Locating the doctrine of Scripture

A lot of evangelical and Reformed confessions of faith place the article on the doctrine of Scripture near the start of their documents.  For example, the doctrinal basis of the FIEC puts it second, after the doctrine of God; the Westminster Confession puts it first.  Presumably the idea here is to be up front about your authority for what is going to follow (although if that is the case, the Westminster arrangement is more logical), and perhaps there is an implicit recognition that the confession can be revised in the light of Scripture - something which is made explicit in, for example, the Scots Confession of 1560 when the authors ask "that if any man will note in this our Confession any article or sentence repugning to God’s holy word, that it would please him of his gentleness, and for Christian charity’s sake, to admonish us of the same in writ; and We of our honour and fidelity do promise unto him satisfaction from the mouth of God (that is, from his holy Scriptures), or else reformation of that which he shall prove to be amiss."  (But note where the full article on Holy Scripture is placed in this confession: right down at 19, after the doctrine of the church!)

A couple of conversations recently have got me thinking again about what difference this makes, and where it would be best to place the article on Scripture.

I do think that the place this article holds in your confession is likely to both reflect and shape your doctrine more generally.  Clearly this could be the case if the article were relegated to an unimportant position; that may well mean that the recognition of the authority of Holy Scripture within the church is on the wane.  But I think putting it first (or worse, second) also has effects.

If you put the doctrine of Scripture first, I think there is a danger of an almost Quran-like doctrine: this book was revealed from heaven, and in it we see a timeless revelation of God.  This tends to be wedded, in contemporary evangelicalism, with the desire to answer one of the big questions of modern thought: where can we find a foundation for thought?  Scripture here is asserted as the foundation, behind which nothing can be found.  I worry about this on two counts.  Firstly, I don't think it does justice to what Scripture says about itself, or its function as a witness to Christ and not merely a compendium of true facts about God and the world.  Second, I think marrying your doctrine of Scripture to this sort of modernist foundationalism produces a brittle faith, which doesn't stand up well to questioning.  And third, I think it risks leaving us philosophically adrift, expressing our doctrine in a philosophical mode which has been largely left behind by the world at large (and not without reason).

If you put the doctrine of Scripture second, after the doctrine of God, I think the big danger is that Scripture becomes the functional mediator between God and man - something which Scripture itself does not claim to be.  The effect is to minimise the ongoing work of Christ and the Spirit.

I think you need to put the doctrine of Scripture after the article on the incarnation: to make clear that in fact the reason we believe in the authority of Scripture is not primarily because it is a book from heaven but because the living Word of God has stepped down into our history in the person of Jesus Christ.  Scripture derives its authority from the historicity of the gospel, and not vice versa.  This is true even though, from our perspective, we may only come to know the historicity of the gospel from Holy Scripture.  We believe that God speaks to us because he has spoken to us in his Son.  It is Jesus, not Scripture, which is the fundamental communication of God to man.

Then again, it's probably best to delay further, and place the doctrine of Scripture after the article on the Holy Spirit.  That way we make it clear that the Scriptural witness to Christ is itself breathed out by God, that its authority is his authority.  A strong filioque (that is to say, an understanding of the relationship between Word and Spirit which binds them closely together) will underline the fact that through Scripture God speaks by his Spirit, and the word he speaks is the Word he spoke, namely Christ Jesus.

Anyway, just a thought for anyone writing future confessions of faith.  If only there were such people out there.

The church's greatest need

I stumbled across a website the other day which proclaimed that the greatest need of the church today is a recovery of the historic creeds and confessions - I imagine meaning here primarily the Westminster Confession (it being a Presbyterian source).

Can I just go on record as saying that this is incorrect?

I am a great fan of creeds and confessions.  I have pushed to see the catholic creeds especially reintroduced into church life.  I think that there is much that the present day church can learn from the sixteenth and seventeenth century confessions of faith.  I am excited by a growing emphasis in certain streams at least of evangelicalism on historical theology.  So this is not the cry of a 'no-creed-but-the-bible' sort of person.

But really, greatest need?

The greatest need of the church today, just like the greatest need of the church yesterday, is to hear the living voice of God.  That is to say, what the church really needs is for Christ to be preached from the Scriptures in the power of the Spirit, such that in God's grace the church finds herself addressed, unmistakably, in the here and now, by the eternal God.  The greatest need of the church is to hear the voice of her Lord.

When we read creeds and confessions, we are encountering the church's record of what she thinks she has heard God saying to her.  That is valuable.  It is valuable because the church is made up of sinners, and one thing that sinners consistently do is exalt other voices - and not least the voice of their own hearts! - into the place of God's voice.  Listening carefully to the report of yesterday's church about she heard from God can help today's church to be discerning about whether the voice she is hearing today is really that of the Lord.  It is valuable also because every age tends to absolutise the questions and the concepts and the forms of thinking of that age - and it is a good reminder that God is beyond these things, for has he not spoken to the church of yesterday, with other questions and concepts and forms?

But listening to the report of yesterday's church is not listening to the living voice of God.  And in fact, where it is substituted for that - where study of the Confession takes the place of study of the Scriptures - there we are in danger of elevating the voice of the church to the place of the divine voice.

What the eternal God says is always the same, because his Word is Christ Jesus.  The creeds and confessions help us to evaluate whether we are truly hearing that same Word.  But they can't take the place of that Word.  Because what the eternal God says is also always absolutely new, the Word we can never take for granted, or imagine we have heard sufficiently, or be content to hear second-hand  We need Christ, Christ preached and Christ present.

That is the greatest need of the church.

Prolegomena to any future statements

It may have escaped your attention that a group of evangelical Christians has published a statement on the subject of sexual ethics.  Now, a number of the signatories are people I deeply respect, and the actual ethical positions taken are ones with which I am in broad (but not total) agreement.  So I'm not knocking the statement, per se.  But here's how I wish it had started, and how I wish any future statements on ethical issues from evangelical Christians might begin.  And if it sounds a bit antiquated, a bit theological, not directly relevant to the ethical questions asked: well, so much the better.  I've just written the intro and the first article.

Preamble

That the Church in the West is faced with a particular crisis today is undeniable.  The outer nature of this crisis is the unique result of the Church's ongoing encounter with post-Christian society, with the inevitable shattering of the consensus worldview and ethics of Christendom.  It is essential that the Church pay attention to the unique features of this situation, for she is called to speak a word in season, to address men and women as they are and where they are.  The Church can hardly take too seriously the unique situation in which she finds herself.

However, the inner nature of the crisis is the one pressing question which is put to the Church in every age, not by the surrounding world, but by the Church's Lord.  This is the question of whether she will hear, believe, and obey the Word of God.  That there are particular pressures today inclining her to be deaf to this Word; that there are unique circumstances today making it difficult for her to seriously believe what she hears; that the path of obedience is today strewn with obstacles which she has not previously faced - all these things are undeniably true, but must not be allowed to conceal the most important question.  Will the Church today hear, believe, and obey the Word of God?

Article 1

We believe that the Church of Jesus Christ lives by faith in the Word of God, which Word is Jesus Christ himself as he is held out to us in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

a.  We believe that the Word of God in Holy Scripture calls us to confident faith in the accomplished work of God in Jesus Christ.  We tremble before the revelation of God's holy love at the cross of Christ, love which embraces all of sinful humanity and yet purges from sin.  We rejoice in the promise of eternal life given to us in the empty tomb of Jesus Christ, receiving this promise by faith as our only hope in life and death.  We gladly receive by faith the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, daring to call on the holy God as our Father because of the completed work of his only-begotten Son.

b.  We believe that the Word of God in Holy Scripture calls us to faithful obedience to the Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ, who rules by his word and Spirit.  We acknowledge that the love of God in Christ does not leave us unchanged, but calls us into the perfect freedom of his service.  We acknowledge Holy Scripture as the sceptre of Christ the King, by which he commands his people and orders his Church.  We prayerfully depend on the presence of the Holy Spirit of Christ in the Church and in the hearts of his people, looking to him to give the will and power to follow where Christ our Lord leads.

c.  We confess with sorrow that we, the Church of Jesus Christ, have not lived by faith in the Word of God, but have sought to establish our own righteousness.  We confess with sorrow that we, the Church of Jesus Christ, have not obeyed the commands of Christ.  We confess with sorrow that we, the Church of Jesus Christ, have failed to present the promise of eternal life to the world.  We confess with sorrow that we, the Church of Jesus Christ, have failed to show the goodness of Christ in his commandments.  For all our wilful failings and accidental sins, we pray: Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.

d.  We deny that the Church of Christ can live otherwise than by the Word of God.  We deny that the Church of Christ must heed other voices than the voice of Christ as it is heard in Holy Scripture.  We deny that the Church of Christ must change its faith or its obedience in response to any other voice, whether from within or without.  We deny that the Church of Christ must recognise changes in wider culture as the voice of her Lord.  We deny that the Church of Christ can separate faith in the promise of the Word from faithful obedience to the command of the Word.  We deny that the lamentable failings of the Church invalidate the message of the Lord,who is merciful beyond our ability to comprehend.

e.  We call all those who put their faith in Christ to join with us in seeking his will, by prayerful attention and holy submission to Holy Scripture.  We ask the watching world to believe that we, the Church of Jesus Christ, must believe and act in obedience to our Lord.  We pledge ourselves to reform our faith, our teaching, our community life, and our actions in conformity with the Word of God as we hear it in Holy Scripture, and we ask anyone who sees error in our life or faith to bring witness against us from Holy Scripture.

Mediaeval and Modern

Barth rounds off his treatment of the Reformed confessions with an account of the Synod of Dort. Whereas the earliest Reformed confessions were primarily directed against Roman Catholicism, and then Lutheranism, Dort deals with a new opponent: Modernism. The Remonstrance, brought by the Arminian party, was based soundly on modern principles, modern views of humanity, modern approaches to the Bible. At Dort, we see the Reformed churches locking horns with what would become modernist, or liberal, Protestantism.

But Barth sees nothing new here. In fact, he sees this modernist Christianity as having just the same foundations as mediaeval Christianity: faith in reason, a high view of the human being, the freedom of the will. In short, both begin with the autonomous human being, and end up with a co-operative view of salvation which can be labelled semi-Pelagian. On both fronts, against mediaevalism and modernism, the Reformed stress the sovereignty and majesty of God, who in Christ is the sole agent in redemption. God, and only God, saves.

In short, Dort was fighting the battle that has always been fought when God's Word comes up against intelligent, refined human philosophers and theologians.

In the conclusion to his lecture series, Barth asks: how do things stand with us? His answer, in 1923, was not encouraging: "If we look at our theology, then what we see first of all is a pile of ruins". Certainly, that was true then, as liberal modernist Protestantism carried all before it. We have done some rebuilding since, but I wonder whether I am alone in thinking that sometimes the rebuilding looks like a museum rather than a house to be lived in. We can say the words of the old confessions, and mean them, but do we grasp (have we been grasped by!) the beating heart of their theology? Do we have the courage to be exposed to revelation, to hear the gospel again, and to wrestle with the issues our fathers wrestled with in the language and concepts and context of the 21st century?

Visible and Invisible

Barth's longer section on the substance of the Reformed confessions is interesting in lots of different ways. The way he paints the historical picture is intriguing. He sees a rapid decline from the objectivity of the older confessions into a more subjective stance in the later - roughly, a movement away from talk about what God does, to talk about how I am saved. The Westminster Confession comes in for a lot of flack here! I don't know to what extent Barth is correct, but certainly I have observed in the English Puritans a certain subjectivism and emphasis on my assurance of salvation which does not seem to be so much of a problem in Calvin.

But that's not the main point.

Barth argues that what really ties the Reformed confessions together and makes them distinctively Reformed is that they hold together faith and obedience. Because the emphasis is on God, not human experience, the Reformed are able to see more clearly than, for example, Luther that faith and obedience flow from the same source - the Holy Spirit - and therefore they are able to stress both together in a way that Luther could not. This also allows them more substantial and enlightening engagement with the law than was possible on Lutheran soil. Barth uses the analogy of the incarnation. We hold that Christ has a human nature and a divine nature, and we do not confuse the two but neither do we divide them. In the same way, the Reformed confessions see God's action on the human being as bringing about faith and obedience - and they do not confuse these (faith justifies, obedience does not), nor do they divide them (faith without obedience is no true faith at all, because it cannot come from God - the author of obedience).

In other words, the Reformed hold the invisible (faith/justification) and the visible (obedience/sanctification) together because of their doctrine of the Holy Spirit. He is the personal source of both.

This overflows into ecclesiology - the invisible Church and the visible churches are held together, but never confused. Church discipline ensures that the visible church is conformed to some extent to the invisible Church, but there is never any attempt at complete purity because that is a trait of the invisible Church.

This tension is hard to hold, but I believe it must be held. The Christian life is a life of obedience and war against sin, not just peaceful basking in justification. The Christian church is a community of obedience and peace, not a live-and-let-live society of ease. The Holy Spirit, who creates justifying faith and therefore the invisible Church, also creates sanctifying holiness, and therefore the visible church.

The Reformed vs. Rome

Barth moves on to discuss the substance of the Reformed confessions. What holds them together? What makes them distinctively Reformed?

One thing which the confessions have in common, although it is particularly pronounced in the earlier confessions for obvious historical reasons, is opposition to Roman Catholicism. "In the bitterness and disgust with which they speak of the pope and the mass, there is scarcely any notable difference between the Swiss and the German, the Eastern and the Western confessions". Barth argues that this opposition to Romanism is more deliberate, and more central, to the Reformed confessions than to the Lutheran, although all Protestant confessions carry the awareness that Rome is the undoubted enemy.

Barth sees two subtly different positions at work here. The Lutherans are cross with Rome because Rome robs Christians of assurance and despoils Christendom (thus dishonouring God); the Reformed are cross with Rome because Rome dishonours God (by robbing Christians of assurance etc). The Lutheran confessions stress salvation by faith in Christ; the Reformed confessions stress salvation by Christ through faith. The Lutheran position is pastoral first; the Reformed position is theological first.

Now, I don't know how accurate a portrait that is of Lutheranism, but I think it captures Reformed concerns perfectly. The point is that, contra Rome, the Reformed maintain that God does everything. Hence the typical (almost stereotypical) Reformed concern for the sovereignty of God, expressed in the doctrine of predestination.

Here is theology I can get behind!

The Principle of Scripture and its Grounds

The second part of Barth's lecture series on the Reformed confessions looks particularly at the Scripture Principle. The principle is expressed by Barth thus: "The church recognises the rule of its proclamation solely in the Word of God and finds the Word of God solely in Holy Scripture". In other words, this is what has been called the 'formal principle' of the Reformation - Sola Scriptura, the Bible alone.

Barth again develops a contrast with Lutheranism. In many ways the Lutheran Church is the church of the 'material principle' of the Reformation - justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. This is the organising 'idea' of Lutheran theology, and it is noticeable that this has an effect on the way the Lutherans approach the Bible. Consider Luther's attitude to James, for example: it doesn't teach justification by faith alone, therefore it is secondary, unexciting. This also allows for the privileged position accorded in Lutheranism to the Augustana and to the work of Luther generally.

The Reformed churches, on the other hand, took up the 'formal principle' as their particular emphasis. That ruled out the possibility that they should become 'Calvinist churches' or 'Zwinglian churches' in the same sense as the Lutheran Church. Scripture alone also ensured that the Reformed confessions took on a very different role to the Augustana. The Reformed churches could only see their confessions as pointing to Scripture. They were not the light, but they pointed to the light (Barth develops the analogy with John the Baptist, an important one for his theology generally). In essence, Reformed Christianity is simply this attitude to Sola Scriptura.

He goes on to trace the idea of the grounds of this principle. In Calvin, the grounds of the Scripture Principle is simply the Spirit speaking in Holy Scripture. The Bible is God's Word because God address me in it. The Spirit in me and the Spirit in the Word are one. The early Reformed confessions generally take this line. Even at this early stage - and even in Calvin - it is acceptable to append arguments from the style or circumstances of Scripture, but they are understood as just that: appendices. The main point is Inspiration, and the witness of the Holy Spirit.

The sad history of the Reformed churches is a move away from this basis in two directions. Firstly, there is a tendency to make the arguments which had been appended to the Scripture Principle the real basis for taking Scripture as God's Word. A loss of confidence in the basis of the Principle in the doctrine (and experience!) of the Holy Spirit led to more emphasis on the arguments, and eventually to the arguments taking over. Scripture is made subject to the judgement and reason of human beings.

Secondly, there is a tendency to make the Bible just one thing amongst many others. Obviously, this goes hand in hand with the first. There is a movement away from seeing God revealed only in the Bible, to seeing the Bible as merely the pinnacle of God's revelation in creation and the human spirit.

In both cases, the door is opened to Protestant liberalism and modernism. That door is shut again only when we say that the Word of God in Scripture is self-authenticating. God witnesses to God. The Word of God is not chained, but speaks clearly and powerfully by the Holy Spirit.

The Theology of the Reformed Confessions

I've just started reading Barth's treatment of the Reformed confessions, delivered as lectures in 1923. The first section deals with "the significance of the confession in the Reformed Church", and is extremely interesting to me, and I hope to other people.

Barth tells the story of the Reformed confessions by contrasting their reception with the place of the Augsburg Confession (the 'Augustana') in Lutheranism. The Augsburg Confession was very quickly considered to be on a level with the ecumenical creeds of the Church. The Lutheran Church was still very much wedded to the old Imperial ideal - one Empire, one Church - and so the Confession could hardly be received as anything else. Moreover, the Confession had been presented to the Emperor - albeit only as a protest, since it was not received. It was therefore a public and ecumenical confession, in the eyes of Lutheran theologians at least. It was only a small step from there to the Book of Concord, which upholds the Augustana, along with various other Lutheran products, as the standard of faith never to be shaken. As Barth points out, this leads to the exaltation of the Confession to the level of Scripture - the Formula of Concord makes regular reference to "the Word of God and the Augsburg Confession" as things which are hardly separable. Luther is seen as essentially a new apostle; the Confession is the product of the Holy Spirit.

This should never happen in a Reformed Church. The Reformed churches were happy for there to be numerous confessions, not fixing on one form of words, because they saw that the confessions were the products of particular churches. They confessed the faith which churches had received from the Scriptures. As such they were always in principle open to correction. Thus Zwingli: "where I have not now correctly understood the said Scripture, I am ready to be corrected and instructed from the aforesaid Scripture". Confessions in the Reformed tradition were understood to be provisional, even when loyalty to them was demanded of the church's teachers in the strongest terms.

It seems to me that (if Barth's view of Lutheranism is correct), the Lutheran Church views authority as coming from Scripture, via the Confession, to the Church. The Confession stands above the Church, as a kind of subordinate Scripture. Barth's picture of the Reformed view has authority come directly from Scripture to the Church, which produces the confession as a result of what it has heard and understood from Scripture. Because it is what the church has heard, the confession cannot then be set aside lightly, but it can be modified and even replaced in time.

Barth concludes that we don't have new Reformed confessions of the standard and profundity of the older confessions simply because we do not have Christians and theologians who are being reformed by the Scriptures. Reformed confessions come from Reformed Christians, and Reformed Christians are brought to birth by Holy Scripture.

"The current situation [now as in 1923!] does make it especially advisable that the Reformed church should set its only hope (truly its only hope) on the prayer 'Come, Creator Spirit!'"

Protecting Ourselves

Just off the back of yesterday's thought...

Churches put together creeds and confessions of faith to protect themselves. It's right that they should do that, absolutely right. These summaries of the truth, often forged in the struggle against serious error, can help to keep us thinking and believing right.

But I wonder if they don't sometimes end up protecting us against... God?

When my favourite confession, or favourite formulation of a particular doctrine, is questioned on Biblical grounds, how do I react? Am I open to hearing God's voice in Scripture, or has my doctrinal construct shut up my ears?

I guess sometimes we need to take some risks - let our guard down and try to hear afresh what God is saying, rather than the (important!) second-hand version that we have in our confessions. If God really speaks, is this a risk at all?