Barbara Kellam-Scott sees the Theology
and Worship statement as offering "magic words" rather than
true hope
[10-8-01]
Barbara Kellam-Scott is a professional writer,
former president of Semper Reformanda, and a member of the Witherspoon
executive committee.
Dennis Maher offers
a response to Kellam-Scott's comments.
Elder Warren Aney writes
to agree with Kellam-Scott in questioning the
continuing insistence on affirming that "Jesus is
Lord." [12-5-01]
I am very disappointed in the
statement offered by the Office of Theology and Worship (TAW) in
response to the request of GA213. It is not what "the time
requires." Neither is it what GA asked for. In general, it is a
recapitulation of magic words that a human institution provides to
assert its own power over the hearts and minds of the people who in
reality belong to God alone. It repeatedly (in quotes and in its own
voice) speaks of what "we" believe or "invite all
Presbyterians to speak and live." Shouldn't it be the other way
around? Shouldn't the church express in its institutional forms the
faith that its members (who after all are the church)
speak and live? And who is this "we" if not the people of God?
TAW tells us how "the church shapes its
confession." The church may write confessional statements,
confessions, but it cannot confess as something above and beyond its
members. I could be happy to know how the church has shaped its
confessions, perhaps with some historical and comparative scholarship on
those confessions. What statements has the Presbyterian Church
considered and declined to claim, and why were they declined? It might
be helpful even to do some comparison of how the 11 creeds and
confessions in our constitutional collection reflect understandings of
the Lordship of Christ as it has developed through our own history.
It seems no accident that TAW has included six
Scripture passages from the Epistles and other New Testament writings
that unequivocally attest to the activities of the early church, but
only one from the Gospels (and that from the least narrative of the
Gospels) and one from the Hebrew Bible (from a Psalm, not any of that
great narrative). The document is a work of ecclesiology, but we are a
people of story and followers of one of the greatest of storytellers,
one profoundly -- and manifestly, in that same collection of writings --
uninterested in ecclesiology.
TAW speaks of prayer only "at the Lord's table
and the baptismal font," and then invites Presbyterians to
"the faith expressed in creed and prayer," as if only the
institutional forms matter. Corporate prayer is certainly one of the
most important functions of the church, but if corporate prayer does not
gather in the passions of the people, it is a hollow or even destructive
activity. Our Book of Confessions includes both brief creeds
and finely nuanced confessional statements, and we explicitly recognize
that not one of them is sufficient in itself. We have a clear process
for adding to the collection new expressions of the people's faith --
and indeed for removing those we find contain more qualifications than
affirmations.
"Jesus is Lord!" is hailed in the opening
sentence as a "foundational declaration" and "the
earliest Christian confession of faith." Perhaps it is the latter
-- the earliest recorded expression of a faith shared within an
institution whose members shared the label "Christian" -- but
it is certainly not the earliest confession of faith in Jesus as the
Christ. For that we generally accept the testimony of the Samaritan
woman at the well, the one the Greek Orthodox call Photini and the
Russians Svetlana -- a woman of light -- the confession of a renewed
spirit to whom Jesus has ministered.
TAW declares that "Christian faith is Trinitarian
faith. Our understanding of Jesus Christ is necessarily
expressed within our understanding of 'the one triune God, the Holy One
of Israel, whom alone we worship and serve.' [emphasis added]" This
would appear to be at least a step in the direction of what the Roman
Catholic Congregation of the Faithful so hurtfully proclaimed last year:
that we (in this case the Trinitarian Presbyterians) have the only
authentic Christianity and that others who proclaim themselves Christian
by some other theology have missed the boat. Yet it also fails to
explicate what "Trinitarian faith" means. It is wise not to
assert such an explication while we are at the midpoint of the work of a
task force, convened by TAW, to study what we mean by the Trinity. But
it would be wiser not to make unexamined assertions at all.
I'm initially drawn to the affirmation that "God
is most fully known to us through God's free presence with us in Jesus
Christ," but as I contemplate it further in the context of the rest
of the document, I find myself wondering what it is meant to mean. If it
is meant to say that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are God's wholly
unmerited gift to all humanity, whether or not we individually recognize
that gift and explicitly respond to it, I can agree and rejoice. But if
the statement grudgingly grants God some freedom to gift us but limits
who can receive that gift and how, I reject it.
TAW has given us a confessional statement without
benefit of the confessional process on which Joe Small himself addressed
us at the GA213 Semper Reformanda Conversation. He told us then that new
theological statements by and for the whole church are "almost
always the product of several years' work by a task force or
committee" and presented for the review of a General Assembly
before being commended to the embrace of every Presbyterian. This
document is indeed signed by each member of the program staff of TAW.
But it is acknowledged as primarily the work of Joe Small. It does not
reflect the kind of collaborative process, checked and balanced by the
input of elected members from across the church, that we as
Presbyterians expect. Neither is it a study document from which a
churchwide conversation is likely to arise. It closes rather than opens
doors with such language as "necessarily" and
"only." And its own usefulness as a study guide is limited by
such factors as at least two unattributed and unidentified quotes. Other
than its last paragraph, the TAW statement follows pretty much the same
structure as A Brief Statement of Faith. Wouldn't that, our most nearly
contemporary confession, have been more useful as at least the framework
for such a statement than the ancient Nicene Creed? The Brief Statement
is barely mentioned. But TAW has found something worthy of quotation in
essentially every other confession or group of confessions in our
collection.
Perhaps the TAW writer(s) found A Brief Statement too
abstract or generalized, a theological approach that is dismissed with a
scoff as far less than "our faith." But comprehension of God
without the particularization of personified theism is "much
more" of many things than reliance on concretized forms of dust,
breath, and physicality. At least, I confess, it has been for me. It
allows me to understand the poetic imagery and symbolism in which the
scriptures I call Holy were written by people with completely different
apprehension of the material world than I have access to in my
postmodern, empirical age. It allows me to recognize the Bible as indeed
the unique and authoritative witness to God's revelation, but to see
that revelation as accomplished through the agency of people who share
the very same senses that I enjoy. It allows me to identify fully with
Jesus in my sensory apprehension of the world God has given me. And it
allows me to understand that the world I apprehend, broad as it is
compared to the world of the Bible writers, is still only a tiny part of
what God is.
"Jesus is Lord," on the other hand, is much
too abstract for me. I do not regularly use the word "lord" in
any other contemporary, concrete context, save the very limited usage
for a certain set of British citizens who have received royal favor and
some political privileges. I do not know what it means to say Jesus is
Lord. I have no meaning to put behind it in my own life, so I do not say
it. I also much doubt, based on the witness of Scripture, that Jesus of
Nazareth would have accepted it. As I understand the usage of the word
in Jesus' time, it could mean simply "Mr." or "Sir."
That I can see him taking. But in our mouths today, it sounds
hierarchical, and I do not believe Jesus would stay on the pedestal
where we so often try to confine him.
What is this salvation that's so
important? The document talks all around it, but never says whether it's
in this life, in the next, or what good it is. I know that I have been
saved from many things, but I do not presume that I will be saved from
any particular or generalized suffering in the future. I acknowledge
that what salvation I have experienced -- that I experience every day --
comes not from my incantation of the name of Christ, but by the grace of
Christ. I have done nothing to in any way deserve it. I also acknowledge
that, if God would save the likes of me, there's no reason in the world
to suppose that God would not save almost anyone else, whether or not
they know or use the name of Christ. So I assume nothing. I strive to
live as God's true child, to be a blessing to others and mindful of my
unmerited riches, and to treat every other one of God's children as just
as loved as I am.
I also find any statement of Christian faith,
including both the Nicene Creed and the TAW statement that follows it,
inadequate without mention of the ministry of Jesus and the church's
call to likewise minister in and to this world. Where is that great
Great End of the Church, the promotion of social righteousness? With
only theology, we are incomplete Christians and a scandal to our maker.
TAW shows in this statement no evidence of any of the
"striving and struggling" to use gender-inclusive language
that our constitutional Directory for Worship says we as Presbyterians
do [W-1.2006b]. This is particularly the case for language about God. No
opportunity has been missed to assert the masculinity of God the Father
or the Son. All of the confessional quotations are selected from
documents that predate this struggle, when in many cases there are quite
good portions of, say, A Brief Statement of Faith that could make the
same summary or illustrative point in a more contemporary voice.
If this statement isn't magic words, it must be a
rulebook, narrowly selected from a large and diverse body of Scripture
and Confessions, for making clear who is beyond the pale of
acceptability to a particular institution. And such rulemaking is the
clearest possible demonstration of that institution's humanness (fallenness)
and need of true renewal if it is not to be an offense to God. TAW has
titled its offering "Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ." But
that's the only time the word "hope" appears in the document.
Hope is what the time requires, not magic, and not rules.
