“Confessions ought not be written unless there
are bullets flying overhead.”
That is the sentiment of a friend of mine, a Presbyterian
elder who knows just how important it is that Christians know
what they believe.
In an increasingly secular world, Christians must be able to
articulate “the faith once delivered to the saints”
(Jude 3), both for their own edification and to be able to
fulfill the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19).
And in the course of Christian living, few tools are more
helpful than the historic creeds and confessions of our
Christian faith.
Who is God?
Part I of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA)
is the
Book of Confessions, a collection of 10
confessional documents that span most of church history.
The Nicene Creed is the first entry. Composed in the fourth
century, well before the invention of bullets, it nonetheless
emerged from a crucible of controversy. At stake was nothing
less than the answer to the question “Who is God?”
The flashpoint of this debate was Jesus’ nature: Was he
both fully human and fully divine? The answer, worked out by a
convocation of pastor-scholars in Nicea, was the use of a word
not found in Scripture –
homoousia, meaning “of
the same substance, or essence” – to articulate the
clear and consistent teaching of Scripture that the fully
human Jesus eternally was, now is and forever will be fully
God.
St. Anthanasius played a major role in Nicene Creed.
Photo courtesy of St. Isaac of Syria Skete
The convocation did not settle the controversy.
Athanasius, whose arguments for
homoousia carried the
day, was exiled on five separate occasions for confessing his
faith in this language. But what we now call the Nicene Creed
remains one of the Church’s defining documents. For more
than 16 centuries it has encouraged an unhindered exploration
of the nature and character of God while guarding against
false teachings and ungrounded speculation. It remains one of
the most unifying creeds of Christendom.
Church and state
One has to look back past the two most recent additions to the
Book of Confessions to reach a document written as
bullets were flying, The Theological Declaration of Barmen.
In July 1933, Germany’s new chancellor, Adolph Hitler,
created a national German Protestant Church. In Edward Dowey’s
words, this institution effectively harmonized “throne
and altar, fatherland and church, gospel and patriotism,
Christian hope and national destiny.” As a result, and in
spite of its rich confessional heritage, the church in Germany
largely lost its “critical perspective and prophetic
power. The gospel was absorbed in the culture. The salt lost
its savor, and the leaven its power to change the lump. The
distortion of cross into swastika, which seemed obvious to
wise men from afar, was clear in Germany to relatively few.”
Some who did sense this diabolical transformation gathered in
the Barmen section of the city of Wuppertal in May 1934. In a
document unanimously approved, 133 ministers and church
members (along with six professors) cited “errors of the ‘German
Christians’ … which are devastating the Church.”
In response, they confessed six “evangelical truths.”
Each confession was followed by the articulation and rejection
of a “false doctrine” being promoted by the
politicized leadership of the German Protestant Church.
Saying the same word
Such confessions of faith are thoroughly Biblical. Paul taught
that “if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is
Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from
the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). His teaching
echoes Jesus’ words to his disciples, “Whoever
acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before
my Father in heaven” (Matt. 10:32).
The Greek word translated “confess” and “acknowledge”
is
homologeo. Literally “to say the same thing,”
in secular Greek it was used in the sense of “to agree to
the statement, to accept the affirmation.” In Scripture,
the term took on a technical, theological meaning, and was
used both in reference to confessing sins to God and
confessing faith in God.
All who are in relationship with God share the joy and
responsibility of publicly acknowledging that fellowship, and
the beliefs that are a necessary part of that ongoing
communion. As Thomas Gillespie notes, “Jesus is Lord”
is equally “a confession of loyalty to the Lord Jesus
[and] a confession of faith in the one who is Lord precisely
because he is the crucified and exalted Jesus.”
Of course, we are able to confess our faith in God only
because God has first revealed himself to us; through his acts
in history, his words in Holy Scripture and, supremely, in
Jesus Christ. The priority of God’s self-revelation means
that our confessions are a response to God’s gracious
gift of saving faith. It also means that while our confessions
may be intensely personal, they are never purely private.
Rather, they express in our own words what God has revealed in
his Word.
'The arrogance of the modern'
In turn, the confessing Church is characterized by saying the
same words about Jesus that Jesus said about himself in
Scripture, the same words that have been said about Jesus by
the Church in its creeds and confessions.
As Karl Barth, who significantly influenced the Barmen
Declaration, observed, “a real confession … will
have the power to continue speaking even at a great distance
from its own geographical and temporal and historical place in
the church, to make itself directly intelligible and
instructive in its application to the faith of a church in
some quite different place, in spite of and even in the
particularity of its theses and positions and negations.”
That explains why the Nicene Creed and Barmen Declaration,
firmly rooted as they are in their own historical situations,
are so useful to the contemporary church. Questions about
Jesus’ person and work, and concerns about the influence
of the state on the church, are as pressing now as they were
in the 1930s and the fourth century. And the answers offered
by our theological ancestors are as faithful and true now as
they were when they were written.
Unfortunately, as David Hall notes, “Many Christians
treat the past like a dead, and therefore irrelevant,
ancestor. As a result, memory has little place in an age that
has little vision. … That is the arrogance of the modern.”
The confessing church
The confessing church has no room for modern arrogance.
Instead, it is characterized by a humility that allows it to
recognize its place in God’s plan. The confessing church
may, but need not, have a
Book of Confessions. But it
cannot do without the ability to convincingly articulate “the
faith once delivered to the saints” in the language of
its day.
With the church throughout the ages, the confessing church
today must be able to say, without hesitation or
qualification, “Jesus is Lord.”