TAW on Christology

Responding to a request from the 213th General Assembly, the Office of Theology, Worship and Discipleship on September 27 issued a statement entitled "Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ," which seems sufficiently narrow even to satisfy the Presbyterian Layman.

Presbyterian News Service has reported on the statement, and responses to it in the meeting of the Congregational Ministries Division at the end of September in Tempe, Arizona.

The full text of the statement is available on the PCUSA web site.

Witherspoon's Issues Analyst, Gene TeSelle, has commented on some of the shortcomings of the TAW statement, as it appears to reflect an intention to perform a concern for "damage control," rather than for exploring the large theological questions that confront the church in the post-Christian and "post-modern" world.

He points to five major concerns with the document:

It seems to ignore the witness of Scripture and the confessions that Israel and the Jewish people are included in God's saving work.
It limits God's self-revelation so narrowly to Jesus Christ that it minimizes the affirmations of the Bible and the confessions that God is revealed also, even if not fully, through nature and human reason.
It fails to take seriously the ways in which truth may come to us through other faith traditions.
It seems to limit salvation to those who claim the name of Christ, even though our confessions are often more cautious about limiting the scope of God's grace.
It does not deal with a major issue of our time -- the growing religious pluralism of our own nation and of the world.

While these issues and others need far more (and more creative) attention, we must add that the TAW statement, in its classical Trinitarian arrangement, offers a helpful corrective to the conservative demand that Jesus Christ alone be named as the defining basis of Christian faith and life.

Clearly our Office of Theology and Worship maintains a more balanced view of our tradition, as it affirms the one Creator God and the indwelling and enlivening Spirit, along with Jesus Christ who "came to us as one of us, sharing our joy and sorrow .... and was a friend of sinners."

Also, it maintains the classic Reformed affirmation of God's sovereign freedom and thus refuses to restrict the grace of God to those who express explicit faith in Christ.

For this and more in the statement, we are grateful.

Responding to the comments above, Barbara Kellam-Scott sees the Theology and Worship statement as offering "magic words" rather than true hope. [10-8-01]

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