The Rest of the Paper

I’m posting in the extended entry the entire remainder of  "Moving Forward, Looking Backward: The Ancient Faith for the 21st Century," mostly because I’m tired of posting it.  There’s lots of other stuff I want to move on to. 

“I Believe in the
Holy Spirit”

 On first
glance, the Creed gives exceedingly little attention to the Holy Spirit. More careful examination, however, will
reveal that the Creed’s statements about the church and the communion of saints
are also statements about the work of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit that causes our unity as
well as our communion as the body of Christ.[1] Apart from the reality of the one Spirit who
unites us all, all attempts to unify the Lord’s church would fail
miserably. Just as one cannot separate
soteriology from Christology, so one cannot separate ecclesiology from
pneumatology.

“I believe in the holy
catholic church”

 Two
adjectives are given by the creed to describe the church: “holy” and
“catholic.” It should be noted that the
Nicene Creed adds two equally important adjectives: “one” and “apostolic.” In a sense, it is difficult to examine the
adjectives separately, since they are built upon each other. There is one
and only one church, and being such, it is catholic
(universal), uniting all followers of Jesus Christ who confess the classic
ecumenical faith established by the teaching of the apostles (apostolic) themselves. For the purposes of simplicity, we will
examine “holy,” and then “one catholic and apostolic” separately.

The holiness of the
church

 The call
for the church to be “holy” should be the greatest deterrent to an uncritical
acceptance of cultural norms within the church. Certainly the balance between the quests for holiness and incarnational
ministry is not an easy one to strike. One need simply look at the opposite poles in the 20^th
century culture wars – fundamentalism and liberalism – to see that. The phrase, “Be in the world but not of the
world” has practically lost all meaning, since there are so many different
suggestions as to how to accomplish such a task. As Johnson writes, “the impulse towards
holiness in the church has tended toward disunity.”[2] The issue of unity will be addressed briefly
in the section below; for now, it must be firmly held that failure in attempts
at both holiness and unity in the past should not prevent us from continuing to
pursue that goal. Johnson suggests two
realms in which the church should be holy: it should be a transformational
context for individuals and a unique corporate entity.[3] 

 The
transformational aspect of the church’s holiness may be what is most appealing
to a postmodern generation, for “no religion will be given the time of day
right now unless it connects with the real world and makes a difference in
people’s lives.”[4] The temptation the church must resist is in
marketing a “new life” rather than modeling and living it. As noted above, the great idolatry of
postmodernism consists in its birth in the midst of a market economy. Many faithful Christian voices of our time
can be heard warning the church of becoming “market-driven.”[5] As the much of the world pushes more towards
a global market economy, it is becoming clear that one of the primary challenges
the church must face is the old warning of Jesus Himself: “You cannot serve God
and money.”[6]

 Singer/songwriter
Derek Webb has written strong words about the church’s willingness to market
its salvation. Singing from the point of
view of the devil himself, in similar fashion to C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, Webb writes:

Just
keep selling truth in candy bars
On billboards and backs of cars
Truth without context, my favorite of all my crimes

 

Take
out the sign, forget the meal
We’ve got a gym and a farris wheel
I swear it’s just like the country club down the block

 

‘Cause
everything’s for sale in the 21st century
And the check is in the mail from the 21st century[7]

 Webb argues
through his music that because of Christianity’s adaptation to the market economy,
rather than being known by our love, we are now known “by the T-shirts that we
wear.”[8] Examples could be multiplied, but Webb has
hit the nail square on the head. From
Christian bookstores to sanctuaries, Christianity is being marketed rather than
lived and proclaimed.

 The church
should rather be the context in which believers learn to live out their
baptism, which, as we noted above, connects us to real hope in the midst of a
dark world. We must take up anew Jesus’
suspicion of earthly wealth and cling instead to God’s kingdom and
righteousness. It is then than
postmodern people will see that hope and ask us about it, at which point, as
the apostle Peter writes, we can give a gentle and respectful answer.[9]

 In order to
do this, a return to solid catechesis in the classical Christian faith is
needed. The quest for relevance in
modern churches, leading to a plethora of Christian “self-help” sermons and
Sunday school classes, has unfortunately led to a trivialization of the great mysteries
of Christian doctrine. Dawn argues we must regain the language of the faith.[10] At the same time, we dare not return to a
dry, line by line systematic instruction, not connected at all to life. Cate Siejk has noted well that these kinds of
“strictly didactic and transmissive” ways of Christian education “are shaped
significantly by the assumptions of modern epistemology.”[11] Christian education must be more than
“indoctrination into an ideology.”[12]

 The only
way to invite others to join the transformational community of the church is to
be certain the faith is “embodied within the community.”[13] Siejk believes Christian catechesis must be
able to find the proper balance between a rootedness in the ancient faith and
the desire for the believer to “be authentic in living their Christian faith in
a postmodern world.”[14] In an age of doubt and uncertainty, it would
be detrimental to the faith to shout down questions and concerns about the our
doctrine. Indeed, Seijk suggests that
embracing and loving the questions will bring imagination “to the center of the
educational process.”[15]
In a postmodern context, a “dialogical pedagogy” will go much farther to
produce genuine disciples than a simple transmissive mode of lecture.[16] While preaching should certainly not be
dismissed as irrelevant and must still hold a primary place, catechesis must be
a community project, taking into account each individual, rooting them in the
Christian faith, while allowing each to remain a unique person.

 Concerning
the holiness of the institutional church, however, the issue is far too complex
for the present work. A few brief
comments are in order before pressing on. As noted above, the church’s call to be holy should discipline its
temptation to over-accommodate to the culture. Dawn has noted rightfully that we demonstrate our ignorance of classic
Christian faith if we simply “water down our own uniqueness” in response to
postmodern pluralism.[17] Horton argues that an attempt to “reconcile”
Christianity with modern culture results in the church being left with “nothing
to say that was not being said (almost always sooner) by everybody else.”[18]

Since, as noted above, a
fundamental problem of unity arises at root of the question of the church’s
holiness, we will proceed to the next characteristics proclaimed by the
Christian creed and note just a few fundamental suggestions for paving the way
forward toward holiness and unity.

One catholic and
apostolic church

The vast complexity of the state of
the church, especially since the Protestant Reformation, makes the concept of
“one catholic (i.e., universal) church” look impossible. The division is so pervasive that the quest
for healing seems unattainable. Sadly,
Reformed churches are as guilty as any at being divisive, not merely concerning
Catholics and evangelicals, but within their own ranks as well. Reformed scholar John Frame has documented no
less than twenty-two areas of major debate and controversy in and among
Reformed churches.[19] While the situation has no simple answer, it
is here that paleo-orthodoxy offers its most valuable principles.

Oden and others of the
paleo-orthodox movement need a hearing in the Reformed community. Indeed, some have already noticed this. J.I. Packer, for example, has co-edited a
book with Oden entitled, One Faith: The
Evangelical Consensus.[20] The book’s purpose is to establish and
document the thesis that evangelical theology, from all its various
expressions, is slowly drawing towards a consensus on the major issues. This means that even the “two related but
distinguishable wings of modern evangelical history: the Calvinist, Lutheran,
and Baptist wing” and “the Arminian, Wesleyan, Holiness, Charismatic and
Pentecostal wing” are finding common ground. 

Some in the Reformed community
would find this troubling. But we can
learn much from simply recalling that the early Reformers themselves referred
frequently to the early church fathers. The Reformation principle of sola
scriptura was in no way intended to convey the idea that church history was
to be disregarded. Rather, Calvin,
Luther, Zwingli, and the others believed themselves to be articulating a more
accurate interpretation not only of the Scriptures but of the early church
fathers. To line ourselves up with
paleo-orthodoxy would be to line ourselves up with the Protestant
Reformers. After all, it is the earliest
teaching of the apostles that makes the church “apostolic” to begin with. The question is not whether or not our
theology lines up with Reformation theology, but whether any theology at all
lines up with apostolic teaching.

While it is not a sufficient enough
answer to settle the problem, returning to the faith as defined by its early
theologians seems at least a better starting place than mimicking culture. This present work has included references and
thought from scholars and writers who might not make it onto the approved list
of many Reformed thinkers.  The choice
was deliberate. Oden says of discovering
orthodoxy that our primary job is to listen, and his words will provide a
fitting conclusion to our considerations of the church:

The imperative, in a word, is Listen! Heed those most aware of the enormous flexibility and variability of
orthodoxy, of its ability to transform various cultural traditions, yet who are
able to behold within all this variety the unifying work of the Holy Spirit.[21]

“I believe in the
forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting”

 Forgiveness
of sins is at the center of the believer’s vertical relationship with God and
horizontal relationship with other human beings. Jesus binds the two together, never to be cut
asunder, in His teaching about prayer.[22]
C.S. Lewis argued that the phrase about the forgiveness of sins was thought
important enough to be included in the creed because the concept can be a quite
difficult one, and easy to forget.[23] The difficulty is that true forgiveness
breaks down our excuses, for to ask for forgiveness in hopes that God or friend
will accept one’s excuse is not to believe one needed forgiveness in the first
place, but that one was justified in his or her actions.[24] 

 The offer
of forgiveness from God through Christ presupposes our guilt, and our
willingness to ask for such forgiveness is an act of humility. We admit we need it. It is the same in our relationships both with
God and with others. Admission of guilt
before God and human beings should never result in a haughty attitude towards
others once the forgiveness has been received; certainly Jesus warned against
such betrayal of God’s forgiveness. Rather, a community whose individuals are willing to be real with one
another about sins and faults, forgiving one another for Christ’s sake, is a
different kind of community than perhaps the world around us is used to. We must stop reciting the cliché, “Christians
aren’t perfect, just forgiven” as an excuse for our faults, and rather begin seeking
forgiveness from people that we have wronged. It is a genuine, humble, and forgiving community that will draw
decentered postmodern people, not an arrogant group intent on pointing fingers,
hoping the sins of others will look bad enough to cover up our own.

 The
resurrection of the body and life everlasting are the consummation of the hope
we are linked to at baptism, when we are united in the resurrection life of
Jesus. As the church passed on through
persecutions, schisms, corruption, victory, defeat, reformations, revivals,
modernity, and now into postmodernity, it does so all the while looking for a
home that will never fade away. While
difficulties and persecutions may abound, and the church may have many more
tribulations through which it must pass, we cling to the class “faith once
delivered,” knowing that life everlasting with Jesus awaits us. 

CONCLUSION: MOVING FORWARD, LOOKING BACKWARD

 In essence,
my argument is that our best path forward in Reformed churches as well as in
the rest of the Christian world, be it Evangelical, Protestant, or Catholic, is
to look to our rich past before making a lunge at future ministry in a
postmodern world. As has been noted,
postmodernism can hardly be defined in the first place. It is almost impossible to even use the
phrase, “postmodern world,” since the world, in fact, is not thoroughly
postmodern, as if that were even possible. The deconstruction of the modern world is a blessing, in that we are
being freed from many of the philosophical threads that led to the belief that
we are in a post-Christian era. In the
context of postmodernism, in light of its dissatisfaction with modernity,
Christianity may very well gain a new voice as people once again open up to the
importance of spirituality. 

 At the same
time, we dare not place our hopes on postmodernism itself. Some hope that the tolerance of postmodernism
will open up the way for the breaking down of sectarianism in the church.[25] Others, as we have seen, think the
postmodernism is a more biblical expression of the way the world actually
is. We must be careful not to submit to
passing idolatries and cling instead to the classic Christian faith. It is not because postmodern tolerance
convinces us that sectarianism is wrong that we should engage in efforts to
unify the church; “but we should hate these things because Scripture requires
us to hate them — one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”[26] 

 Commenting
on postmodernism,

Princeton

philosopher
Diogenes Allen has stated, “A massive intellectual revolution is taking place
that is perhaps as great as that which marked off the modern world from the
Middle Ages.”[27] If he is correct, the church must be alert
and ready to respond. We will not be
ready if we continue to chase every new fad that comes along, including the
ones we create for ourselves. We must
humbly return to the classic ecumenical faith and listen to it. After listening and learning, we must then
listen to each other, and dialogue on the grounds of our shared ancient
faith. Finally, we must stop and listen
to those around us who do not belong to our faith, first of all because we love
them, and second of all because we want to share with them our great story, the
continuing saga of the God of Israel, of His Son Jesus Christ, and of the work
of the Holy Spirit in the world.