity but their newfound paganism, based on the Eddas and Hindu sources.

It is striking how much of the work of inventing a new religion for the Germans had been going on long before Hitler ever came to power.

4 New York Times, September 24, 1934.

5 To see how complicit some churchmen were in Nazifying, see Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus, and Emanuel Hirsch by Robert P. Ericksen (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985).

6 Confession of 1967, paragraph 9.29.

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†by

C O N F E S S IO N 1 5 6 9

illustration by

R. SC OTT CLARK

Between 1559 and 1561, while hiding from Spanish troops who sought to arrest and make a martyr of him for the sake of the gospel, Guy de Bres (1522–67) wrote a confession of faith, which we know as the Belgic Confession (1561). Among the more remarkable aspects of the story is that the French Confession (1559), composed with input from Calvin himself, had just been adopted by the French churches, and de Bres cribbed from and modified it to suit his purposes.

That de Bres wrote a confession so shortly after the adoption of the French Confession is remarkable, because it is widely held that the confessional Reformed and Presbyterian churches have no need of a new confession for three reasons: First, we do not live in a confession-writing age; second, our present confessions are sufficient; 1 and third, the modern confessions have tended to heterodoxy.

MLC

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NOT A CONFESSION-WRITING AGE? The assumption of this objection is that the theologians, pastors, and churches of the Reformation and post-Reformation periods, during which the major confessional documents were written, were better prepared than we are now to write confessions and catechisms. It is certainly true that de Bres had a good liberal arts education. It is also true that his formal theological training was probably fairly limited. The same was true of John Calvin (1509–64) and his successor, Theodore Beza (1519–1605), and Caspar Olevianus (1536–87), who contributed to the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) and who studied briefly in Zürich and Geneva before beginning his career in Heidelberg. Zacharias Ursinus (1534–83), who was responsible for most of the Heidelberg Catechism, was somewhat exceptional in that he studied theology for several years with Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) in Wittenberg. Ursinus was twenty-seven and Olevianus was twenty-five, about the age of most seminary graduates today, when they began work on the Heidelberg Catechism.

If we survey the Westminster Divines, though, there were many exceptional men at the assembly. For example, there were those who denied the imputation of the active obedience of Christ—and who would have trouble being ordained in most NAPARC (North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council) denominations today. Nevertheless, as is often the case, the remarkable product of the assembly was more than adequate to the needs of the Presbyterian churches for a long time. In other words, we should resist the notion that the sixteenth and seventh centuries were a golden age that cannot be replicated. Industrious, intelligent, and faithful ministers did what was needed to confess the faith positively and to refute errors of their day for the edification of the church. Much of what they did was not new or creative. They harvested the work of others, articulated the faith, and restated it carefully.

I am convinced that, whatever our disabilities, we are able to do that again.

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ARE THE CURRENT STANDARDS SUFFICIENT? The second objection—that our existing confessions are sufficient—is hard to square with the history of the Reformed confessions. To write a new confession is not to condemn another. Why did the Dutch churches not adopt the French Confession? Both were in French.

Why did Heinrich Bullinger (1504–75) publish the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) instead of adopting the Belgic Confession? On this objection, virtually all of the confessions and catechisms written in the classical period should have been aborted, but they were not. The recent English translation and publication of the Reformed confessions from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries runs to four volumes.

Were none of them redundant? Apparently, the Reformed churches across Europe and the British Isles did not think so.

Our forefathers wrote confessions and catechisms because they felt compelled to confess the faith anew, in every place, in each generation. The writing of them was an affirmation of the continuing validity and vitality of the Reformed confession. Our strange silence since 1675 in the face of a multitude of challenges to the Reformed confession perhaps, counterintuitively, suggests that we have not been as faithful as we like to think we have by refusing to confess the faith anew, in every place, and in each generation.

ARE MODERN CONFESSIONS NECESSARILY MODERNIST? For the sake of discussion, let us say it is true that most of the confessions produced in the modern era (e.g., the PC[USA]’s Confession of 1967) were defective or corrupted by modernism— that is, by rejecting or revising the doctrines of the faith to attempt to make them compatible with modern criticisms. So what? What if most American cars produced since the mid-1970s were defective or unsatisfactory? Does this mean that American auto manufacturers are

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INTELLIGENT, AND FAITHFUL MINISTERS DID WHAT WAS NEEDED TO CONFESS THE FAITH POSITIVELY AND TO REFUTE ERRORS OF THEIR DAY FOR THE EDIFICATION OF THE CHURCH.

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inherently incapable of producing a good car?

No. So it is for the churches. It may have been the case, during the period of transition as the great mainline churches were moving toward theological liberalism, that it was a poor time for them to write new confessional standards.

It simply does not follow, however, that confessional Reformed churches are now incapable of relearning our own theology and confessing the faith again. It may well be true that while one is fighting cancer and undergoing treatment, it is ill-advised to run a marathon. Once in remission, though, it may be a very good thing to train for a marathon.

THE CASE FOR A NEW CONFESSION Nearly a century ago, R. B. Kuiper (1886–1966) wrote: When our Reformed fathers wrote the Confessions, they intended that these documents should be revised from time to time with a view to heresies that might in the future arise, and in accordance with the additional light on the truths of Scripture which the Holy Spirit might be pleased to give the church. I believe that the time has come for us to do something 2 along this line.

Kuiper was right, and there are more reasons to agree with him than there were in 1926. The Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Canons of Dort (1619), and the Westminster Standards (1648) are marvels of clarity and piety, but they were never intended to serve, in the case of the Belgic, for 450 years. A call for a new confession is not a rejection of our confessions but a call to do in our age what they did in theirs. It would surprise and amaze the authors and framers of our current confessions that it has been 369 years since our last major, orthodox confessional document was produced by the churches.

First, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Reformed churches in Europe and

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HAVE A VITAL INTEREST IN CONFESSING THAT OUR HERMENEUTIC, COVENANT THEOLOGY, AND DOCTRINE OF BAPTISM ARE ESSENTIAL TO OUR THEOLOGY, PIETY, AND PRACTICE.

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the British Isles produced a confession about every three years. The English translation of the Reformed confessions from the period runs 3 to four volumes. On average, between 1523 and 1675, accounting only for the major confessional documents, the Reformed produced a significant confessional document every six years. This fact alone makes our relative silence since 1675 remarkable.

Second, since the Westminster Standards were completed, there has been an intellectual revolution or two in the West with serious consequences for the theology, piety, and practice of the churches. In the Enlightenment, the West declared its fundamental independence from God. While the great question that dominated the West prior to the middle of the seventeenth century was “What has God said?,” in modernity, the locus of authority shifted from outside ourselves to within.

The modern, Enlightenment movements were asking another familiar question: “Has God really said?” In late modernity, however, the question has become “Who is asking?” or perhaps “Who cares?” The arrogance of modernity has devolved into the hermeneutic of suspicion, apathy, and subjectivism.

In modernity, every doctrine of the faith from Scripture to eschatology has come under assault within the church and without. For example, the ecumenical faith holds that Scripture is infallible. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, rationalists and empiricists rejected the possibility of the supernatural and made God a bystander to the parade of history.

Empowered by modernity, source critics have mangled the Pentateuch, the Gospels, and the Pauline Epistles beyond recognition. Anything that does not fit their scheme is exiled from the canon as unacceptable.

The ecumenical doctrine of God—i.e., the Apostles’ Creed, Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), and the Athanasian Creed—confesses that he is, that he is almighty, and that he is Triune. The modern doctrine of God says God is becoming (process theism) or that he has died (i.e., the so-called death of God theology), that he is a partner in history (middle knowledge

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and open theism), and his tri-unity has been either rejected flatly (Unitarianism) or radically revised (social Trinitarianism). Just now, the evangelical and Reformed world is in the midst of a controversy over whether it is proper to speak of the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father. There are Reformed theologians speaking of complexity and mutability in God. These are fundamental questions that call for a confession by the church.

The doctrine of humanity has been challenged in a variety of ways to which we have yet to respond. Arguably, the theological question implied in the slave trade and colonialism of the early modern period was that of theological anthropology. Did not Europeans and American Christians effectively deny the humanity and image-bearing status of entire races and nations? Is not the fundamental question of abortion the humanity and imagebearing status of persons in utero? This is to say nothing of the theological problems associated with cloning, genetic engineering, and stem cell research. Under this heading, we might also address the nature of the creation days, which some assemblies have addressed through doctrinal declarations, but the question remains contentious.

The Definition of Chalcedon (451) and the Reformed confessions are clear about Christ’s two natures and one person. In modernity, however, we have faced questions whether Christ abandoned his deity (kenosis) and renewed questions as to whether his humanity is consubstantial with ours. In North America, the Second Great Awakening revived the Anabaptist “celestial flesh” Christology.

The Reformed doctrine of salvation has been in question almost from its first confession. Even before the Westminster Assembly had completed its work, from 1634, the French church was roiled by the Moses Amyraut’s (1596–1664) doctrine of hypothetical universalism. For a variety of reasons, partly political and partly theological, the French synods were unable to come to consensus. The issue was not addressed confessionally until the 1675 Helvetic Consensus Formula, drafted by J. H. Heidegger

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(1633–98) in Zürich and Francis Turretin (1623–87) in Geneva, and adopted by the Swiss churches, which unequivocally rejected hypothetical universalism. The Consensus, however, was scuttled by Turretin’s broadly evangelical son, Jean Alphonse Turretin (1671–1737) in 1725, and the Reformed churches have not spoken confessionally to these issues since. In the same period, however, a strong consensus emerged among the orthodox against Amyraldianism.

It is difficult to imagine that a candidate for ordination in a NAPARC denomination could successfully affirm Amyraldianism in his ordination trials.

Further, since the death of Richard Baxter (1615–91), the churches have faced repeated challenges to the doctrines of salvation—that is, the doctrines of justification and sanctification—most recently in the Shepherd controversy (1974–81) and the self-described Federal Vision movement from the early 2000s. Are all baptized persons automatically elect, united to Christ, adopted, justified, and so on, and do they retain those benefits by grace and cooperation with grace? That is what the Federal Visionists propound and the orthodox deny, but the churches have not confessed our doctrine of salvation and confessionally rejected their errors.

On the doctrine of the sacraments, we could mention the rise of the Particular Baptist movement. When the Belgic Confession first declared that there are three marks of the true church, one of which is the “pure administration of the sacraments” (Article 29), the churches doubtless had in mind the Anabaptist rejection of infant baptism, which they condemned (Article 34). But the Particular Baptist movement did not yet exist, as it was in its infancy during the Westminster Assembly.

The very recent designation of Reformed Baptists, however, raises the question about what constitutes the Reformed confession. The churches have a vital interest in confessing that our hermeneutic, covenant theology, and doctrine of baptism are essential to our theology, piety, and practice. On the Lord’s Supper, we could mention the rise of the practice of paedocommunion in some Reformed circles.

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ON THE CREED: A SERMON TO THE CHURCHES

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eceive, my children, the Rule of Faith, which is called the Symbol (or Creed). And when you have received it, write it in your heart, and be daily saying it to yourselves; before ye sleep, before ye go forth, arm you with your Creed.

The Creed no man writes so as it may be able to be read: but for rehearsal of it, lest haply forgetful-

ness obliterate what care has delivered, let your memory be your record-roll: what you are about to hear, that are you to believe; and what you shall have believed, that are about to give back with your tongue. For the Apostle says, With the heart man believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For this is the Creed which

Further, few subjects are as contentious in the life of the church as worship. The original intent of the Belgic Confession and the Westminster Standards is clear: They confessed a “rule of worship,” to use Calvin’s expression, and practiced it by singing the psalms a cappella. This was on the conviction that God’s word is sufficient for public worship, that Christian liberty forbids the church from imposing on Christians anything not required by Scripture, and that musical instruments belonged to the period of types and shadows. Since the eighteenth century, however, that consensus has been upended.

When asked, most candidates for Reformed

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you are to rehearse and to repeat in answer. These words which you have heard are in the Divine Scriptures scattered up and down: but thence gathered and reduced into one, that the memory of slow persons might not be distressed; that every person may be able to say, able to hold, what he believes. For have ye now merely heard that God is Almighty? But

BY AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

ye begin to have him for your father, when you have been born by the church as your Mother.

AUGUSTINE (354–430) was a theologian, philosopher, and bishop of Hippo (within the modern-day city of Annaba in Algeria) who wrote such wellknown works as Confessions and City of God.

ministry reflexively articulate the Lutheran, rather than the Reformed, principle of worship.

As a consequence, we are in the midst of a Thirty Years’ Worship War. Under the heading of eschatology, we may observe that there has been a notable slide among British and American evangelicals on the question of the eternal punishment of unbelievers and on the very nature and existence of hell.

Are the Reformed churches willing to reaffirm their commitment to the ecumenical doctrine of eternal punishment and to deny universalism?

For the past century, contemporary Reformed ethics has been dominated by the vision of the

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great Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), but there are significant questions about how to relate his doctrine of sphere sovereignty to the confessions and to the older Reformed theologians. Has neoKuyperianism reached confessional status, or is there yet room for a post-Constantinian version of Calvin’s doctrine of a twofold kingdom? Kuyper himself demanded the revision of Article 36 of the Belgic Confession, because he rejected the notion of a state church and stateenforced religious orthodoxy. Still, since the late 1950s, the Christian Reconstruction movement and, since 1974, the question of theonomy have troubled the churches. Should we not clarify these questions in a new confession?

In the decade since I first made this argument, the case for a new confession has only mounted. Thus I offer again my humble suggestion: Rather than have each Reformed denomination and federation of NAPARC draft and adopt its own contemporary testimony, the member bodies of NAPARC should send properly prepared and authorized delegates to a confessional convention to draft a new confession of the historic Reformed faith, to be presented to the constituent denominations for ratification. Certainly, the member bodies of NAPARC can find within their ranks a sufficient quantity and quality of pastors and theologians for such a task. This NAPARC confession would be an ecumenical Reformed document that would be subscribed by all members because it is biblical. It should contain nothing from which anyone who genuinely holds the historic confessional Reformed faith should need to dissent. The creation, adoption, and subscription of the NAPARC confession would advance not only confessional Reformed ecumenism (based on a shared understanding of a shared confession in which all the NAPARC bodies would have ownership), but it would also promote a more profound understanding of the existing Reformed confession.

To anticipate one more objection and to mix metaphors: Would not such an assembly open Pandora’s Box and set loose a thousand hobbyhorses? My experience says no. Confessions are necessarily limited in scope. The Westminster

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Confession, as adopted by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, is about 17,900 words or about thirty single-spaced pages. Furthermore, there were just as many hobbyhorses in the seventeenth century as today. We need only exercise the same restraint they did. As my students can testify, the very act of writing a confession requires setting priorities. A confession is a zero-sum game. Whatever is said under one heading will limit what may be said under another. This is an inherent check on preoccupations.

What is really at stake here is what my friend John Muether calls “confidence in the brethren.” Do we still believe that God has ordained offices and assemblies to meet, to consider matters prayerfully, judiciously, and to come to an agreement in light of our Scripture and our older confessions? Like de Bres, Ursinus, and the Westminster divines, can we not harvest the best from the past and articulate it again for our time?

Perhaps an even more fundamental question remains: Do we still believe in the act of confessing the faith? I think we do. It is true that we are out of practice; but as with any other rusty skill, with a little exercise and practice, it returns.

Should we undertake this important work by virtue of doing it, rather than losing regard for our classical confessions, we would gain greater appreciation for them in the same way those who build houses appreciate them as distinct from those who merely live in them. Becoming builders again would make our ecclesiastical houses stronger, healthier, and more unified than they presently are.

R. SCOTT CLARK is professor of church history and historical

theology at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

1 Because I minister in and help to prepare ministers for the confessional Reformed and Presbyterian churches (hereafter Reformed), I address this essay primarily to them—though I hope that at least some of these arguments and considerations are relevant to other confessional traditions. Much of the material that follows is revised from my book, Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007), 180–90.

2 R. B. Kuiper, As to Being Reformed (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1926), 66.

3 Reformed Confessions of the 16 th and 17 th Centuries in English Translation, ed. James T. Dennison (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008–14).

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W H Y

by

MICHAEL S. HORTON

The Trinity and

the Dangers of Biblicism

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T H E O L O G Y illustration by

M A T T E R S

JOE CAVAZOS

For many evangelical theologians and pastors, 2016 will be remembered for one of the most contentious debates over the Trinity ever.

I am not interested in going into the weeds of the debate (particularly the more acrimonious exchanges), yet it does emphasize the importance not only of being creedal and confessional but also of understanding the debates in which they were forged. The good news is that after a few or more centuries of functional unitarianism in academic theology and frequent neglect in evangelical circles, the Trinity is one of the most popular topics in both audiences today.

The bad news is that the versions of Trinitarian theology that receive the most attention often reflect the agendas of the author more than the actual positions that formed the ecumenical consensus of orthodox Christianity.

The fourth century was the richest postapostolic era in terms of providing the foundations and formulations that we often take for granted.

How are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit one in essence (homoousia) and yet distinct persons?

There are several ways of coming to a wrong answer, and the church was well aware of all of them by the late fourth century. The Nicene consensus, forged through controversy and finally adopted at the Council of Constantinople in 381, yielded a simple formula that said what had to be affirmed and denied (over against the various heresies), yet it expressed humble restraint before the majestic mystery. There are

two processions in the Godhead: The Son proceeds from the unbegotten Father as the only begotten, and the Spirit proceeds by spiration (being breathed) from both the Father and the Son. This single act of double-procession is eternal—there is no point in time when the Son or the Spirit was not God. It is perfect, admitting no degrees of sharing in the divine essence, and it is necessary. While the missions in the economy (history) of creation and redemption are contingent (resulting from a free decision), the double-procession is essential to the life of the Triune God. Thus God is God without creation, but he cannot be God without the eternal procession of the Son and the Spirit from the Father. The external works of the Trinity in our world reveal the Godhead but must not be confused with the immanent life of the Trinity in these eternal processions. God doesn’t depend on the world for his existence and identity.

But to understand the results—especially as we confess in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed—we have to engage the context of controversy, revision, overreactions, further revision, and so on, that produced this consensus. When we do, we discover that we are often reinventing the wheel and it’s not always round. Many of the dead ends of the fourth century are repeated in contemporary projects and debates.

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BEING AND DOING: HISTORICAL CONFUSION ON TRINITARIAN PROCESSION AND MISSION any (like the early Origen) taught an ontological subordination, where the Son and the Spirit were seen as different in rank, authority, and essential Godhood from the Father.

Arianism went further, placing the Son on the “creature” side of the Creator-creature ledger, saying that though the first and most glorious creature, the Son is qualitatively different from the Father—not of the same essence. Others argued that “Father,” “Son,” and “Spirit” are just different names or masks for one person—like personas on the stage in a one-person play.

Hence, they were called modalists (or Sabellians, after the Roman presbyter who taught this view). In reaction against this rejection of the plurality of persons, others veered toward tritheism—namely, that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are different persons in exactly the same sense as human persons; consequently, there are three gods.

Among the important conclusions of these church fathers is the distinction between the eternal processions (also called the immanent Trinity) and the historical missions (the economic Trinity). While the Triune God reveals himself truly in history, we do not know what God is in himself or how the processions of the Son and the Spirit from the Father actually work. But if we confuse the processions and the missions, then we open the door to heresies such as Arianism, where Jesus’ statement about his inferiority to the Father (for example, in John 14:6) is taken to refer to his eternal status.

Navigating between the Scylla of one heresy and the Charybdis of another, the ancient pastors we justly revere arrived at not only a simple but a grand statement of the faith. In the process, they showed us their work, as it were, wrestling with opponents and sometimes each other in the letters, treatises, and biblical commentaries that are with us today. Exploring the history of the developments leading to Nicaea

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isn’t just a great way to pass the afternoon; it is essential in order to go beyond merely repeating their words, much less thinking we can come up with a better formula. We need to try to understand the deeper contexts and arguments that led them to their conclusions.

In Lewis Ayres’s magisterial work Nicaea and Its Legacy, he observes that while “Trinitarian theology” has become a cottage industry, many theologians engage the legacy of Nicaea “at a fairly shallow level, frequently relying on assumptions about Nicene theology that are historically indefensible.” It is remarkable that Ayres addresses this criticism not to the general public or the media but to “modern Christian 1 theologians.” There is plenty of evidence of such “historically indefensible” interpretations across a broad spectrum, ranging from conservative to liberal, especially in recent years. Often, the theologian comes to the subject with a set of convictions about the way things should look in the world today and then proceeds to develop a Trinitarian theology to ground it.

For example, Jürgen Moltmann is famous for developing a social model of the Trinity that eliminates the unity of essence in favor of a unity of purpose and will. Then he offers this model as a way of justifying a political, economic, and cultural program of democratic socialism.

However, virtually no specialist in patristic studies recognizes the fourth century in Moltmann’s version of the story. As conservative Protestants, we are alert to the penchant for “theologies of correlation” (that is, systems in which the ideals of modernity function as central dogmas). We know when liberals are projecting their own secular assumptions, as if they were talking about God when they’re really talking about humanity.

But it is more difficult to detect it when conservative agendas are in play.

(THE) FATHER KNOWS DOES BEST

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oted conservative theologians Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware have led the charge for what they call “the eternal functional

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CONSERVATIVE AND LIBERAL PROTESTANTS… SOMETIMES USE THEIR ‘RETURN TO THE BIBLE’ AS A JUSTIFICATION FOR DISSENTING FROM CLASSIC FORMULATIONS, WHILE INSUFFICIENTLY ENGAGING (OR IN SOME CASES, EVEN MISUNDERSTANDING) THOSE HISTORICAL ARGUMENTS. MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

subordination of the Son” (EFS). According to these writers, the subordination of the Son to the Father is the basis for that of wives to their husbands. In fact, Grudem sees the relations of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit along the 2 lines of father, wife, and child in a family.

Whereas Moltmann and others appeal to a social Trinitarian model to defend a more egalitarian ideal, Grudem and Ware seem to adopt certain of its features with a more “subordinationist” interpretation for a complementarian (male headship) perspective. Ware pleads, “May God help us to see that Trinitarian roles and relationships are meant to be reflected in marriage as both husbands and wives manifest what is true eternally in the very triune nature of God” (147).3 Although Ware is obviously not a social Trinitarian, the phrase “society of Persons” nudges in that direction, along with the tendency to turn distinct roles in every work into distinct works of the Father that he often delegates to the other persons (21).

Unlike Moltmann, the author clearly affirms the equality of the persons on the basis of their unity of essence. Nevertheless, as I will argue, this affirmation is at least qualified, if not abrogated, by many of his formulations. In any case, conservative and liberal Protestants—in quite different ways—sometimes use their “return to the Bible” as a justification for dissenting from classic formulations, while insufficiently engaging (or in some cases, even misunderstanding) those historical arguments.

According to Ware, “The Father possesses the place of supreme authority.…This hierarchical structure of authority exists in the eternal Godhead” despite their being identical with respect to essence (21). Each person “possesses fully the identically same divine nature” (42).

In fact, the Son and the Spirit “possess fully the attribute of omnipotence by possessing fully the undivided nature” (45). Here, however, we have a major point that needs clarification in how consubstantiality can be maintained if the Father alone • is “supreme among the Persons of the Godhead” (46);

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• “is the one who reigns over all” (48); • “stands above the Son” (49); • “gets top billing, as it were…as the highest in authority and the one deserving of ultimate praise” (51) with “the place of highest honor” (55); • is “the one who is on top” (58) and “retains the position for which highest honor and glory is owed” (66; cf. 67: “the Father who rightly deserves ultimate honor and glory”).

The Son “is worshiped with the Father” (84), but is he worshiped equally with the Father? From Ephesians 3:14–19, Ware concludes: Paul begins his prayer bowing his knees neither to the Son nor to the Spirit but to the Father, “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.” The Father, then, is the sovereign Ruler over heaven and earth, controlling even the very names that every creature is given. From this position of sovereign supremacy, it is the Father who has the authority to grant this prayer’s fulfillment, and so ultimately all glory and thanksgiving must go to him. (125) We do have to be careful here. Paul does indeed begin with the Father, as indeed all prayer is directed to the Father, in the name of the Son, through the power of the Spirit. This does certainly indicate differing roles in the economy. But does it entail different ranks, particularly eternal ranks of superior and inferior, justifying the conclusion that the Father alone “is the sovereign Ruler of heaven and earth” and that “ultimately all glory and thanksgiving must go to him”?

There is an Arian way of reading the passages according to which the Son being granted by the Father authority over heaven and earth, “the name above every name,” and the right to have life in himself is seen as grounding his inferiority. Then there is the orthodox way of reading the same passages, according to which being “from the Father” means being exactly what the Father is, “Light from Light,” except

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that the Son is not the Father. In On the Trinity, Augustine was especially keen in his anti-Arian interpretation of these passages. “Light from Light” means that there can be no rank, diminution or subordination. The order (“from Light,” i.e., the Father) does not cancel the substance (“Light” from Light) (De trin. IV.27).

Luigi Gioia’s recent work, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate, offers a terrific exposition of this point. To be begotten is to be inferior, according to the Arian logic, while for the orthodox it is to be of the same essence as the begetter. According to the Athanasian Creed, “In this Trinity none is before nor after another; none is greater or less than another.”

I am not at all suggesting that Ware, Grudem, or others are Arians! However, there is a way of reading the relevant passages as highlighting unity, and a way of reading that highlights the Son’s difference from the Father. On that score, it appears that some of Ware’s interpretations favor the latter.

Ware is correct to remind us of the distinctness of the persons, over against an implicit modalism or tendency to confuse them. At the same time, I wonder whether Ware is overcorrecting at certain points. For example, while it is wholly salutary to say that each person contributes uniquely to every external work of the Godhead, expressions such as “distinct tasks and activities” (20) appear to threaten the important maxim that the external works of the Trinity are undivided. The emphasis on the Father’s authority threatens to divide the work of the Godhead. “It is not as though the Father is unable to work unilaterally, but rather, he chooses to involve the Son and the Spirit” (57).

In fact, there are several places where the works of the Father are distinguished from those of the Son and the Spirit, and unhelpful expressions (e.g., that the Father often [!] works through them, though he could do it himself). “Yet though the Father is supreme, he does much of his work through the Son and the Spirit” (59; italics added).

As the earlier expressions raise the question about the consubstantiality of the Son and the Spirit with the Father in terms of omnipotence,

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this statement seems to call into question their shared aseity (i.e., self-existence) with the Father. Although they are persons from the Father, what they are from the Father is exactly what the Father is with respect to these attributes. It is both true and important to affirm that each person contributes differently, but it is impossible that the Father could operate apart from the Son and the Spirit any more than he could exist apart from them.

Ware even goes so far as to add, “In many ways, what we see here of the Father choosing not to work unilaterally but to accomplish his work through the Son, or through the Spirit, extends into his relationship to us” (57). Here is another example of an apparent blurring of the line between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity (which ultimately threatens the Creator-creature distinction).

While it is correct to observe that God freely chooses to work through creatures even though he could work unilaterally, it is dangerous to say that this is just as true of the Father in relation to the Son and the Spirit. “Marvel at how the Father delegates his work to others” (64; italics added). The unity of the persons in every work hardly accommodates this picture of a boss delegating his work to others.

According to Scripture, interpreted by classical formulations, everything done by the Father, in the Son, through the Spirit is God’s work—that is, the work of the three persons in unison. Ware writes: When others participate, it becomes “our work” even if all was designed and “empowered” by one person. And this principle is most astonishing when seen as carried out by none other than God the Father—the one who can do anything he wants, by himself and without any assistance, but who instead determines to do so much of his work through another. (64; italics added) Ware reminds us that the intent is practical (“The lessons here are manifold”): to encourage men in authority to allow others to join them in their tasks. “While those in authority need to

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be more like the Father…those under authority need to be more like the Son” (67; italics added).

But to emphasize (repeatedly) that it is properly the Father’s work and he allows the Son and the Spirit to help him, though he could do it himself, calls into question the essential unity Ware clearly affirms elsewhere.

It is as if the Father says, “Shine the spotlight on my Son, and praise and honor his name.” How many of us in positions of authority have a heart to put the spotlight on our subordinates and say, for example, “Look at the work of our youth minister!”

(65; italics added) But the Father is not merely manifesting his magnanimity, choosing to spotlight his Son. He is calling everyone everywhere to honor the Son just as they honor him because he is equally God. He deserves the same worship as the Father, because he is not a subordinate person of the Godhead.

The subordination extends to the Third Person, according to Ware: “Jesus has authority over the Spirit” (87; italics original). “As a man, Jesus submitted fully to the Spirit, even though in terms of rank, within the Trinity, Jesus has authority over the Spirit” (91; italics original).

Introducing the idea of rank in the Godhead is to move in an Arian or at least ontologicalsubordinationist direction. And it is due in large part to Ware’s collapsing of the immanent Trinity (i.e., eternal processions) into the economic Trinity (historical missions). “By this, the Son is shown to be under the Father but over the Spirit,” he adds, since “the Spirit is the ‘Spirit of Jesus’ (Acts 16:7)” (97). However, orthodox theology has always taught that such identification of the Spirit with the incarnate Son pertains to their work in the economy of grace, not to the eternal processions and status of the persons. It is difficult to reconcile such language as Ware’s with the confession that the persons are of the same essence. Indeed, Ware states that in Christ’s submission to the Spirit, the Spirit “recognizes that, even here, he is third” (129). And yet again, the lesson for

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us is of paramount concern: “Can marriages be like this?” And churches? “What a beautiful case study in humility the Spirit is”—namely, of one who is content “to accept the behind-the scenes place…all for the glory of another” (130).

If one might question the practical application to husbands or pastors, then surely it is a controversial claim to make concerning the persons of the Trinity.

Ware rightly points to the Spirit’s focus on Christ. In my view, however, the way in which he argues this point is by downgrading the Spirit’s significance in the history of revelation.

If the Father is “on the top,” supreme, sovereign, and worthy of ultimate worship, and the Son is eternally inferior in rank or role, then the Spirit occupies “what might be called ‘the background position’ in the Trinity. . . . The Holy Spirit embraces eternally the backstage position in relation to the Father and the Son” (104). “Finally, in the age to come, the Spirit will take the backseat to the Son and the Father” (125). Ware bases this on Revelation 5, where worship is given to the Father and to the Lamb (125–27). “And while the Spirit is represented in this passage [Rev. 5:9] in a veiled and subtle way, it is the Son and the one on the throne, his Father, who receive primacy in worship” (127).

What then does this mean for the confession that the Spirit is also “the Lord” and “with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified”?

Further, the author concludes that “all worship of the Son, in and of itself, is penultimate…. The ultimate object of our honor, glory, praise, and worship is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who himself alone is over all” (154). But if the Son and the Spirit are God in the fullest sense, then there is no rank. They are worshiped and glorified not only with the Father, but with the Father equally.

The Son and the Spirit proceed from the Father. The Father is the “origin” of the persons, orthodox theology teaches. Nevertheless, this has never meant that the Son and the Spirit have less authority—or less of anything else that belongs to the one essence they all share—than the Father. As I mentioned above, “Light from

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“LIGHT FROM LIGHT” MEANS THAT PRECISELY; BECAUSE THE SON AND THE SPIRIT PROCEED FROM THE FATHER, THEY ARE “LIGHT” IN EXACTLY THE SAME SENSE AS THE FATHER. 57

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Light” means that precisely; because the Son and the Spirit proceed from the Father, they are “Light” in exactly the same sense as the Father.

Ware even quotes Augustine on this very point, although it goes against his entire argument:

the Son as only-begotten and the Spirit as proceeding from the Father (and the Son) refer, in my judgment, to the historical realities of the incarnation and Pentecost, respectively. (162n3)

Not because one is greater and the other less, but because one is the Father and the other the Son; one is the begetter, the other begotten…. For he was not sent in virtue of some disparity of power or substance or anything in him that was not equal to the Father, but in virtue of the Son being from the Father, not the Father being from the Son. (80; italics original)

This notion of “incarnational sonship” assumes that “Son of God” is a title that accrues to the Second Person at his incarnation. While the three persons existed eternally, according to this view, the Father became “father” and the Son a “son” with Jesus’ conception. I do not use the term lightly: this is a heretical concept. It was held by J. Oliver Buswell, Walter Martin, and others, while John MacArthur recanted this position in 2000. The assimilation of the immanent Trinity to the economy here reaches its apex. Yet the orthodox formulations of taxis presuppose these eternal processions; there is no taxis apart from them.

While Ware in the recent debate has rejected claims that he and others are developing a Trinitarian model to undergird a complementarian perspective, his repeated applications suggest otherwise. He is eager to draw specific applications from his model, such as that a woman “should not teach a mixed male-female adult Sunday school class” (149). At the same time, he states that “men must realize that their position as heads of homes in no way indicates their supposed superiority over their wives, in particular, or over women, in general” (143). But is not this superiority of the Father over the Son and of the Son over the Spirit precisely what he has been defending?

It is striking that Ware italicizes the very phrases I would appeal to against his conclusion at this point. Has he not argued repeatedly that the Father is greater in some sense, solely deserving of ultimate worship and glory? Has he not asserted that the Son was in fact “sent in virtue of some disparity of power” or something “in him that was not equal to the Father”?

He might put this “something” down to different roles rather than ontological inferiority, but the predicates to which he refers belong to the essence. This seems to me to be the key point of confusion in Ware’s argument.

“For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself,” Jesus says in John 5:26. To read this in an Arian way is to conclude that the Father is properly “God” because he possesses life intrinsically, essentially, eternally, and necessarily, and then he freely decides to grant this to the Son as a creature. To read it in an orthodox way is to conclude that the Son is as properly “God” as the Father because he receives from the Father eternally all of the attributes of the Father himself, including aseity.

There is, however, a more fundamental problem. In a footnote Ware writes, The conceptions of both the “eternal begetting of the Son” and “eternal procession of the Spirit” seem to me highly speculative and not grounded in biblical teaching. Both

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SCRIPTURA MEUM VERSUS SOLA SCRIPTURA epeatedly, I have said that I do not regard the authors I have cited as Arians. Rather, I humbly suggest that they are confused. That is entirely understandable—we are dealing here with the greatest of all divine mysteries, and we must have more reflection at our disposal

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than our own. This is the danger of “biblicism”— that is, marginalizing the history of doctrine in favor of explicit biblical statements, when at least among orthodox Christians the history of doctrine is the history of biblical exegesis. There is no Bible verse for the distinction between processions and missions, for example, and yet it is an essential biblical truth.

Church historian Robert Godfrey often says, “We always want to reinvent the wheel…and it’s never round.” Biblicism keeps us from taking seriously the objections and the solutions that remain relatively unchanged since the fourth century. We can even return to the creeds with a “biblicistic” method, quoting a line here or there to justify our orthodoxy. But confession is not only of the letter but of the spirit—that is, the intention of the creed, which can be understood properly only by knowing something about the context and the process leading up to it. In addition to Ayres’s work, the following are superb places to start for this background: Arius: Heresy and Tradition by Rowan Williams, Retrieving Nicaea by Khaled Anatolios, The Trinity by Gilles Emery, and the recently released The Triune God

by Fred Sanders.

We must always return to Scripture, the only judge in doctrinal controversies. Nothing may be added or subtracted from this canon as the magisterial authority for faith and practice. But biblicism isn’t biblical.

First, at the end of the day, biblicism merely substitutes my reading of the Bible for our reading of the Bible. In other words, in the name of basing everything on Scripture rather than on merely human wisdom, biblicism imagines that one may take a shortcut, circumventing centuries of complicated debates, and arrive at the immediately obvious meaning of Scripture.

Second, biblicism reduces the scope of biblical teaching to what is said explicitly in so many words. The Westminster Confession expresses well the classic rule: The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and

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necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture. (1.6) Notice the high bar for such deductions: They must be not only good but necessary consequences of scriptural teaching. All parties in the current controversy can agree that Scripture teaches the doctrine of the Trinity at least in its basic rule: “One in essence, three in person.”

Despite the fact that the word Trinity cannot be found in any concordance, Scripture clearly and explicitly teaches that God is one and that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. The dogma of the Trinity is a good and necessary inference from a host of biblical passages. But this was not realized by each theologian or believer anew who came to the biblical text. Serious objections from teachers and pastors who were just as concerned with scriptural fidelity forced the church to wrestle with what it means when it baptizes people in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

FROM PRAISE TO PRACTICE he fourth-century church father Basil of Caesarea wrote that none of the persons executes any work apart from the others, “but every operation which extends from God to the Creation… has its origin from the Father, and proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy 6 Spirit.” The Genevan Reformer John Calvin frequently repeats these Cappadocian formulas, as when he expresses it in his own words:

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To the Father is attributed the beginning of action, the fountain and source of all things; to the Son, wisdom, counsel, and arrangement in action, while the energy and 7 efficacy of action is assigned to the Spirit.

This has no small impact on his entire theology.

These are great and important rules for us to bear in mind. But it is in the pulpit, at the font, and in the pew where the rubber meets the road.

We do not formulate our doctrine of the Trinity

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on the basis of what we think about ideal or even biblical patterns of human life. But our doctrine of the Trinity will inform and shape our worship, lives, and witness.

Luke reminds us that the early Christians “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). Anyone reared in the synagogue would have known what “the prayers” meant. Like a trellis, the formal prayers (said and sung) were a way of not only directing public worship but of also shaping informal worship in the family and alone. Basil of Caesarea, who revised the liturgy to more intentionally inculcate a full Trinitarianism, called pastors “to keep the Spirit undivided from the Father and the Son, preserving, both in confession of faith and in the doxology, the doctrine taught them at their 8 baptism” (italics added). The Holy Spirit works through his word, and insofar as our liturgies convey that word, they convey nothing less than Christ with all of his benefits. Learning not only from our forebears’ successes but also from their failures helps us today to direct our hearts—and those of our fellow believers—to sing, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

Amen, amen.

MICHAEL S. HORTON is the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

1 Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1.

2 Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 257.

3 Bruce Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Crossway, 2005), 147 (hereafter cited in text with page number only).

4 Gregory of Nyssa, “On ‘Not Three Gods’: An Answer to Ablabius” (NPNF2 5:334).

5 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Lewis Ford Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 1960), 1.13.18.

6 Basil, On the Holy Spirit 10.26 (NPNF2 8:17).

7 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Lewis Ford Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 1960), 1.13.18.

8 Basil, On the Holy Spirit 10.26 (NPNF2 8:17).

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HERE’S TO 25 MORE YEARS Get your copy of The Reformation Then and Now as a thank you for your gift of $50 dollars or more!

As a part of our 25th anniversary celebration, we partnered with Hendrickson Publishers to release a new book filled with Modern Reformation articles celebrating 500 years of the Reformation.

White Horse Inn and Modern Reformation are possible because of your support. So, thank you!

We’re looking forward to many years to come.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviews 64

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Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical

Confessions of Sin and Assurances of Pardon: A Pocket Resource

Augustine: Conversions to Confessions

Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

by Timothy Keller

by Robin Lane Fox

by Bobby G. Griffith Jr.

by Tish Harrison Warren

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

Andy Smith

Eric Landry

J. G. Amato

Nicholas Davis

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Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical

by Timothy Keller Viking, 2016 336 pages (hardcover), $27.00 ne of the hardest parts of apologetics is speaking in such a way that people who disagree with you want to interact with you. Far too often, apologists find themselves reaching those already in the choir. The choir gets excited, but few new members join. The result is an echo chamber full of very convinced people who cannot get their message out. Tim Keller is an apologist who skillfully exited the echo chamber in his 2008 book The Reason for God, and who ably repeats the feat in his new offering, Making Sense of God. While Reason dealt with traditional doubts concerning the teachings of Christianity (existence of God, hell, and so on), Making Sense attempts to convince skeptics that they should want to believe Christianity. Keller argues that Christianity is not only true (as in Reason), but that it is the best belief system for a life and community of meaning, hope, satisfaction, morality, and human rights.

The book is divided into three sections. Part 1 combats the widely held Western belief that secularism has defeated religion. Keller points out that these Western assumptions are just that: Western. Appealing to the postmodern virtue of globalization, Keller shows that the “death of religion” idea fails to account for Christianity’s explosive growth in Asia, Africa, and South America.

This argumentation illustrates Keller’s acuity

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in using our culture’s own values to point to Christ and his gospel without succumbing to it entirely. The foundation of his thought is always scriptural; but rather than lobbing logic bombs from an ivory tower, Keller allows this biblical foundation to anchor him as he confidently wades in the stream of postmodern culture and thought. This is certainly one of the reasons Keller is so fruitful to read for both Christians and non-Christians. It is also the reason that the conclusion of part 1 lands its blow so successfully: modern secularism is just as faith-based as religion.

Part 2 follows this conclusion by outlining why faith in Christianity is desirable and necessary. Keller again shows cultural wisdom in the aspects of Christianity he chooses to discuss, such as meaning, the self, personal freedom, and justice. I say “wise” rather than “shrewd,” because Keller’s choices reflect a desire to reach out to those steeped in secularism, instead of resting contentedly in well-trodden theistic argumentation. For example, Keller’s chapter on hope is not a puff piece on escapism and how much better the new heavens and new earth will be from our current experience. Rather, Keller pauses to consider the terrifying existential reality of death—not to scare the reader to Christ, but to show the personal love of the Savior. This Savior took upon himself that terrifying existential reality so that our experience wouldn’t have to be so terrifying. Keller is thus able to present the gospel not as the horror story it sometimes is made to be, but the love story it truly is.

Another example of Keller’s cultural aptitude is his refreshing perspective on postmodernism. In his chapter on the self, Keller outlines the “ancient” and “modern” views of the

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“Keller recognizes that postmodernity has done much to overthrow ‘extremely hierarchical societies’ and ‘rigid, exploitative social stratification,’ which have victimized oppressed groups, such as the poor and racially oppressed.”

self—the former being grounded in tribal identity while the latter is rooted in the individual. As a Millennial, I braced myself for a diatribe against my generation’s proverbial dropping of the torch, a critique I’d heard from many a pulpit. But the diatribe never came. In fact, Keller recognizes that postmodernity has done much to overthrow “extremely hierarchical societies” and “rigid, exploitative social stratification,” which have victimized oppressed groups, such as the poor and racially oppressed (123–24). Of course, Keller still discusses the dangers of such individualism, but it is a welcome surprise to see the positive results of postmodernism acknowledged in a work of apologetics. Keller’s answer to postmodernity is not to return to modernism but to recognize Christianity as the “‘nontotalizing metanarrative,’ a nonoppressive absolute” (205).

In the third and final part of the book, Keller offers the skeptic a case for Christian faith, utilizing the foundational arguments he presented in parts 1 and 2. As I said earlier, Keller’s goal here is not necessarily conversion, but to invite the skeptic to consider the value and coherence of Christianity. Some may see this limited goal as a weakness, and I assume that most critiques

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of the book will focus on the third part. However, Keller’s aim is to engage the secular mind-set that is ubiquitous in his context of Manhattan and that is more present in the church than most leaders realize. Doubts and questions are viewed by Keller as objects for engagement and discussion rather than as enemies to be destroyed. Some may call this a weakness, but I think it is a strength.

I highly recommend Keller’s newest book.

The breadth of research (read the endnotes) will leave readers with a longer list of books and articles on their reading list than when they first began. The tone is welcoming and intellectual in the best sense of both words. The thoughtfulness of the argument will bear fruit for all who read it—whether evangelistic, homiletical, personal, devotional, or pastoral. I can perhaps give no greater recommendation for a work whose subtitle is An Invitation to the Skeptical than to say that I plan on buying many more copies to give to those questioning, doubting, and skeptical.

ANDY SMITH is a licentiate in the Orthodox Presbyterian

Church and graduate of Westminster Seminary California.

He lives in Chicago, where he participates in the OPC’s church planting efforts.

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“New resources must take the place of contemporary worship helps for pastors and worship leaders who are trying to incorporate historic liturgical practices back into their services.”

Confessions of Sin and Assurances of Pardon: A Pocket Resource

by Bobby G. Griffith Jr. Christian Focus, 2016 112 pages (hardcover), $14.99 astor Bobby Griffith helped found and now pastors an urban Presbyterian church in the Midwest that embraced liturgy from its very beginning. He is part of a growing number of ministers and laypeople who are returning to historic forms of worship, as evangelicalism stumbles under the weight of what one author calls “entertainment worship” and a “performance mind-set.” This growing trend is gaining traction and being noticed by mainstream news outlets and evangelical magazines such as Christianity Today. In order for it to continue, new resources must take the place of contemporary worship helps for pastors and worship leaders who are trying to incorporate historic liturgical practices back into their services. Pastor Griffith’s new book, Confessions of Sin and Assurances of Pardon: A Pocket Resource, is a muchne e de d and wonder f ully designed answer to that need.

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This book contains the text of seventy-eight confessions of sin and twenty-one assurances of pardon, drawn from a broad range of Christian sources. They are intended to be used in a worship service for public confession of sin and a minister’s assurance of pardon. They are appropriate for all seasons of a church’s life and can be easily repeated or spoken in unison.

One hopes that this small book will be followed by other liturgical helps. Some churches are fortunate to have a strong history of historic Christian worship and know where to find otherwise forgotten resources for service planning. Other churches, especially in nondenominational settings, will turn to suspect sources and could ruin the experiment that would have returned them to historic Christian practices. New books that focus on the Call to Worship, public prayer, the Benediction, and even the use of a lectionary would be beneficial for all.

I commend Pastor Griffith for his work and encourage others to purchase and use his helpful book as they plan worship services that bring us closer to our historic and biblical roots.

ERIC LANDRY is executive editor of Modern Reformation and pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.

VOL.26 NO.3 MAY/JUN 2017

Augustine: Conversions to Confessions

by Robin Lane Fox Basic Books, 2015 688 pages (hardcover), $35.00 e will never finish with his confessions because they will not finish with us” (12), Robin Lane Fox writes in his new five-hundr e d-p a ge bio gr aphy o f St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. Lane Fox, a historian of the ancient world, endeavors to tell the story of Augustine’s life from his birth in Thagaste in 354 to the completion of his Confessions in 397, using Confessions as a key to understanding his intellectual and spiritual development. Indeed, Confessions becomes as much a lead protagonist as Augustine. Lane Fox states that his goal is to “place Augustine, with the Confessions in hand, as the central panel of a triple set of sketches, like a triptych on a medieval Christian altar” (8).

The side panels of the triptych are peopled by Libanius (d. 394), a pagan rhetorician of Antioch, and Synesius of Cyrene (b. 373), bishop of Ptolemais in Libya. In almost all for ty-t hr e e chapt ers, Augustine is compared and contrasted with his imagined Eastern interlocutors, Libanius and Synesius. At its best, the triptych concept gives occasion for insightful comparisons among the three men, but it can also prove frustrating to leaf through pages of Libanius or Synesius to get to Augustine.

As the subtitle indicates, Augustine is about conversions and confessions, and Lane Fox dedicates roughly half of the book to each theme. The first three parts (chapters 1–20) treat Augustine’s conversions from birth to

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ca. 386, the year of his conversion in a Milan garden. Lane Fox explains what conversion meant to ancient thinkers, before taking the reader through Augustine’s three conversions: (1) from rhetoric to philosophy, (2) from worldly ambition, and (3) renunciation of sex. The next three parts (chapters 21–42) take up the theme of confessions, seeing Augustine from his postconversion retreat through his baptism, the death of Monica, his return to Africa, his ordination first to the priesthood and then as bishop, and finally the composition of Confessions.

In winter and spring 397, Lane Fox argues, Augustine dictated Confessions in three to six weeks during a protracted illness (532ff.). This is a minority view, but one worth considering, based on Lane Fox’s evidence and careful reading.

Augustine is not the biography its title suggests it to be, but rather a biography of Augustine’s Confessions and its author. Strengths include the attention given to Neoplatonism, Plotinus, and Porphyry, as well as two chapters on Manichaeism (chapters 9–10). Lane Fox acknowledges that Peter Brown’s is still the classic biography in English (573), and I think that remains the place for new disciples of Augustine to start reading. I found part 6 (chapters 35–42) to be the most compelling and worth reading on its own, as it synthesizes much of the previous chapters’ insights, culminating in Lane Fox’s persuasive redating of Confessions and clear and concise exposition of the text. Readers interested to learn more about Augustine will likely find the sections on the other panels of the triptych—Libanius and Synesius—either fascinating or tiresome, or, as this reader did, both. Modern Reformation readers will like to know that Augustine does not display great theological nuance. Lane Fox

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readily assumes his readers to be enlightened modern people, offended by Augustine’s doctrines of original sin and predestination.

Overall, this is a rather long book that is somewhat confused about its own identity.

Augustine has three protagonists and is not a complete biography: after 397, the book’s namesake lived another thirty-three years. Moreover, it treats Confessions as Augustine’s literary zenith up to the year 397; but as Lane Fox notes, it was not until one year before his death that we have any evidence that anyone requested a copy of the text (561–62). Augustine was not a onebook man, or a one-book-among-others man, and it seems either hermeneutically dubious or futile to read his previous works as coalescing in Confessions and subsequent works as echoing them. This said, Lane Fox helps readers encounter an Augustine developing intellectually and spiritually from his licentious youth to his sobering career as bishop, an Augustine less like the timeless evangelical Christian or the idealized saint-to-sinner convert.

Although Fox leaves off in 397—before the Pelagian controversy, the sack of Rome, and City

of God—his book consolidates the most recent Augustine scholarship and makes it available to readers outside the guild of professional historians. Bibliographical summaries at the head of each chapter’s endnotes serve as succinct and helpful introductions to secondary literature.

There is minimal recapitulation from chapter to chapter, and I noticed very few typographical errors. Christians always do well to read about and reason with Augustine who lived at the end of the Roman Empire, an age perhaps even more transitional than our own. Lane Fox’s biography provides another occasion to consider a theologian foundational to the history of Christianity and our Reformed heritage.

J. G. AMATO is a member of the United Reformed Churches

in North America and a graduate student of history at Stanford University.

Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

by Tish Harrison Warren IVP, 2016 184 pages (paperback), $16.00 ome people like to say that there is no such thing as an ordinary day, but surely that’s a mistake.

There is such a thing as an ordinary day, and Tish Harrison Warren knows how to appreciate the everyday— every single day. In her book Liturgy of the Ordinary, she shows the intersection of our mundane daily experience with liturgical aspects of historic, Christian worship. Each chapter embraces the ordinariness of both life and worship, of peanut butter and jelly and bread and wine—of the secular and the sacred—and recognizes how God uses our daily rituals to form and shape us into who God wants us to be. (For example, chapter 1 is titled “Waking: Baptism and Learning to Be Beloved,” and chapter 2 is titled

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“There is such a thing as an ordinary day, and Tish Harrison Warren knows how to appreciate the everyday—every single day.”

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“It’s in that most ordinary and familiar of places that God works on us in extraordinarily deep and unique ways through his specially chosen (but outwardly rather ordinary) means.”

“Making the Bed: Liturgy, Ritual, and What Forms a Life.”)

It’s a simple but enjoyable book that savors the doctrine of vocation with every bite.

Whether you’re a mother or father changing diapers in the home, a career-driven office worker, a truck driver, or a minister of the word, doing for-profit or nonprofit work, suburban or urban ministry— each of these unique callings is of equal importance in the sight of God and in service to our neighbors.

Many aspects of the liturgy that organize God’s chosen means of grace in church every Sunday are also just as ordinary as brushing our teeth or washing our faces. We show up to the same place each week, our prayers sound similar (sometimes they are the same, if your congregation recites the Lord’s Prayer), we sing the same songs, we confess and ask for forgiveness for many of the same sins, we hear a similar sounding monologue (the sermon) for about the same length of time, we speak in a particular

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language, we eat crackers, bread, or wafers and we drink wine (or grape juice), and life goes on as it did the last week. We’re sent back out into the same work or household or school routine we experienced the week before. But it’s in that most ordinary and familiar of places that God works on us in extraordinarily deep and unique ways through his specially chosen (but outwardly rather ordinary) means, such as preaching, bread, wine, and prayer.

Outside of our worship of God, Warren teaches us that we should also expect God to work our sanctification through the minutia of our daily grind. It doesn’t mean that all of life is a sacrament (although this is the view that Warren seems to hold), or that making the bed in the morning is a means of grace. But each chapter encourages us to think about how we can enjoy God, the giver of life, throughout each day of our lives.

NICHOLAS DAVIS is associate producer for White Horse Inn.

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A Timeline of Creeds and Confessions

by MR Editors

AD 100

AD 200

The Apostles’ Creed (circa AD 200) was not written by the apostles, but was gradually formed by common consent out of the confessions adopted by particular churches and used in the reception of its members. It reached its present form, and universal use among all the churches, about the close of the second century.

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AD 300

The Nicene Creed (AD 325) was formed on the basis of the Apostles’ Creed. The clauses relating to the consubstantial divinity of Christ were contributed by the great council held in Nicaea in Bithynia in 325; those relating to the divinity and personality of the Holy Ghost were added by the Second Ecumenical Council, held at Constantinople in 381; and the filioque clause was added by the Council of the Western Church, held in Toledo, Spain, in 569. In its present form, it is the creed of the whole Christian church; the Greek Church rejects only the last added clause.

AD 400

AD 500

The Athanasian Creed (AD 500) was evidently composed long after the death of the great theologian whose name it bears, and after the controversies closed and the definitions were established by the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. It is a grand and unique monument of the unchangeable faith of the whole church as to the great mysteries of godliness, the Trinity of persons in the one God, and the duality of natures in the one Christ.

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The Augsburg Confession, the oldest Protestant confession, was written by Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon.

After the Protestant princes and leaders signed it, it was presented to the emperor and imperial diet in Augsburg in 1530.

AD 1500

The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, originally drawn up by Thomas Cranmer and Nicholas Ridley in 1551, were revised and reduced to the present number by the bishops at the order of Queen Elizabeth in 1562.

AD 1600

The Heidelberg Catechism was prepared by Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus in 1562. It was established by civil authority as the doctrinal standard and instrument of religious instruction for the churches of the Palatinate and endorsed by the Synod of Dort.

lthough synods and councils met during the Middle Ages, no great creeds or confessions were adopted that had lasting significance or ecumenical weight. The next wave of creeds, confessions, and catechisms were provoked by the Protestant Reformation. As Protestantism

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The Canons of the Synod of Dort were written after the famous synod in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, which was convened by the authority of the States General for the purpose of settling the questions brought into controversy by the disciples of Arminius. Sessions began on November 13, 1618, and ended on May 9, 1619. It consisted of pastors, elders, and theological professors from the churches of the Netherlands, and deputies from the churches of England, Scotland, Hesse, Bremen, the Palatinate, and Switzerland. The French delegates were prevented from being present by order of their king.

In order to oppose the progress of the Reformation, Pope Paul III called the last great ecumenical council at Trent in northern Italy (1545–1563), resulting in the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent: the decrees contain the positive statements of doctrine; the canons explain the decrees, distribute the matter under brief heads, and condemn the opposing Protestant doctrine on each point.

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The Westminster Standards were produced by the assembly convened by the English Parliament at Westminster Abbey to provide further reforms to the Church of England. Meeting between 1643 and 1649, the Westminster “divines” (who were drawn from Anglican, Presbyterian, and Independent churches around Great Britain), produced a Confession, a Larger Catechism, a Shorter Catechism, a Directory of Public Worship, and a Form of Church Government.

divided, new churches developed their own doctrinal standards—often borrowing heavily from already established creeds and confessions. No work, however, has had as much universal influence as those standards listed here.

Adapted from The Confession of Faith by A. A. Hodge (1869).

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B AC K PAG E

A Cross-Cultural Community

by Michael S. Horton

ost of us who have enjoyed Bible studies know the richness of digging into the Scriptures directly with each other. But we rarely do it together. Do we believe that the gospel really has the power to create not only saved individuals but also a saved culture? I don’t mean a new neighborhood or nation; I mean a new humanity “from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation” as redeemed saints. Before we answer, we need to realize that it’s going to cost all of us something, even things we value highly. It will involve difficult questions that may never receive adequate theoretical answers, requiring more explicit practice, such as: to what extent does our catholicity—that is, our location “in Christ” together—eliminate and to what extent does it incorporate the specific characteristics of our diverse cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic, and generational mix?

We can find resources for our religious therapy online, but we cannot become part of the communion of saints apart from God’s sovereign act of gathering us together with his flock as recipients of grace. There is a circulation of gifts set in motion by God’s grace through preaching and sacrament; and as we receive God’s gifts from the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit, we become part of the exchange of gifts in the communion of saints—people I never would have chosen for my own family, but whom God chose for me. As gifts came down from God, a new order was established, and the result was an energetic diaconal ministry, as well as the ordinary vocations of

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individual believers in their secular callings as parents, coworkers, and neighbors.

My colleague Rod Rosenbladt served as a pastor during the Vietnam War, when believers held various positions on this conflict.

In the parking lot one day, he noticed two parishioners—a veteran and an antiwar protester—arguing to the point of fisticuffs. He called them into the church service. Sitting on opposite sides of the sanctuary, they heard the pastor greet them in Christ’s name. As they heard the law, they were visibly moved—even more so, as they participated in the corporate confession of sin and heard Christ’s absolution through the lips of the minister. After the sermon, they not only came to the rail for Communion, but they knelt there together with their arms around each other, sobbing, as they held out their empty hands for the bread.

There is an important place for the world’s politics. The issues are not unimportant: health care, education, military action, foreign policy, and the economy. God calls us to love and serve our neighbors by caring for the common good in our secular callings, and politics is a part of that. Nevertheless, on the Lord’s Day we are made citizens of another kingdom. There are no flags marking national boundaries, no banners signaling a particular ethnic, socioeconomic, generational, or gender identity. There is only a cross with a pulpit, table, and font, where we gather as one people, “called out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

MICHAEL S. HORTON is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation.

VOL.26 NO.3 MAY/JUN 2017

KNOW WHAT YOU BELIEVE With over 25 years of radio broadcasting and magazine publishing, and our new online Bible studies, our mission is to help Christians “know what they believe and why they believe it.”

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