Before the Israelites crossed the Jordan to enter the Promised Land, Moses had taught them all the commands, decrees and laws that they and all their future generations were to obey after they began to live in the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 6:1-3).
Under Joshua’s leadership, the Israelites crossed the Jordan, conquered and took possession of the land God had promised to give them. “The people served the LORD throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the LORD had done for Israel… . After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals. They forsook the LORD, the god of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them” (Judges 2:7-12).
Moses envisioned his teachings to be obeyed not only by his contemporary Israelites but also to be passed on from one generation to the next. This intergenerational link is similar to the links of a long chain that guarantees the continuity and perpetuity of the faith. To Moses’ chagrin however, the Israelites who were Moses’ and Joshua’s contemporaries failed to pass on the teachings to the next generation. The emerging generation abandoned the LORD and worshiped other gods. This created a crisis of faith, a situation in which the Israelites professed to be the LORD’s covenant people but practiced foreign religions.
Crisis of Faith
This crisis situation of Israel is more similar to the crisis of faith in the Presbyterian Church than we Presbyterians want to admit. This crisis of faith is rooted in the theological confusion of our time (theological crisis), watered by a long-standing educational oversight (educational crisis), and is now being harvested as an identity compromise (identity crisis).
Theological Crisis
As the millennium draws to a close, many professing Christians in the Presbyterian communion take pride in embracing beliefs that are contradictions of and departures from scriptural teachings. This creates a kind of theological tribalism which, when lauded and encouraged by denominational leaders, results in theological confusion.
Educational Crisis
Biblical literacy is perhaps the most daunting task the church must face in the new millennium. It was not by accident that each time the Israelites had drifted away from the LORD and later returned, their leaders would invariably teach the law of God (e.g. Nehemiah 7-8).
Identity Crisis
The body of beliefs contained in the Book of Confessions is what describes and defines us as Christians in general, and as Reformed Christians in particular. In the creeds, catechisms and confessions, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) declares to its members and to the world who and what it is, what it believes and what it resolves to do.1 When Presbyterians attempt to delete some of the confessional teachings or to throw the Book of Confessions out the window altogether, we lose our identity, our raison d’etre.
All these three crises are part and parcel of the same problem: somewhere along the way one generation failed to teach the next. It is time to dust off the Book of Confessions and begin fulfilling the mandate of the Confessing Church as a Teaching Church.
Time For A Matching Game
In the early church the creeds were used as the litmus test for authentic faith in Jesus Christ. A candidate for baptism had to recite a compendium of fundamental facts or truths of faith as evidence of his or her faith before being baptized and accepted as a member of the church. The beliefs embraced by the candidate had to match the standard, apostolic, scriptural teachings adopted by the early communion of the saints.
In order to recover our theological identity, each congregation must have some mechanism whereby it can teach and test their candidates for baptism and membership. Each congregation must also design a process to fully “catechize” (teach) those who have been baptized as infants and later become ready to participate as young adults in the life of the church.
By designing and using such a process, each congregation participates in a kind of matching game, ensuring that the beliefs of their members match the beliefs of the Presbyterian Church.
Reordering Priorities
Aside from teaching our adults and children in the congregations, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) must also reorder its priorities in order to become an effective instrument for the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Redefine diversity as a value
“Diversity” or “variety” of beliefs, i.e. theological diversity, has been elevated to a doctrinal status in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). While cultural and racial/ethnic diversity should be valued as a way to enrich the life of our church, theological diversity should not be allowed to govern or to hold the church hostage to unscriptural ideas about Jesus Christ.
Reassign a high priority to theological unity
Unity of the body of Christ is first and foremost theological unity.2 Unless and until a reasonable degree of theological unity is achieved, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will suffer from an identity crisis and will continue to be ineffective in its mission.
Rededicate ourselves to the teaching of doctrine
One retired pastor who had had a fruitful ministry said, “If I could start all over again, I would use my pulpit as a teaching desk.” We must teach our people doctrine because the church of Jesus Christ is charged with the mandate to impart and preserve sound doctrine (1 Timothy 1:10; 6:3; 2 Timothy 1:13; 4:3; Titus 1:9-10; 2:1; also see Study 3 of this series).
Rediscover the Confessions as a teaching tool
The Book of Confessions, along with the new catechism “Belonging to Christ” passed by the 210th General Assembly in 1998, provides a marvelous tool for our matching game. At the congregational level, the confessions can be used in a wide variety of ways: preaching from the pulpit, officers training, church-based theological education for adults, new members training, and teaching baptized children who are ready to receive communion.
Conclusion
In Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked his disciples two pivotal questions: “Who do people say the Son of Man is” and “Who do you say I am” (Matthew 16:13-20). Against the background of multiculturalism and against the backdrop of varied religious traditions, the Lord Jesus Christ called on his twelve apostles to express their theological convictions about his Messiahship and to declare their personal and exclusive loyalty to him. The church of Jesus Christ has the scriptural mandate of making disciples of Christ and teaching them to obey Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:19-20). This mandate to teach includes no less than imparting the sound doctrine in answer to the question, “Who do you say I am”.
This study first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 5, No. 3 (May/Jun 1999).
