The doctrinal core of evangelicalism has traditionally been preserved in ‘statements of faith’ such as the following, which is the UCCF Doctrinal Basis…
- There is one God in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
- God is sovereign in creation, revelation, redemption and final judgement.
- The Bible, as originally given, is the inspired and infallible Word of God. It is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour.
- Since the fall, the whole of humankind is sinful and guilty, so that everyone is subject to God’s wrath and condemnation.
- The Lord Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Son, is fully God; he was born of a virgin; his humanity is real and sinless; he died on the cross, was raised bodily from death and is now reigning over heaven and earth.
- Sinful human beings are redeemed from the guilt, penalty and power of sin only through the sacrificial death once and for all time of their representative and substitute, Jesus Christ, the only mediator between them and God.
- Those who believe in Christ are pardoned all their sins and accepted in God’s sight only because of the righteousness of Christ credited to them; this justification is God’s act of undeserved mercy, received solely by trust in him and not by their own efforts.
- The Holy Spirit alone makes the work of Christ effective to individual sinners, enabling them to turn to God from their sin and to trust in Jesus Christ.
- The Holy Spirit lives in all those he has regenerated. He makes them increasingly Christlike in character and behaviour and gives them power for their witness in the world.
- The one holy universal church is the Body of Christ, to which all true believers belong.
- The Lord Jesus Christ will return in person, to judge everyone, to execute God’s just condemnation on those who have not repented and to receive the redeemed to eternal glory.
I have chosen this one because it is one of the more comprehensive, but you could also look at similar statements published by InterVarsity Press, the National Association of Evangelicals, the UK Evangelical Alliance, and the World Evangelical Alliance.
I would be interested to know how people who identify themselves with the ‘emerging church’ movement regard doctrinal statements of this nature. Do they still have a part to play in our self-understanding? Do they need to be modified? Ditched? Have you come across better ways of encapsulating the essential beliefs that define Christianity?
I've recently come to wonder
I’ve recently come to wonder about the second one
3. The Bible, as originally given, is the inspired and infallible Word of God. It is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behavior
To paraphrase it: “The bible arrive in pristine condition on a cloud from heaven and God’s intention was that we would find within it’s pages, everything we would ever need to know about him.” The reality is that it is a collection of writings made throughout history that record the relationships that various people had with God. As a tool it is vital to living as a Christian but where did we get the idea that when God said such and such to David, it necessarily applies to us today. It seems to me that this is a rather convenient statement of faith because it allows you to treat Christianity like a science. By analyzing the bible text and applying logical reasoning, you can know the mind of God. True, you can infer much from the bible, but doesn’t making the bible the “infallible… supreme authority” mean that you’ve replaced the personal God with a book? Or to put it another way, doesn’t it mean you’re claiming you have the mind of God down encapsulated in a few hundred pages of stories? At the very least, you have now restricted God to acting within the bounds of how he has acted before with other people. Assuming, of course, that the Bible has not been altered in any way of the years, which we can never be sure of. Plus there’s the fact that God has never actually told me that the bible is my supreme authority. Paul does mention to Timothy that scripture is “God breathed” and “useful”, but he was referring to the Old Testament, and if you use a biblical quote to claim that the bible is our supreme authority then isn’t that a circular argument.
Statements of Faith
I tend to find the creeds sufficient. Statements of Faith are generally about boundaries, wheras in liturgical use the creeds are about community faith shared together.
Something like the UCCF statement of faith could probably not be signed by many historic ‘evangelicals’ like Finney or even Wesley.
balance.
After a quick scrim read of the above, I hope I’m not repeating something.
I’m as marginal as they come, and can out liberal nearly anyone in beliefs and doctrine etc., and I deplore the use of statements of belief to exclude people, to divide into who is ‘in’ and ‘out’. In fact, this was one of the factors that contributed to my leaving the University CU, and which still makes me very wary of UCCF associated activities.
But I think even I can see that such things as creeds have some value. I find the Nicene creed a beautiful and succinct thing, and can recite it along with other Christians (be they Catholic, Conservative, Evangelical, or whatever) with a totally clear conscience - despite being highly dodgy liberal-universalist. I find it a helpful centre of gravity to orbit around, to contemplate. I sometimes even find maybe having an almost spiritual experience when saying it along with other Christians - in the same way that others might in singing a chorus and raising their hands. There is great potency in saying words that have been said by millions of people before you, who have believed so much, who have shown such great diversity.
So I find myself bemoaning doctrinal formulations and singing their praises - how awkward.
Can we say anything about God without claiming to know everythin
I guess as I have been reading the comments to creeds and even the specific one about the bible, I wonder if we aren’t reacting more to how the creeds have been used at times to oppress or exclude than we are to the use of creeds themselves. In the statements given, there isn’t necessarily anything that limits God to those statements. I think we all need to be able to say things about God or we don’t know which God we are talking about. To just let a god concept be and float out there without any kind of defintion or form (we use statements) we can’t communicate about God and really have difficulty communicating to God. So I think we have to be careful not to project bad applications of the format or form to the form itself as I know we have all either experienced or been the recipient of being bashed by creeds or excluded because we questioned one part of a creed.
In terms of the bible I think we could say the bible is the infallible word of God and is our primary source of knowledge about who God is an how to live the Christian life. I think the bible could be used as a anchor of sorts to help us interpret events that might be said to be from God but may not be. Would we agree that the Holy Spirit does use the scriptures as means of communicating God’s truth with us? While I agree that the scriptures do not show every possible way God could respond or would respond today, would he respond in an inconsistent manner to how he responded in the past? While I agree that all of who God is could not be encapsulated in the few hundred pages we have in scripture, that is one major representation that he has given us and I think it is trustworthy and helps me to understand God’s character just enough to know him relationally even if I cannot know all about him metaphysically.
Sorry for the long winded reply. I just think we can tend to project misuses of the scripture or creeds and then react against any creeds at all when all along it was the misuse we are and should react against. (I do know of course we could quibble about the statements themselves). As far as answering Andrews question about whether they are useful in their current form, I think we could do a better job of tying them to the overall story and cause that we are called to, but as summary statements to help us quickly communicate they could be useful.
Creeds and the bible
Although I can appreciate how creeds only isolate people in proportion to how they are used/misused, I too am generally opposed to the idea of creating a closed set philosophy in the formulation of any doctrinal basis or creed (which realistically is the main purpose behind their construction). At the end of the day these are merely attempts to summarise scripture in a way people of a certain culture/time generally agree with. As such anyone claiming a specific DB or creed represents the absolute test of a persons salvation are simply unaware of their own cultural context.
This is why, as tolthoff says above, I think the bible should be used as our “anchor” of faith. Whereas creeds/DB’s seem to present fairly absolute boundries, the bible can be interpreted in a far more artistic manner. This results in me still believing that the bible is the word of God however at the same time interpreting it in ways that differ greatly from those around me. This moves the argument onto the issue of translation or interpretation rather than saved vs. non-saved. It also forces us to consider and defend the stances we take on a variety of topics. As far as I am concerned any movement away from judgement and into this sort of discussion can have nothing but positive benefit.
Thus saith the Lord...
Simon,
To say that the Bible is the “word of God”, is a statement that I feel needs some qualification. We know the Bible can be used in ways that bring freedom, hope, healing and liberation…but we also know that the Bible can be used to justify violence, bloodshed and corruption. So, in and of itself, can we really say that the Bible *is* God’s word?
The way I see the Bible is as a collection of writings from Jewish and early Christian people wrestling with what it means to be human and what it means to interact with God for their day and their time. As such, I don’t see it as a theological text book with all the right answers, but rather as a starting point for exploration.
The Bible is therefore central to my faith - perhaps in a not dissimilar way that the creeds are to Post_Liberal, in that they provide ancient wisdom, that has echoed down through the ages and that it is something that I share in common with followers of Christ all around the globe.
So when I read the Bible, I remember that the same words have been read through many generations. I allow myself to be challenged and provoked by its words and by the history of how those words have been applied. It roots me to a tradition from which it is possible to grow, develop and be very creative with.
However, we must take care. The Bible has been misused to justify atrocities (the Crusades, the Inquisitions etc), but it has also provided some of the raw materials used to bring liberation, hope and healing in the face of injustice, apartheid, racisim, poverty and sickness (e.g. Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoffer, Corrie Ten Boom, Mother Teresa, Gandhi etc.)
So for me, the Bible is intricately tied up with other things & other people. The Bible speaks to me but only in so much as it is inter-woven with many other influences - great thinkers, protestors, liberationists, literature, art, music, creation, the people around me etc - all of these things knit together. I believe that God speaks to us through a great mish-mash of voices, images, ideas and events and challenges us concerning how we are going to respond in the society in which we live in the 21st century.
Perhaps the Bible only becomes the word of God in its interpretation and practical outworking of that interpretation. So in order for the Bible to be the word of God, it must become incarnational. It must be lived - much like Christ, who according to the Bible, actually is the word of God, took on flesh and lived amongst us.
I once saw an image of Christ holding out a giant Bible. Needless to say, I wasn’t so keen on that little piece of art. However, perhaps if I was a decent artist I would paint it the other way round, in that the Bible holds out Christ to us - but it is only in interpreting and living the Bible in our every day experiences that we actually hear and experience God’s word with us.
And in addition, I don’t think its only the Bible that offers Christ to us - but rather, Christ can also be found in history, in art, in literature, in human rights movements and especially in lifestyles of compassion and love.
Does that make sense and is that a helpful way to be thinking?
Ruthie
continuity
It might thus be helpful in some ways to see a greater continuity between what we have in the writings of the bible and in other works and writings of later traditions - poetry, prose and creeds.
They all come out of, are born from, the life of communities. The letters of St Paul, for example, were situation-specific documents that were a response to the needs of particular Churches. And this can be paralleled by the Nicene creed, which came out of the common dialogue of Eastern Mediterranean Bishops (though not without a little arm twisting and pressure by Constantine, but that’s another story!), it grew from communities of faith.
Thus in both cases there may need to be some balance in the way we view ‘sacred texts’ - “the word of the Lord” itself came out of God working in people’s relationships, and so in my view it would be a little perverse if the bible, the creeds, or whatever, were to be used in validating closed boundary communities or in declaring people ‘out’. This is something I’ve been considering quite a lot of late, prompted by it being the week of prayer for Christian unity. As so many people have found, such texts as the bible and creeds have been used to excise people from God - and (a scandal of great significance) to try and break up the body of Christ by excluding those who are not deemed ‘proper’ (usually termed ‘bible believing’) Christians.
But when we look even wider, we find that the work of God that is expressed in The Kingdom of God itself has, to appropriate a Pete Ward phrase, ‘fuzzy edges’. Yet people always seem keen to clean them up, to tidy God’s work, to tuck in the missio dei.
Re: I've recently come to wonder
i fully understand the assumption that if the bible is the only infallible word of God, that it would seem we would not have room for the personality of God to speak through the Holy Spirit. this is my take. the bible is infallible because it contains enough of the mind and will of God that if read with a dilligent and sincere heart one could find God in the scriptures. However, we full know that God is omnipotent and omniPresent. For this cause i believe God speaks in the here and now as well as the past and Future for that matter. to try and isolate the all mighty God into sixty six books , would also give us the inclination that his wisdom is limited which we all know is above our thoughts.
No the bible cannot contain all the words or works of God, according to St. John , but i believe it has enough to save anyone.
I would be interested to know
depends on what type of Christianity you want to ‘emerge’ (and there are oh-so-many of them!); but what is a creed or statement of faith, in all honesty? all we know is that we don’t know, and the more we say about what we *imagine* God to be, the further we get from any *actual* understanding of any *real* God who may or may not be “out there” or “in there”, whichever the case may be.
its just the wine-wineskin dilemma combined with the quintessential human problem of attachment: to the degree that someone lets themselves grow attached to “the wineskin” in ANY of its forms or manifestations, to that degree they *will* be shattered when the Eternally-New Wine blows it apart. its just the way everything works, right down to our very lives and bodies on this earth, I think. If you could walk intentionally in front of a speeding bus tomorrow and never even think about looking back at what lies either behind you or ahead of you, then what need have you for anything? obviously we’re all here incarnate on this planet learning how to get past that whole conundrum, in one way or another; I just think that things like creeds, statements of faith, etc., while they can definitely be educational, inspirational, and even enlightening some of the time, insofar as they have this tendency to cement the old wineskin into something even *more* old and brittle, we should be wary of them at the very least… as much as I struggle with my own terminal uncertainty about the things that the creeds say are “Absolute Truth”, I’d take my uncertainty any day over the type of shattering that the old-school churches and believers are in for as the onslaught of the future continues relentlessly… by all means fight against entropy if that’s your calling, but… in the end all the wineskins get absorbed by the wine, an endless flowing river into an endless expanse of ocean… formless chaos is where it all comes from and where it all returns… how can one encapsulate the ineffable?… every God we worship will be brought down, time will end and time will be all there is…
the grown-ups can have the creeds, I don’t want them; after all God and “getting into heaven” is oh-so-serious business, right?! I tried on those shoes, they were too big for me. :( this truly does make me sad, all I ever wanted was to fit with the people who were IN with God; but creeds, forms, structures, etc., make that impossible. When all you want to do is play with Daddy’s important grown-up papers and color all over them, make him a pretty picture so that he’ll smile once in awhile, but the papers are apparently so much more important than you are and all you meet is Daddy’s belt, fist, wrath, anger, rage, again and again… what choice do you have but to accept your position in relation to Daddy as an eternal outsider? Because those words are SO much more important than the Children, you know…
THAT’S my problem with creeds, of course it need not be anyone else’s problem. Just one voice out of many, though I know there are many others with similar feelings and experiences as me. The iconoclasts are prepared to go to hell for their heresy, indeed we already live there, voluntarily or otherwise… (no place else will have us!)
:(
Idea of God
“There is one God in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
I suspect this needs reinterpretation. The term “person” in the early Fathers had a precise technical sense, and this is largely lost in translation, so that we end up with something more akin to modalism or tritheism. I think the benefit of the credal declarations, even in translation, is that they preserve more of the caveats against misunderstandings of trinitiarian thought, which is I think best understood in a negative sense (what it does not mean, eg. tritheism) rather than a positive one.
Pleading the 5th
My concern with codified statements of faith as that I am ever-so-likely to find myself today on the other side of a line I drew in the sand yesterday.
While I am certainly interested in (even committed to) specific and particular theological perspectives and hermeneutics, my own “statement of faith” has, through time and trial, been reduced to this:
I believe that a life framed by the Biblical story, and lived in community with others whose lives are similarly framed, is a life worth living.
The rest, of course, depends on how you read the story.
creeds and statements
I grew up in a fundegelical environment that trained me very well how to have a “stance” on everything. At one time I adhered pretty closely to all eleven statements here. What did it do for me? turned me into a stubborn, judgmental SOB!
Today, I have serious issues with many of these statements.
I’ll categorize my thoughts on these statements as one might find on a restaurant menu..from “very hot” “hot” “warm” and “mild”
very hot, #11 hot #3, #4 warm #7 mild #10
I don’t know, just reading over those statements makes me wonder how much of it would actually help enable us to obey the greatest commandment of Christ. Love God and love others as you do yourself.
I don’t think these kind of “lists” hold much meaning or purpose for the emerging church. We need more than words.
peace
Paul
More than words?
But do we need less than words?
Ditch it!!!
My experiences of doctrinal bases are that they are used to define the boundaries and determine who is in and who is out of the faith community. If you don’t subscribe to this view, you’re somehow not quite there as a “proper Christian”.
If you want to suggest there are alternative ways of approaching the Bible that proclaiming its inerracy as the absolute Word of the Lord, you’re out. If you think there may be better ways of understanding the atonement than Penal Substitution you’re a dangerous heretic and you’re out too. Doctrinal bases and statements of faith create exclusivity and stamp out the possibility of rich dialogue that is willing to listen and learn from a diversity of perspectives.
But I have another, perhaps more crucial gripe with doctrinal bases. Since when as following Jesus got anything to do with signing up to a particular statement of faith? Surely the message of Christ is one that calls us to love one another, make peace with our enemies and create the kingdom of God where justice and compassion are the new order of the day? So, aside from preventing exciting theological meanderings, I think doctrinal bases put far to great an emphasis on what is considered kosher theology and ignore the real day to day kosher practices of love, forgiveness, justice and mercy that Christ called us to.
Ruthie
In defence of doctrinal bases
Ruthie, I fully agree with you that the church has too often misused statements of faith, that we have allowed ourselves to become servants of idolatrous texts rather than servants of God. But I think there are still some things that may be said in defence of them:
1. I suspect that at certain times it has been necessary to define and defend doctrinal boundaries rather more vigorously than we might normally need to do. The creeds emerged during a period of theological confusion; the modern statements of faith were a stubborn reaction to the rationalist onslaught of the 19th and 20th centuries. The question we must ask is: What is the best way to preserve our sense of identity under the present circumstances, today nor yesterday, and in light of the calling of God. Our current dislike of statements of faith may simply reflect a tidal change in the church’s sense of core purpose from defence of the faith to mission.
2. Statements of faith can be seen as the end point in a process of interpretation and clarification before they become the starting point in a process of control and exclusion. We will always need some sense of the ‘rightness’ of the story that we tell - the story, moreover, that motivates us towards those ‘kosher practices’. And we will always need to simplify and summarize that story - for our own sakes but also as part of giving account of who we are to the world. If that is the case, then we must simply ensure that the summary remains caught up in the hermeneutic circle of statement and revision and restatement, and so on.
I still say ditch it!
Andrew,
Some good thoughts there! But I’m still not convinced. To me DBs and perhaps also the creeds seem representative of a church on the defensive. Often in the face of theological confusion we construct a belief as a measure of orthodoxy.
However, I think theological confusion can be a good thing, in so far as it allows us to explore different ideas and think through things.
DBs sometimes sound to me like ‘these are the answers, read and agree’ Can we ever truly have such a nice clean end point to theological interpretation? Will we ever tap into an absolute source of truth and that we can write down, sign and kick back in satisfied doctrinal purity?
To me an end point just sounds like the end of thought, progress and creativity. Would it be possible for us to move on from defensiveness in order to explore, build and create theological understandings that can be reinterpreted continuously in the light of culture, expriences and new ideas and thinking?
Of course it makes things a lot less simple than if everyone just bands together around a theological statement that unites us. But perhaps making more space for thought, discussion, disagreement and dissent might lead us into a time of fresh thinking, creativity and new understanding.
Another idea - would it be possible to state the story in a way that communicates kosher practices far above kosher doctrine? This seems to me to be in line with Christ’s teaching, for example, he points to the Good Samaritan as an example of what it means to follow him & love our neighbours. To first century Jewish ears that must have sounded unbelieveable - the Samaritan was a hated heretic, not an example of righteousness. Do we need to retell those kinds of stories instead of writing doctrinal bases?
A while back we discussed the creeds in a church group I go to. There were people there who were uncomfortable even with the catholic creeds! But someone did manage to come up with an example of a creed that emphasised love and justice rather than doctrinal correctness that pretty much everyone was very happy with…could we adopt this sort of creed rather than a doctrinal statement?
The People’s Creed
I believe in a colour blind God Maker of technicolour people Who created the Universe And provided abundant resources For an equitable distribution among all people.
I believe in Jesus Christ Who was ridiculed, disfigured, and executed, Who on the third day rose again and fought back; He storms the highest councils of men Where he overturns the iron rule of injustice. From henceforth he shall continue to judge the hatred and arrogance of men. I believe in the Spirit of Reconciliation, The united body of the dispossessed; The communion of the suffering masses, The power that overcomes the dehumanising forces of men The resurrection of personhood, justice and equality, And in the triumph of Brotherhood. (Canaan Banana)
Any more thoughts?
Ruthie
Statements of Faith
For myself, I’ve found them irrelevant. In seventeen years of discipleship, biblical study and Christian reading, I’ve hardly eveer encountered a creed and never felt the need to rely upon one to understand or interpret my own faith.
I think interpreting faith is definitely a branch of the purpose of theology, on the other hand and have been greatly helped over the years by a wide range of sources that have informed and helped me to interpret the faith that is within me. In that sense “faith conversations” are esssential. At some point, a succint summary may become possible and a “faith statement” may be born. But it seems a very tired mode of presentation just to place a Heading somewhere on a website, or in a publication, saying Statement of Faith, with a list of 11 things. I think the only people reassured by that are those who only feel safe when dealing with like-minded people.
However, I do believe in the value of “sound doctrine” and biblical theology. I think systematic theology has played a role but is insufficient to engage a generation that uses the new 21st century media with a freedom unimaginable to former generations. Theology needs re-presenting in the ‘market place’ of ideas. Debate is something people enjoy and Christian theology - preferably of the open source kind - belongs out there being debated. Incidentally, debate underpins Rabinnical Judaism, in particular, which is, of course, remarkably resilient and nowhere near as fragmented (doctrinalLy) as Christianity.
So, “statements of faith” as such leave me cold and I imagine they leave most people so, especially those who don’t feel part of the creedal in-crowd. However, following is an example of a retelling of the biblical story which serves a similar purpose and I find it personally engaging, refreshing and helpful. It comes from David Stern, a Messianic Jewish scholar who wrote the Jewish New Testament and Commentary. Here it is:
In telling about God, his people Israel and his Messiah Yeshua – Jesus Christ – the Bible’s constant theme is that human beings need to be saved and that God provides salvation.
The purpose of life and the meaning of history is that God will deliver humanity from the misery of sin and restore the conditions that enable individuals and peoples to relate rightly with him. Morality and happiness are inseperably linked with salvation.
For according to the Jewish Tanakh – the Christian ‘Old Testament’ – God created human beings in his image to be in intimate, loving obedient fellowship with him. But humanity rebelled – people chose their own way instead of God’s – and still do. The name for such rebellion is sin and the penalty for such rebellion is sin, and the penalty for sin is death – not only cessation of physical life but everlasting seperation from God. However, God, who is merciful as well as just, wills to save human being from the eternal death they have earned and deserve. To this end God chose one person, Avraham, and through him brought forth a people, the Jews, commissioning them to “be a blessing” and “a light to the nations.” Through Moshe he gave them a Torah [literally, “teaching” or “instruction,” though usually translated “law”], making known his standards for righteousness. Through judges, kings and prophets he encouraged them, disciplined them and promised that final salvation would come to them and the other people through an “anointed one” [Hebrew mashiach, which has come over into English as “messiah”; the Greek word for “mashiach” is “christos,” which evolved into the English word “Christ”].
Continuing this chronicle, the books of the New Covenant proclaim that the Messiah of Israel prophesied in the Tanakh is Yeshua, a real, historical person who, like others, was born, lived and died. However, unlike others, he had no human father but was given birth by a virgin named Miryam (Mary). Also unlike other, he did not die simply because his life ended or because of his own sin (he had committed none), but in order to redeem us from our sins. Finally, again unlike others, he was resurrected from the dead, is alive now “at the right hand of God” and will come a second time to rule as King of Israel and bring peace to the world. In explaining why he alone was qualified to be the final sacrifice for sins the B’rit Hadashah (the New Testament) calls him both Son of Man and Son of God. the first term, taken from the Tanakh, means that he is fully and ideally human, sinless, “a lamb without blemish.” Since he did not owe his life for his own sins, he could be “God’s lamb… taking away the sin of the world.” The second term, hinted at in the Tanakh, means not only that God’s Holy Spirit (the Ruach HaKodesh), supernaturally caused Miryam to become pregnant, but also that “in him, bodily lives the fullness of all that God is”, so that he is uniquely able to express God’s love to humanity.
The B’rit Hadashah also describes formative events among the early Jewish and Gentile followers of Yeshua and explains how this new Messianic Community or “Church” is related to the Jewish people. Unlike much Christian Theology, the B’rit Hadashah does not say that the Messianic Community replaces the Jews as God’s people. Nor tdoes it say that the Messianic Community stands alongside the Jews as a second eternal people of God with a seperate destiny and seperate promises. Rather the relationship is more complex: Gentiles are grafted as “wild olive branches” into a Jewish “cultivated olive tree” some of whose branches “fell off” but will one day “be grafted back into their own olive tree,” so that in the end, “all Israel will be saved” Thus the Jews are not, as many Christians think, and as many Jews fear, annihalated as a people by being “absorbed into the Church.” On the contrary, as Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) states – in the same passsage as where he announces that God will make a New Covenant with the house of Isra’el and the house of Y’hudah – the Jews remain God’s people forever, for as long as the sun, moon and stars give light to the earth. But the Jews will become a people who honour the Messiah for whom they have hoped and waited for so long: Yeshua. It is on this basis that unity will be restored between the Messianic Community and the Jewish people and the great schism finally healed.
The Bible’s concept of salvation is both individual and corporate, so that the Tanakh and B’rit Hadashah speak to the full range of human activity – family life, class struggle, social concerns, commerce, agriculture, the environment, national identity, government, justice, repentance, forgiveness, interpersonal relationships, personal identitiy, gender issues, worship, prayer, physical health, emothional well-bing, the inner life fothe spirit, death, the after-life and final judgement. In all these areas the Bible informs us that the right response to God’s initiatives will bring salvation to every part of our lives – individually, socially, communally, nationally and universally.
[extracted from the Introduction to ‘The Complete Jewish Bible’, a translation by David Stern, published by Jewish New Testament Publications Inc.]
Enjoy, shalom! John
Son of man and Son of God
John, there are a lot of things that I like in this messianic Jewish retelling of the biblical story. I’ll mention two things. First, the Jewish perspective helps us to read it as a single, continuous, and coherent story, rather than as a Jewish story about Israel followed by a Christian story about Jesus and the church that he founded. I imagine many people will feel uncomfortable with the Hebrew terminology and the re-centering of the story around Israel, but it underlines the fact that neither Jesus nor the church can be properly understood apart from this history. It might be helpful, in fact, to include intertestamental Judaism in the narrative. It is becoming increasingly clear, I think, that the Maccabean crisis provides a crucial part of Jesus’ interpretive context. Secondly, I like the typically Jewish conception of an all-embracing salvation.
A discussion of the Son of man / Son of God terminology in Stern’s ‘creed’ has been moved to a new thread.
Re: Statements of faith
There has been a long struggle between tradition and scripture. It did not take long after Jesus’ ascension for different interpretations of Christ’s life to emerge (see Paul and John’s epistles). The creeds and statements of faith have a simplistic feel to them. I hope that no member of such organizations like the UCCF would believe these eleven statements to encapsulate God.
danthompson asked the question about the ultimate authority of Scripture. This question also initiates the conversation of: when does Scripture end and tradition begin? I do not believe that investing authority into the Word limits our understanding of God. The words on the pages are not God, they are from God. Just as a love letter from a wife is not the wife, they are words for the wife. They do not encapsulate everything she is, but give a springboard to understanding her feelings, language, desires, and personality. The Scripture gives us a picture of God from the context of Israel, Judah, Rome, Corinth, etc. It is our job to acknowledge the inspiration of the authors and interact with the text within our context.
Andrew commented on the necessity, or lack thereof, for creeds or statements of beliefs in the emerging church. The EC desires a more fluid understanding of spirituality and does not like to be limited to outlines. The statements of belief serve some faith communities well, such as the UCCF, but the emerging church seems to strive after one story. The Gospel accounts, letters of Paul, Old Testament texts all flow into the story of God and his relationship with his creation. The Scripture offers authority of timeless truth that can create an overarching story or a list of statements. It speaks to all contexts.