Our story begins in 325 BCE in the town of Nicaea, in what is modern-day Turkey.
A few years earlier, Roman Emperor Constantine claimed Christianity, ended Christian persecution, and began commissioning churches with his mother, a baptised Christian.
But as often happens, factions grew within the faith to the point that Constantine was concerned the empire, and to a lesser degree the church, would split.
Constantine must have been a nascent Presbyterian because his solution, essentially, was to appoint a committee of some 300 bishops to solve the disagreement.
The Nicene Creed emerged from that meeting, although it took more than 50 years before it was finalized in the form we know today.
It remains the only truly ecumenical creed recognized by virtually all Christians.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s current Book of Confessions, part one of the denomination’s constitution, leads off with the Nicene Creed and includes 11 more confessions and/or creeds, organized chronologically.
Why so many? How can something written in the fourth century have anything to tell us? Or the 16th, or even the 20th century? The challenges of the 21st century are unprecedented, aren’t they?
Indeed, what good are these aging words in a post-modern, or is it metamodern, world?
What good are these aging words in a post-modern, or is it metamodern, world?
The 227th General Assembly will address that question when it meets in Milwaukee in late June and considers the report of the Special Committee for a New Confession, which has spent almost four years studying it.
While most may think of a “confession” as an admission of guilt, it also means stating what one believes, as such confessions and creeds play an important role in Presbyterian life.
“Second only to the Bible, the foundational witness to Jesus Christ in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is The Book of Confessions,” former Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick writes in the introduction to Conversations with the Confessions, a compilation of articles on various aspects of the confessions published in 2005.
“The Book of Confessions is clearly our greatest constitutional treasure, a wonderful source of wisdom to deepen our faith in Christ and inspire our faithfulness,” he adds.
The PC(USA) Book of Order says, “The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) states its faith and bears witness to God’s grace in Jesus Christ in the creeds and confessions in the Book of Confessions … The creeds and confessions of this church arose in response to particular circumstances within the history of God’s people. They claim the truth of the Gospel at those points where their authors perceived that truth to be at risk” (F-2.01).
Related reading: “Special committee proposes confession specific to the times we live in” by Harriet Riley, Presbyterian Outlook reporting
With that in mind, the report of the Special Committee opens saying: “The Church is called at every age to confess the faith it professes in the face of worldly forces that threaten the gospel. We are in such a status confessionis today, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) is called now, as it has been in centuries past, to confess who it is, what it believes, and what it resolves to do. …”
“Racism, white supremacy, colonialism, and the oppression of persons based on any number of human qualities remain clear and present threats in the 21st century. They are collective sins in which the Church is deeply complicit. In particular, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been both a voice decrying these sins, a participant, and an accomplice in the oppression and greed endemic in the world, oppression and greed that now threaten the very survival of human beings as a species.
“As we deliberated, we came to understand that underlying these sins is a particular form of idolatry,” the committee wrote, labeling that idolatry as “the heretical worship of power and money, and its concentration among the few, an idolatry that equates money and power with the divine and the will of God. Maintaining this concentration of power and money has and continues to require the domination of others and the creation. Systems of oppression are upheld by lies, by ‘othering’ and through persecution and violence aimed at producing fear and disempowerment.”
Related viewing: “Confession Conversation with Teri McDowell Ott and the Special Committee to Write a New Confession,” Presbyterian Outlook’s YouTube
Special Committee member Charles Aden Wiley, III, who spent almost two decades in the Office of Theology and Worship and was its director before retiring, agrees that a new creed is appropriate.
However, he said the occasion of creating a new confession is a perfect time to look at the entire book with an eye toward trimming it.
In a column for the Outlook, he proposed removing The Scots’ Confession, The Second Helvetic Confession, and all but The Larger Catechism’s questions about the Ten Commandments, taking the book from 318 pages to 186 pages. The removed items would nevertheless be maintained in a “Book of Confessional Witness,” which would become a supplement to the Book of Confessions with no constitutional authority.
Related reading: “Why the PC(USA)’s Book of Confessions is too long — and how to fix it” by Charles Aden Wiley, III
“This would be an interesting and helpful move toward accessibility and usability of the Book of Confessions,” he writes.
He notes that the third of the nine ordination vows PC(USA) officers take is: “Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God?”
Wiley believes the length and depth of the current book discourage its use and/or would require too much time in training to adequately prepare those being ordained to really understand what their answers mean when they reply “I do” and “I will.” Plus, the denomination has repeatedly declined to define or outline “essential tenets.”
However, Joe Small, who led the Theology and Worship prior to Wylie’s tenure, isn’t so sure, calling the proposed creed “social policy spoken in a shout.”
Related reading: Read the full proposed confession on PC-Biz
Small and Wylie concur that there isn’t sufficient understanding or knowledge of the confessions within the denomination, although they had different solutions to the problem.
For Small, the current confessions sufficiently address most, if not all, the ills.
“I’ve said this for years: The Book of Confessions is in danger of becoming a sanitary landfill. You know, we just pile more and more and more stuff in there, and nobody pays much attention to any of it anyway,” Small said.
“People who say it needs to deal with social problems such as race and poverty and all this kind of stuff, these are people who’ve never read [The Confession of 1967], because [it] does deal with precisely those things.”
The Confession of 1967 says in part, “God’s reconciling work in Jesus Christ and the mission of reconciliation to which he has called his church are the heart of the gospel in any age.”
Related reading: “Why a 50-year-old Presbyterian confession still matters” by John Williams
“Our generation stands in peculiar need of reconciliation in Christ. Accordingly, this Confession of 1967 is built upon that theme.”
“The Larger Catechism in its section of the Ten Commandments [questions 98-148],” Small said, “is the most detailed social witness section that we have.”
As an example of the Larger Catechism’s relevance today, Small noted that the answer to “What are the sins forbidden in the Eighth Commandment?” has a long list, one of which is “man-stealing.”
“You know what man-stealing is? It’s a slave trade,” Small said. “This is the Westminster Larger Catechism condemning the slave trade at a time when Great Britain was still actively involved in the slave trade.
“But who knows any of that?” he said.
“When people say, ‘Oh, there are things in the confessions I don’t agree with,” he said. “Well, of course they are!”
The confessions and creeds “are the wisdom of people who’ve lived and died in the faith,” he said. “Also, some of the foolishness of people who’ve lived and died in the faith before us.”
