Does this confess 'the faith of the church'? An Easter Reprise

Easter seems a good time to return to the Confession of  Faith I drafted some months ago. I am grateful for the responses from many and various people to the earlier version. There have been many conversations which have made me think a bit more carefully and be clearer about what I was trying to communicate. I won't explain the detail of all the changes that ensued from those responses. Nevertheless, I doubt it will take long  to recognise the following as the key issues which I've addressed: the relationship between historical an doctrinal claims, the emphasis on the unity of  God as the starting point, gendered language in the second article, more care in the claims made for the church, and a few others.

I've had several requests to use this in various contexts. I'm very glad for it to be used. It's a public document intended for use in the church. If it is used, I would always be interested to know how it is received and/or adapted.

We trust the one God.

We trust the Love and Life who is the source and sustainer of all that was, is and will be.

We trust Jesus Christ, Love’s Beloved, Life's Light, Eternal Wisdom, Israel's Messiah, God with us.

Sent from the very heart of God's love for the world, coming not to be served but to serve, Jesus became human in the womb of Mary.

Hailing from Nazareth, befriending outcasts, healing the sick, forgiving sinners, confronting falsehood, and showing mercy to enemies, Jesus proclaimed the long-promised reign of God.

Reaching Jerusalem, prompting hosannas, trusting the one he named ‘Abba’, he offered himself as the servant Lord; he was rejected, abandoned and betrayed, and then crucified on a Roman cross as a false Messiah.

Lying dead and buried in a tomb, God raised this Jesus to new life: the human verdict was reversed; violence was rejected; the earthly mission was vindicated; death was defeated, the reconciliation of the world to God was manifest

Appearing, speaking and eating, this transformed body provoked fear, doubt, joy and hope. With words of peace the risen Jesus empowered these confused followers, sending them as witnesses to the way, truth and life.

Returning, scarred and bruised, to the One who sent him, Jesus now shares in Love’s rule and receives the worship of his sisters and brothers from every culture, class and nation.

We trust the Holy Spirit, the loving and lively breath of God, who blows where she wills: in, around and through the whole creation.

This same Spirit spoke through Israel's prophets, animated Jesus' ministry, and gathers a community, the church, which, like Jesus, is called to serve; it is an instrument through which Christ continues to command attention and awaken faith.

Sent by the Spirit, the church is to proclaim the risen, crucified Jesus Christ in ever-fresh words and deeds; it is to witness to God's renewal of all creation, for which it waits with an impatient but sure and active hope.

This is the church’s faith. It is the faith we confess. In this Triune God we trust. God grant us so to live and hope. Amen.

Does this confess the 'faith of the church'?

Late last year, I began pondering what issues I would want to contribute to a contemporary statement of the church's trinitarian faith. This was prompted by several factors. Conversations in China last November with colleagues from the United Church of Canada reminded me of that church's history of writing statements of faith. The encouragement of my own church's Basis of Union to confess the church's faith in fresh words and deeds is a constant presence to my theological work. More sustained teaching in Christology and Trinity in recent semesters has led me to engage more explicitly with the continuing discussions about gender, the theological significance of the specifics of Jesus' humanity, and the eschatology of the New Testament - all issues where the classical creeds are problematic. At the same time my conviction grows that the 'faith of the church', including its trinitarian content and structure, remains a fruitful source of wisdom; it warrants critical re-articulation rather than dismissal on the grounds of either its allegedly primitiveworldview or its alleged captivity to Greek metaphysics. For that reason I believe that any contemporary statement of faith succeeds to the extent that it is a fresh confession of the faith of the church and it fails to the extent it that it is an idiosyncratic statement of individual belief. Learning to use statements of faith as confessions of who we 'trust' rather than as lists of things to 'believe' is, in my view, an important spiritual challenge for the contemporary church. 

The result of these various promptings is below. It will be evident that some of my criteria are in tension with each other (e.g., I've deliberately retained the word 'Lord' to reflect the biblical witnesses' own re-framing of the term). Specific echoes of the Basis will be very easily heard. I post the statement here for reflection and comment. It remains a work in progress and I'd value both critique and suggestions for improvement.

* * * *

We trust one God: the Love, Life and Truth who is the source and sustainer of all that was, is and will be.

We trust Jesus Christ, Love from Love, Life from Life, Truth from Truth, Eternity’s Wisdom, Creation’s Lord, Israel's Messiah, God among us.

Sent from the very heart of God's love for the world, he became human in the womb of Mary. He came not to be served but to serve.

Hailing from Nazareth, he proclaimed the long-promised and coming reign of God; he befriended outcasts, healed the sick, forgave sinners, confronted falsehood, and showed mercy to his enemies.

Reaching Jerusalem, riding a donkey, prompting hosannas, he offered himself as the servant Lord; he was rejected, abandoned and betrayed; he was crucified on a Roman cross as a false Messiah. 

Dead in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, God raised him; the human verdict was reversed; his mission was vindicated; his reconciliation of the world to God was declared.

Appearing, speaking and eating, his transformed body provoked fear, doubt, joy and hope; his resurrection announced the defeat of death; he reassured his confused followers and commissioned them as witnesses to his way, truth and life.

Returning, now scarred and bruised, to the One who sent him, he shares in Love’s rule and receives the worship of his sisters and brothers from every culture, class and nation.

We trust the Holy Spirit, the loving and lively breath of God, who flows in, around and within the whole creation.

This same Spirit spoke through Israel's prophets, inspired Jesus' ministry, and gathers a community, the church, through which Christ bears witness to himself.

Sent by the Spirit, the church, like Jesus, is called to serve; in ever-fresh words and deeds, it is to proclaim the risen crucified Jesus Christ; its vocation is to witness to God's renewal of all creation, for which it waits with an impatient but sure and active hope.

This is the church’s faith. In this Triune God we trust. God grant us so to live. Amen.

* * * *

My thanks to Jason Goroncy, Katharine Massam and Rachel Kronberger for responses to earlier versions of this statement. None of these colleagues should, however, be taken to endorse this version or any part of it.

Audio Links to Lectures by Williams and McFarland from Cambridge Divinity

The Divinity Faculty at Cambridge has posted audio files of the first two of Rowan Williams' Hulsean Lectures. Both are available via this link. Subsequent lectures will be posted as the series continues. There are four more to go. The Series is entitled Christ and the Logic of Creation.

Ian McFarland's inaugural lecture as the Regius Professor of Divinity has also been made available. Go to this link.  McFarland's topic: The Crucial Difference: For a Chalcedonianism Without Reserve.

Basis of Union Conference, 2014: Part 1

Last weekend, the Assembly Doctrine Working Group, Uniting Mission and Education, and the United Theological College jointly hosted a conference on the Uniting Church's Basis of Union. The theme was Basis of Union: Catalyst for Renewal. This followed an earlier conference on the Basis in Melbourne in 2010. This second conference drew around 80 participants over the weekend. The keynote address was given by the leading scholar of the Basis, Andrew Dutney, who is also the current President of the UCA. You can read his address here.

The range of topics and the various approaches taken can be checked out in the conference brochure.  Some highlights for me included hearing the new Preamble of the UCA's Constitution read by an indigenous person, the appropriation of the Basis by a panel of UCA Young Adults, the input of theologians from the Nanjing Theological Seminary, and Bec Lindsay's engagement between the Basis, Deuteronomy and the churches of South-East Sydney.

Over the next week I'll post some brief reflections on three specific issues raised at the conference and which I've been pondering since. These three issues are: the relationship of the first 13 paragraphs of the Basis to the last 5 paragraphs; the place of the triune understanding of God in the Basis; and the question, 'Whose document is it?'

In my own paper I focused on Paragraph 4, specifically its reminder that we are "called to be disciples of a crucified Lord, and to enter into the fellowship of Christ's suffering". I argued that the appropriation of the discourse of discipleship, so understood, could help us resist moralism, triumphalism and nostalgia. On that basis I suggested that this fourth paragraph could feed into the post-Christendom and post-denominationalist calling of the UCA. (My presentation included a project I've been working on with the Young Adults from the local congregation of which I'm a member. They offered themselves as first time readers of the Basis. Their filmed responses were interesting, diverse and challenging, and injected a form of engagement with the Basis which was well-worth hearing.)

I also emphasised the reference in Paragraph 4 to the claim that "in his own strange way, Christ constitutes, rules and renews [his disciples] as his Church". The priority of Christology over Ecclesiology evident in this paragraph continues the same Christological priority articulated in Paragraph 3, the paragraph described by D'Arcy Wood as 'the basis of the Basis'.

The question was raised in the discussion after my paper as to whether the Christological priority of these paragraphs really do condition the theology of ministry and government in Paragraphs 14 and 15. Are those later paragraphs as open to renewal as the core, intentionally controlling paragraphs would mandate them to be? This question was reinforced in the final plenary session when it was asked, 'What if the Basis had simply stopped at Paragraph 13?' Behind these questions lies a concern - widely articulated - that the paragraphs on ministry and government have made the UCA less flexible, more structure-bound, and less mission-oriented than it was meant to be.

We can only speculate about the possible consequences of the Basis finishing at Paragraph 13. We can, however, engage in a much more concrete discussion about the earlier question: Are Paragraphs 14 and 15 really controlled by the normative Paragraph 3? Or, despite the framers' claims to the contrary, are these later paragraphs the place where a bit of 'ecclesiastical carpentry' does actually come to the surface?

For what it's worth, what follows is simply some unpacking of the presenting question with a few observations and/or questions of my own, and in no particular order.

• Paragraph 14 is not without its note of renewal and openness to reform. This is most explicit in the reference to the renewal of the diaconate. It is also present, if a little less transparently, in the acknowledgement of the 'reconsideration of traditional forms of ministry'. 
• The note of renewal and openness to reform is harder to find in Paragraph 15. Nevertheless, the duty of the councils so mandated is to ensure that the "whole body of believers may be united by mutual submission in the service of the Gospel". Any given council of the church can be called to account by this criterion on the authority of this paragraph itself.
• If these paragraphs have stifled the church's capacity for flexibility (on which see below) is that less because of their content per se and more because of the way they have been received and appropriated? Is it here that the Uniting Church hears the strongest echoes and/or remnants of the language and structures of the predecessor churches that they have become the locus of attempts to resolve matters unresolved at union? And if this is so, might it be that the tensions around this will pass the more distant we are from union?
• How inflexible is the Uniting Church anyway? Attention was drawn in the final plenary session to just how diverse the UCA is and how many different trajectories and diverse forms of ministry it has pursued since union. Is this because of or despite the Basis of Union?
• To what extent are the various demands for extra flexibility a summons to gospel-faithfulness and to what extent are they driven by an anti-institutionalism? I'm not suggesting that the latter can't be a tool for the former. But anti-institutionalism is not a self-evident virtue, even if it is deeply embedded in Australian culture and society. Interestingly, the reference to the post-denominational calling of the UCA in my own paper was heard by various people - approvingly by some and not so by others - as a critique of our institutions. This was certainly not my intent. And the call to renewal in the Basis should not be set against the church's institutional dimensions. The call to renewal of church order and law in the Basis is call to the constant reform of government and law, not their elimination.
• Perhaps the trickiest issue to address here is that of the impact on our readings of these paragraphs, especially Paragraph 14 and its reference to ordination, of our ecumenical commitment and impulse. This issue was also raised in the conference plenary. Paragraph 14 can produce quite different resonances when read through the filter of Paragraphs 1 and 2 than when it is read through the filter of Paragraph 3. This is a big question, and one that requires more than a dot point in response. I hope to publish some posts on this question from various interested parties in due course.

So, the question of the Christological core of the Basis is not a stand-alone question. It unpacks into a range of more specific questions, none of which, in my view, can be answered terribly easily.

The next post will be about the way the question of the  Trinity surfaced at the conference, not least through prompts from our Chinese visitors.

The strangeness of the Uniting Church

How might the Uniting Church in Australia be categorised? Within the Australian Christian community, it would conventionally be deemed a 'liberal denomination'. For some, this designation will carry with it an automatic and unambiguous criticism. To be 'liberal' is a bad thing; it's to be captivated by the spirit of the age - at least that's what such critics might say. For others, that same designation might include a possibly wistful, 'I wish my (conservative) church could be a bit more like the UCA'. To be liberal is a good thing; it gives the church some critical leverage against its inherited theologies and practices - at least that's what such friends might say.

Beyond the Christian community - to the extent that anyone out there actually has a view about it - the UCA might be regarded as a champion of social justice and inclusion, a church you can support when you don't actually want to belong to one. Yet even these friends might finally conclude that as an institution it is hindered by its 1970s birth and the cultural and intellectual baggage it carries from that and earlier eras.

As for the UCA's own self-understanding, well, where to start! An Australian church. A multi-cultural church. A scholarly church. A post-denominationalist church (even though deep down we do still hang on to being the third largest denomination!). An ecumenical church. A church in covenant with Australia's First Peoples. A church committed to community service. A democratic, inter-conciliar church. A non-fundamentalist church. A church in the Reformed and Evangelical traditions. A pilgrim people.

None of these categories, however, was where the UCA started. The theological move made by the framers of the church was to direct the new church to the church's only foundation: Jesus Christ. 

It is easy - and not uncommon - to gloss over this as self-evident. 'Of course, the church is built upon Jesus  Christ', we might say. 'What we're really interested in is what the church says about, say, justification by faith, or ministerial order, or the inspiration of Scripture, or theories of atonement, or predestination, or baptism, or any other number of church-dividing issues. Tell us what the Uniting Church believes about these things, then we'll know what kind of a church it is; then we'll be able to categorise it.' The authors of the Basis of Union refused to go down this path. The insistence on Jesus Christ as the starting point was a step out of the divisions and the theological fault lines of Christendom.

Moreover, there was nothing vague or platitudinous about this appeal to Jesus. In pointing to Jesus Christ, the church's framers did so in a quite particular way. In identifying the foundation of the church, they did not point to the creedal affirmations of Jesus' divinity and humanity. They did not point to the Jesus of pietism. Nor did they point to the historical Jesus of the modern academy. Their statement of Jesus Christ's identity, achievement and significance is articulated in an eloquent summary of certain key New Testament claims about him. It's found in the third paragraph of the Basis. Here it is:

3. BUILT UPON THE ONE LORD JESUS CHRIST The Uniting Church acknowledges that the faith and unity of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church are built upon the one Lord Jesus Christ. The Church preaches Christ the risen crucified One and confesses him as Lord to the glory of God the Father. In Jesus Christ “God was reconciling the world to himself ” (2 Corinthians 5:19 RSV). In love for the world, God gave the Son to take away the world’s sin.

Jesus of Nazareth announced the sovereign grace of God whereby the poor in spirit could receive God’s love. Jesus himself, in his life and death, made the response of humility, obedience and trust which God had long sought in vain. In raising him to live and reign, God confirmed and completed the witness which Jesus bore to God on earth, reasserted claim over the whole of creation, pardoned sinners, and made in Jesus a representative beginning of a new order of righteousness and love. To God in Christ all people are called to respond in faith. To this end God has sent forth the Spirit that people may trust God as their Father, and acknowledge Jesus as Lord. The whole work of salvation is effected by the sovereign grace of God alone.

The Church as the fellowship of the Holy Spirit confesses Jesus as Lord over its own life; it also confesses that Jesus is Head over all things, the beginning of a new creation, of a new humanity. God in Christ has given to all people in the Church the Holy Spirit as a pledge and foretaste of that coming reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation. The Church’s call is to serve that end: to be a fellowship of reconciliation, a body within which the diverse gifts of its members are used for the building up of the whole, an instrument through which Christ may work and bear witness to himself. The Church lives between the time of Christ’s death and resurrection and the final consummation of all things which Christ will bring; the Church is a pilgrim people, always on the way towards a promised goal; here the Church does not have a continuing city but seeks one to come. On the way Christ feeds the Church with Word and Sacraments, and it has the gift of the Spirit in order that it may not lose the way.

One UCA biblical scholar has described this paragraph as a faithful 'epitome' or summary of the New Testament witness. Packed into this core paragraph are allusions to Israel's messianic hope, to Jesus' life of witness to God in word and deed, to the centrality of his death and resurrection to Christianity's reconfiguration of Israel's hope, to the sending of the Spirit and the emergence of a novel, boundary-breaking community, to the anticipation of God's reconciliation and renewal of all creation. This is the story the church told and embodied before it surrounded itself (for ill and good) with the doctrines, debates and structures of Christendom.  This paragraph points us to the convictions and commitments which meant there ever was such a thing as Christianity. In fact, the much-quoted remark of former UCA President, D'Arcy Wood, that this paragraph is the 'basis of the Basis' continues with the (usually unquoted) explanation: "for it states how and why the church exists at all". Precisely.

We are directed here to the memories of Jesus, the convictions about him, and the vision of God and God's purposes for the world which energised early Christian preaching and provoked the novel forms of social existence which the first Christian communities became. This was all they had: a strange story of a risen crucified man through whom the God of Israel was renewing the whole world. 

This is a remarkable gift to the contemporary UCA. It is also, I think, the underlying reason the UCA has the critics and friends it does: it unsettles the conventional and formulaic ways of speaking about Jesus. It's a confession of Christian faith that can be made without having first to take our stand on the divisions of Christendom. Of course there is wisdom to be gleaned from the traditions and theologies of Christendom (and I'm in the job I am because I believe that), and the Basis itself is not silent on some of them. But they are all subject to the authority of what is confessed here; they are never where we start. 

It is a confession of faith in Jesus Christ which, in many ways, is strange to the churches of Christendom and the tendency to seek a more secure starting point for ecclesial self-understanding. The banal categories of 'liberal' and 'conservative' can't touch it. It is a confession of faith in Jesus Christ, drawn from the pre-Christendom church which could well yet prove to be a spark for a post-Christendom Christian imagination. Ironically, it is precisely in this 'biblical' account of Jesus and God's work in him that the theological strangeness of the UCA lies. At one level, it's all we've got: a strange story of a risen crucified Jew through whom we dare to believe God was and is renewing the world. Perhaps an ongoing discussion for the UCA is whether we're convinced it's enough.

* * * * * 

• The ideas in this post are explored more fully in a study booklet, Jesus Christ According to the Basis of Union, which I've prepared for the Doctrine Working Group as a resource for the UCA's upcoming Season of Teaching and Learning. It's one of a set of three studies; the others are Christianity in the 21st Century (written by Avril Hannah-Jones) and Living the Christian Life (written by Rod Horsfield). All can be ordered at Mediacom.
• For the discussion of paragraph 3 as an 'epitome' of the New Testament claims about Jesus, see Vicky Balabanski, "The Biblical Fabric of Paragraph 3 of the Basis of Union: How Well Does it Stand Up to Scrutiny", Uniting Church Studies 17.2 (2001), p. 66. 
• The reference to the 'basis of the Basis' comes from D'Arcy Wood, Building on a Solid Basis: A Guide to the Basis of Union (Melbourne: Uniting Chruch Press, 1986), p. 15. 

Starting a blog

The PD for my position at the CTM includes this in my tasks: “Foster an understanding of systematic theology in the life of the Synod, promoting new initiatives as appropriate.” The measurable outcome for this task is: “Systematic theology has a high profile in the life of the church”. I’m not quite sure what criteria will be used to measure that outcome.  Nor am I entirely sure, at this stage, just how I’ll go about addressing the task. I haven’t been back in this Synod long enough to have any real idea of just how systematic theology is already understood and what contributions I might make to ‘fostering’ that understanding.

Anyway, this seems a good reason to start a blog, and to use it to foster some thinking, provide some resources, and perhaps even spark some discussion about systematic theology (and theology more generally).

And the name? It’s based on Acts 17:20 and the Athenian philosophers’ response to Paul’s strange message about Jesus Christ: “We have heard you say some strange things and we want to know what you mean.” I think this is an appropriate framework for this blog.

Christianity is strange. The proclamation about Jesus Christ was strange in the ancient world. Emerging now from the domesticated pieties of Christendom, Jesus Christ can again address the church and the world with the theological, ethical and spiritual novelty of his way. (I've just recently explored some of these ideas in this short reflection on Christmas.)

Systematic theology is strange. Of all the academic theological disciplines it is arguably the one that sits most uneasily to contemporary academic culture, and it is often treated with suspicion within the church precisely because it is, well, systematic. It is seen to bring too much intellectual organisation to the life of faith. In my view, the more creative exponents of the discipline show how being systematic and being open belong, in their own strange way, to each other.

The Uniting Church is strange. In the very act of union it was called to take a step out of Christendom and its denominationalism. Just how big a step we actually took remains an open question. The Basis of Union presents an account of Jesus which precisely in its orthodoxy subverts the conventional liberal/conservative spectrum we inherited from our mainstream Protestant heritage. I’m not sure that we’ve yet come to terms with that particular Christology. So, in their strangeness, the UCA and its theology are hard to classify.  

These different sources of strangeness will be some of the driving forces of this blog.