Lent is over, only if you want it so. Limiting purposeful devotions to God for a short period of time can be helpful, especially if it leads to deeper commitment. Lent continues if you wish it so.
Our spiritual ancestors, Israel, spent 40 long years in the desert, let’s call it a divinely chosen and then enforced time of Lent. A life time of Lent. God came into their midst and they began to learn about life with God.
In its long Lenten walk with God the Christian church has confessed its faith and committed that faith to writing. Thus the Christian Reformed Church has subscribed to the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort since its birth in 1857, having inherited them from their ancestors in the faith. Now the Synod of the CRC recommends the Belhar Confession to the churches for study in preparation for debate and vote on its approval as a fourth confession at the Synod of 2012.
John Bolt, professor of theology at Calvin Theological Seminary and advisor to the Synod of 2009, addressed Synod of 2009 on the Belhar recommendation. The text of his address follows:
Our spiritual ancestors, Israel, spent 40 long years in the desert, let’s call it a divinely chosen and then enforced time of Lent. A life time of Lent. God came into their midst and they began to learn about life with God.
In its long Lenten walk with God the Christian church has confessed its faith and committed that faith to writing. Thus the Christian Reformed Church has subscribed to the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort since its birth in 1857, having inherited them from their ancestors in the faith. Now the Synod of the CRC recommends the Belhar Confession to the churches for study in preparation for debate and vote on its approval as a fourth confession at the Synod of 2012.
John Bolt, professor of theology at Calvin Theological Seminary and advisor to the Synod of 2009, addressed Synod of 2009 on the Belhar recommendation. The text of his address follows:
"Mr. President
Thank you for the opportunity to raise a number of concerns I have about the recommendation before synod.
Thank you for the opportunity to raise a number of concerns I have about the recommendation before synod.
"I enthusiastically share the vision of the Belhar Confession in its powerful affirmations of section 2 [nature of the church], yet when I go to Section 4 [task of the church], I have concerns that the Belhar is an inadequate instrument for that purpose. Specifically, I fear that proposing making the Belhar a fourth confession for the CRC, in an honest desire for unity and reconciliation, could nonetheless have the tragically ironic consequence of creating discord and disunity where it does not now exist.
"Statements such as “God has revealed himself as the one who wishes to bring about justice and true peace on the earth” followed by “God . . . is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor and the wronged,” and then applied to the church’s obligation to follow God in “standing by people in any kind of suffering and need, which implies, among other things, that the church must witness against and strive against any form of injustice” including “witnessing against all the powerful and privileged who selfishly seek their own interests and thus control and harm others”—are at one level of course true but they are partial truths and unable to serve as a full statement of the gospel. They beg the question about who the “poor” are in Scripture and to whom it applies today, and who decides who the real victims are. All too often it is simply assumed that demographic analysis of economies provides the answer and that God’s peace and justice for this world must be understood in categories of class and race. Here the wonderful affirmation of Section 2 that “true faith in Jesus Christ is the only condition for membership in this church” seems in tension with the more global and universal reach of the subsequent discussion of unity, reconciliation and justice in general. To heighten the issue here consider what happens if we substituted the evil of abortion for that of racism and said something along the lines of “God has a preferential option for the unborn and requires that his people be pro-life; that in the United States this is now a status confessionis requiring the church to stand with the unborn and vigorously oppose all those who tolerate or even promote the culture of death or who rationalize their support for politicians and political parties that do so. The troubling question I have for the delegates of synod—a question that we have not faced yet and need to in the next few years—why are we not making this a matter of status confessionis for us? I am as vigorously and passionately pro-life as I am anti-racist but also would oppose such a move for the CRC. Should that inconsistency however not bother us?
"You see what concerns me about Belhar is that the comments I just highlighted from section 4—when stated so starkly and without qualification—may be at odds with our Lord’s own teaching, not to mention the ecclesiology of the Reformed standards. Jesus did after all also give us those troubling statements in Luke 12:49-53 that he came to bring division and conflict between those who follow him and reject him. The biblical antithesis is not between the economically prosperous and disadvantaged—God is no respecter of persons; rich and poor are both sinners in need of redemption—nor is the justice and peace of Scripture simply the cessation of class, racial or national conflict. As synod this year and the CRC in the next three years considers the Belhar—with whatever proposed status—I believe that we need to ask whether or not it in fact significantly alters and perhaps even contradicts a number of categories that are currently an essential part of our doctrinal standards such as the marks of the church. And we need to ask how different standards relate to one another when there are competing or conflicting claims? (e.g. The PCUSA’s 1967 Confession and the Westminster Standards)
"Mr. President,
I believe that a great many questions remain about our understanding of what it means to be a confessional church and how our confessions of faith lead us to faithful discipleship in God’s world. These are weighty and I am not sure we have even begun to deal with them much less answer them. If we fail to deal with them we might reap the harvest that the 1986 accompanying letter to the Belhar prayed would not happen when it said: “Our prayer is that this act of confession will not place false stumbling blocks in the way and thereby cause and foster false divisions, but rather that it will be reconciling and uniting.” That concern should factor into the decision how synod deals with this matter this year and how the church will in the years to come. I pray for the Holy Spirit to grant the delegates of synod and our church courage, grace, and wisdom as we wrestle with this recommendation and its aftermath."
4 comments:
Amen!
Dr. Mouw has once again spoken against granting the Belhar confessional status (Part 1)
October 9, 2009
More on Belhar
http://www.netbloghost.com/mouw/?p=121
Last spring I posted a piece criticizing the proposed adoption of the Belhar Confession as a confessional document by some Reformed and Presbyterian churches in North America. I received a lot of criticism for my position on the subject. And the criticisms came from many good friends who saw my blog posting as a betrayal of sorts.
My critics ought not to have worried about the impact of my comments on the actual votes. Both the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America moved toward adoption at their synods this past summer, and now the Special Committee on the Belhar Confession of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has announced that they are unanimously in favor of adopting Belhar at next year’s General Assembly.
Let me make it clear that I like the Belhar Confession. I served for several years as chair of the Christian Reformed Church’s Synodical Committee on Race Relations, and expended much energy in opposing apartheid policies, as well as the heretical racist rationales for supporting apartheid offered by several white Dutch Reformed bodies in South Africa. By the time the Belhar Confession appeared in 1986, I was living in California, and actively involved in an Episcopal-sponsored anti-apartheid center in Pasadena. Belhar spoke for me, and it still does on the issues to which it was addressed at that point in recent history. My appreciation of Belhar was also enhanced by knowing that it was authored primarily by Dirkie Smit, a solid Reformed theologian who was one of my Afrikaner heroes in the anti-apartheid struggle.
So why am I opposed to our—the CRC, RCA, and PC(USA)— adopting Belhar as a confessional document?
Dr. Mouw - Part 2
When I wrote about this earlier I mentioned that Allan Boesak, also one of the gifted anti-apartheid spokespersons in South Africa’s Reformed community, had recently appealed to Belhar in support of including active gays and lesbians in the church’s ministerial ranks. I might also have mentioned that many fear that Belhar will now be used to reinforce an unnuanced anti-Israeli stance.
I think those worries are real. But my critics, many of whom share my views about same-sex issues and Middle East matters, rightly insist that this is no reason to oppose Belhar as such. What we must do, they rightly argue, is to make sure that Belhar is understood as a prophetic word against racial and ethnic discrimination within the Christian community.
Fair enough. A lot of good things can be misused. But I promise to be ready to say “We told you so” if this happens with Belhar.
My real concern about adopting Belhar has to do with the broader issue of the nature of confessional integrity in our Reformed and Presbyterian churches. I think I know all three denominations very well. I was raised in an RCA pastor’s home, and attended two of that denomination’s colleges and one of its seminaries. I was an active member of the CRC for 17 years. And for two decades now I have been similarly active in the PC(USA).
When I was studying at an RCA seminary in the 1960s, one of my more conservative professors explained the differing views on the status of the Reformed “Standards of Unity”—Heidelberg, Belgic, and Dort—in this way. The CRC, he said, takes them very seriously. If you are Christian Reformed you are expected really to believe what is in them.
This is why, he observed, that when the CRC decides that something in the confessions is no longer binding—such as the Belgic Confession’s statement that the magistrate has a duty to preserve and protect “true religion”—they go on record as saying so. Some people in the RCA, on the other hand, said the professor, tend to see the book of confessions as a kind of museum. They periodically walk through the museum and say things like: “Yes, they really believed that in the past. I respect them for it. I identify with the community that once said that kind of thing.” He made it clear that he preferred the CRC approach.
Dr.Mouw (Part 3)
I think the professor had it right at the time. But today all three of the aforementioned denominations basically endorse the museum approach. Or it may be a little more like a “Great Books” approach. The documents from the past are all there up on the shelf, and we all acknowledge their importance, but some of us really like James Baldwin and others of us prefer Jane Austen.
I personally endorse the older CRC approach. As someone who officially subscribed, in the CRC, to the Belgic Confession, I publicly dissented, as a matter of conscience, from the article that required me to “detest” the Anabaptists, as well as the Heidelbergers’ harsh verdict on the Catholic mass. I was grateful when the CRC declared that these formulations are no longer binding.
These days it is rather common for people—CRC folks included—who have taken ordination vows publicly to express their disagreements with what I take to be essential Reformed doctrines. Indeed, I am often treated as a curiosity of sorts when I make it clear that I still subscribe to the actual doctrinal content of the Reformed “Great Books”—predestination, individual election, substitutionary atonement, the reality of hell, Christ as the only Way.
So, let me put it bluntly. If we—for all practical purposes—don’t care about genuinely subscribing to the actual content of, say, the Belgic or the Westminster confessions, why would we think that adopting Belhar would be in any way binding on the consciences of persons who take ordination vows? When detached from the content of the rest of Reformed thought, many of Belhar’s formulations—as stand-alone theological declarations—are dangerously vague. Belhar deserves confessional status only in a community that takes the rest of its confessions with utmost seriousness.
The most compelling case being made for adopting Belhar is for me the pleas of underrepresented racial-ethnic minority groups in our denominations. They have a right to ask us to declare our firm conviction that racism and ethno-centrism are not only unjust, they are theological heresies. But I fear they are assuming that we are more committed to confessional integrity than we actually are. When all of this debate is over and Belhar—as is very likely—is on the confessional shelf, I hope they will push us hard on whether we really take that whole shelf seriously.
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