Speaking of what distinguishes the Reformed from the Lutheran confessional traditions, Karl Barth stated, “[T]he significance of the confession in the Reformed church consists in its essential nonsignificance, its obvious relativity, humanity, multiplicity, mutability, and transitoriness. One could describe the Reformed confession in its totality the way Schiller spoke of the bell: ‘And as the mighty sound it gives/Dies gently on the listening ear/We feel how quickly all that lives/Must change, and fade, and disappear.’ In point of fact, the Reformed confession is a fading bell stroke … a disappearing shadow.”1
If Barth is right, we might wonder if our newest confession, A Brief Statement of Faith, which was approved and enacted by the church in 1991 to declare the faith that reunited the PCUS with the UPCUSA, is beginning to show signs of age, or if it still speaks with a theological voice that is relevant to our time.
There is no question that at the time of its writing the Brief Statement of Faith (BSF) bravely entered new territory for a Presbyterian confession. One can hear the echoes of liberation theology in its emphasis on the life and ministry of Jesus (his “preaching good news to the poor and release to the captives”), on God’s deliverance of Israel from the house of bondage, and on the Holy Spirit’s giving us courage “to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.” Similarly, the concerns of eco-theology are heard in the claim that we “exploit neighbor and nature, and threaten death to the planet entrusted to our care.”
The BSF has received much acclaim for the way it handles issues surrounding gender. For one thing, it is careful to use gender-inclusive language for human beings–something that is not true of any of the earlier confessions in the Book of Confessions. But the BSF goes further. It is insistent that both women and men are created in the image of God, that the covenant was made with both the patriarchs and the matriarchs of the faith, and that the Spirit calls both men and women to all ministries of the church. Gender equality, in other words, is a matter of faith.
As for language about God, the BSF makes two moves that are theologically significant. First, it states, “Jesus called [God] Abba, Father.” This can be interpreted in a number of ways. Minimally, it points to the fact that this name for God has its roots in a specific historical revelation. For some of the more liberal readers of the confession, this frees one from thinking that Father language is forever theologically binding, while for more conservative readers, the historic revelation of the name of God means precisely that. In other words, this was a rather brilliant compromise phrase. Second, the BSF models a second way to deal with God language by using parallel feminine and masculine metaphors for God in the lines, “Like a mother who will not forsake her nursing child, like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home, God is faithful still.” The language in both cases is biblical, and thus thoroughly acceptable to conservative and liberal alike. But the BSF highlights the importance of using more than the familiar and often repeated male pronouns for the deity.
The writers of the BSF, according to the Preface, did not intend the statement to be only a Reformed confession. On the contrary, they intended the statement to express the catholic, evangelical, and Reformed faith. It seems to do an excellent job on all counts. Recognizably catholic is its Trinitarian structure, its mention of baptism and Eucharist, and its closing Gloria Patri. Evangelical or Protestant concerns are expressed in the doctrines of justification by grace through faith and Scripture as the rule of faith and life. The specifically Reformed character of the confession comes through in several places, perhaps most poignantly in its echo of the Heidelberg Catechism’s first question in its opening line “in life and death we belong to God,” but also in its emphasis on God’s sovereignty, the covenant, the strong doctrine of sin, and the idea that the Christian life is about gratitude and stewardship.
What is missing in this confession? This question was put to a room of students taking a class on the Book of Confessions at Union-PSCE, and I found their answers quite interesting. Many of the students were just toddlers at the time that the committee was writing this confession, so they bring a fresh perspective. They thought that the note of concern about the environment was good but not strong enough given what we now know about global warming. Many of them felt that this issue by itself constitutes a status confessionis for our churches.
The second major concern was that the confession did not talk enough about what it means to be a church. The one line, “binds us together with all believers in the one body of Christ, the Church,” the students argued, really does not go into what is difficult about being the church — namely, being together with people with whom you have serious disagreements and differences. How are we really “one”? This generation of students seems to have been more influenced by the events surrounding the PUP report than the momentous events of the summer of 1983 when there was so much joy and hope about the reunion.
The BSF is being used on a regular basis liturgically with success. The language flows nicely when it is read aloud, and the theology gently shapes the minds and hearts of congregations throughout the denomination. In this way, I would argue that it is a bell that keeps ringing and whose toll will not fade as long as there are Presbyterians who hear their own faith in its carefully crafted words.
1 Karl Barth, The Theology of the Reformed Confessions, trans. and annotated by Darrell L. Guder and Judith J. Guder (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 38.
Dawn De Vries is John Newton Thomas Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary-Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Va.
