Thank you for this! And what an answer to prayer. Boundaries are what we as human beings need to thrive! Holding to scripture and what God teaches us in His Word is the TRUTH we need to cling to. Well done Synod 2024!!!
Good developments. Praise God. May all God's people unite around the Word.
However, one concern that needs to be addressed doctrinally by the CRC is concupiscence. Notably missing from the definition of unchastity is any *thought, desire, or inclination* that does not conform to Gods revealed will.
Good summary but a oft repeated and false strawman that the 'other side' is arguing on the basis of heritage and birthright. Primarily, Canadian CRC folks have grown expressions of their Christian faith from a Kyperian tradition and have bridled for years by what is seen as a narrow right-leaning American Christianity that seems to breezily ignore the mountain of biblical references to justice and care for the poor as at best secondary to the Christian witness (and kingdom evangelistic economy I might add) and at worst just Democratic politics/wrong or evil. I appreciate the evangelical leavening to us in Canada over the year and I also appreciate the push to confront and challenge sin that have been generated in the conversations in recent years; Canadians tend to want everyone to just get along. But I fear for a Western church that tends toward a consumerist and individualistic mentality that disparages care and the biblical for the poor and for justice. I also am old enough to know the history of sharpening confessionalism has often done little to produce unity out of the Three Forms of Unity. Thanks for your work and for listening!
John, thanks for weighing in. We certainly need a proper balance of doctrine and action, belief and behavior. I am also concerned about a consumerist individualistic Christianity, of which I see plenty around. We of different gifts need one another.
Coming now from the outside, this nonetheless seems to be a fair representation as to what happened; it certainly is how I read it. That said, I would be cautious about the Conclusion. The proper unity of the Church, what we hold one another accountable to, if even from a distance, is that of following Jesus Christ. We all have our cultural wineskins--that heritage can hold a lot (or it can leak); so too a "confessional" stance--it holds, it leaks. What allows the church to survive is this following of Jesus Christ in worship, discipleship, and making Him known. And that also, properly is a gift. In the meantime we have our locations, our neighbors and a Word that needs to be heard.
Creeds/Confessions are the children of God 'babbling back' the Word Jesus Christ has spoken to us :) Knowing what people 'babble' helps us see whether they have the same Saviour as us. Many claim to follow Jesus' Word (Jehovahs Witnesses), but you can only know if they are truly following Jesus alone by their 'babble'. Many people claim Jesus but their 'Jesus' and their 'bible' is subordinated to other authorities (self, culture, etc.)
A resource I found helpful was Carl Trueman's Creedal Imperative.
Could you expound on your concern about the conclusion, Bill? It states simply that what holds us together is not cultural heritage, rather our confessions. Yes, human confessions can leak. They are human documents. The church must always do due diligence. Is your concern that we somehow should not forge our unity around the confessions? Thanks.
I was thinking in a more theological frame: the unity does not lie in our selves, but in Jesus Christ. If that is so, then we seek some form of organization that brings us closer to Him; there are different ways that happens. Confessions are understood as being a reliable, perhaps the most reliable means of knowing Christ and following Him.
If we say that our unity is finally in Jesus Christ, that also gives a certain freedom to our own articulation. If the Church belongs to Jesus, then we don't have to worry about whether it will survive; it will. That in turn, I think, frees us to work at being faithful where we are. It also means that we can look across the landscape and see others who are also desiring to follow Jesus, even if we disagree with them or think they are mistaken. They can be mistaken and still be followers, because the Church belongs to Jesus not to men.
And realistically, even as we might believe that our Confessions are the best way of approaching or structuring the Church, we also know that this confession-shaped community that so loves Jesus, is also a community in time. a created thing. It too, suffers from the same frailty that all human-shaped institutions have. Still, rather than despair, we ought to whip out the hymnal and start singing, "My hope is built on nothing less...."
Hello Bill! Thanks for engaging. To your point, Jesus is our unity in that he is the head of his church and we are his body. The trouble is, what sort of Jesus? There are many versions of him. Pretty much every religion in the world has their own understanding of who Jesus is. We do not recognize the Jesus of Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. As such, a functioning denomination needs creeds and confessions or statements of faith of some kind to delineate what Scripture teaches. A denomination that has a similar heritage but both blesses and declares sinful alternative sexualities will be a denomination constantly at war with itself. Common understanding of the boundaries is what makes for a functioning denomination.
My advice: don't be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
When you ask "what sort of Jesus" this does make knowing Jesus a thing of our doing, of our approach. But is that how it is? Who Jesus is a matter of revelation, of disclosure: we enter into His finished work--this is the whole book of Hebrews. Consequently, we are invited to know this One the best we can, with our limited, epistemologically flawed tools that we have. So, Confessions. You mention the Mormons but a better starting point might be the Orthodox down the street (in our neighborhood, St. Nicholas): how and in what manner do they know Jesus?
Again, this point is theological, about what God is doing. If we only set our eyes on our Confessions, we can miss out on the One whom the Confessions would gladly point us to. As I understand it, the role of Confessions, or other Christian articulations (e.g. Orthodox) is to help us so live into the life in God that our own lives, here and now, reflect Christ's character, viz bear fruit.
And finally for politics: even with our divisions, with confessional boundaries, we can nonetheless encourage, edify, support the following of Jesus, not because of some sort of human blah-blah all-is-one nonsense, but because this Jesus keeps seeking us, keeps shaping us, keeps inviting us to be more and more conformed to His life. So it is that I put you--Abide--before the Throne.
Thank you for this! And what an answer to prayer. Boundaries are what we as human beings need to thrive! Holding to scripture and what God teaches us in His Word is the TRUTH we need to cling to. Well done Synod 2024!!!
Good developments. Praise God. May all God's people unite around the Word.
However, one concern that needs to be addressed doctrinally by the CRC is concupiscence. Notably missing from the definition of unchastity is any *thought, desire, or inclination* that does not conform to Gods revealed will.
Good summary but a oft repeated and false strawman that the 'other side' is arguing on the basis of heritage and birthright. Primarily, Canadian CRC folks have grown expressions of their Christian faith from a Kyperian tradition and have bridled for years by what is seen as a narrow right-leaning American Christianity that seems to breezily ignore the mountain of biblical references to justice and care for the poor as at best secondary to the Christian witness (and kingdom evangelistic economy I might add) and at worst just Democratic politics/wrong or evil. I appreciate the evangelical leavening to us in Canada over the year and I also appreciate the push to confront and challenge sin that have been generated in the conversations in recent years; Canadians tend to want everyone to just get along. But I fear for a Western church that tends toward a consumerist and individualistic mentality that disparages care and the biblical for the poor and for justice. I also am old enough to know the history of sharpening confessionalism has often done little to produce unity out of the Three Forms of Unity. Thanks for your work and for listening!
John, thanks for weighing in. We certainly need a proper balance of doctrine and action, belief and behavior. I am also concerned about a consumerist individualistic Christianity, of which I see plenty around. We of different gifts need one another.
Coming now from the outside, this nonetheless seems to be a fair representation as to what happened; it certainly is how I read it. That said, I would be cautious about the Conclusion. The proper unity of the Church, what we hold one another accountable to, if even from a distance, is that of following Jesus Christ. We all have our cultural wineskins--that heritage can hold a lot (or it can leak); so too a "confessional" stance--it holds, it leaks. What allows the church to survive is this following of Jesus Christ in worship, discipleship, and making Him known. And that also, properly is a gift. In the meantime we have our locations, our neighbors and a Word that needs to be heard.
Creeds/Confessions are the children of God 'babbling back' the Word Jesus Christ has spoken to us :) Knowing what people 'babble' helps us see whether they have the same Saviour as us. Many claim to follow Jesus' Word (Jehovahs Witnesses), but you can only know if they are truly following Jesus alone by their 'babble'. Many people claim Jesus but their 'Jesus' and their 'bible' is subordinated to other authorities (self, culture, etc.)
A resource I found helpful was Carl Trueman's Creedal Imperative.
Could you expound on your concern about the conclusion, Bill? It states simply that what holds us together is not cultural heritage, rather our confessions. Yes, human confessions can leak. They are human documents. The church must always do due diligence. Is your concern that we somehow should not forge our unity around the confessions? Thanks.
I was thinking in a more theological frame: the unity does not lie in our selves, but in Jesus Christ. If that is so, then we seek some form of organization that brings us closer to Him; there are different ways that happens. Confessions are understood as being a reliable, perhaps the most reliable means of knowing Christ and following Him.
If we say that our unity is finally in Jesus Christ, that also gives a certain freedom to our own articulation. If the Church belongs to Jesus, then we don't have to worry about whether it will survive; it will. That in turn, I think, frees us to work at being faithful where we are. It also means that we can look across the landscape and see others who are also desiring to follow Jesus, even if we disagree with them or think they are mistaken. They can be mistaken and still be followers, because the Church belongs to Jesus not to men.
And realistically, even as we might believe that our Confessions are the best way of approaching or structuring the Church, we also know that this confession-shaped community that so loves Jesus, is also a community in time. a created thing. It too, suffers from the same frailty that all human-shaped institutions have. Still, rather than despair, we ought to whip out the hymnal and start singing, "My hope is built on nothing less...."
Hello Bill! Thanks for engaging. To your point, Jesus is our unity in that he is the head of his church and we are his body. The trouble is, what sort of Jesus? There are many versions of him. Pretty much every religion in the world has their own understanding of who Jesus is. We do not recognize the Jesus of Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. As such, a functioning denomination needs creeds and confessions or statements of faith of some kind to delineate what Scripture teaches. A denomination that has a similar heritage but both blesses and declares sinful alternative sexualities will be a denomination constantly at war with itself. Common understanding of the boundaries is what makes for a functioning denomination.
My advice: don't be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
When you ask "what sort of Jesus" this does make knowing Jesus a thing of our doing, of our approach. But is that how it is? Who Jesus is a matter of revelation, of disclosure: we enter into His finished work--this is the whole book of Hebrews. Consequently, we are invited to know this One the best we can, with our limited, epistemologically flawed tools that we have. So, Confessions. You mention the Mormons but a better starting point might be the Orthodox down the street (in our neighborhood, St. Nicholas): how and in what manner do they know Jesus?
Again, this point is theological, about what God is doing. If we only set our eyes on our Confessions, we can miss out on the One whom the Confessions would gladly point us to. As I understand it, the role of Confessions, or other Christian articulations (e.g. Orthodox) is to help us so live into the life in God that our own lives, here and now, reflect Christ's character, viz bear fruit.
And finally for politics: even with our divisions, with confessional boundaries, we can nonetheless encourage, edify, support the following of Jesus, not because of some sort of human blah-blah all-is-one nonsense, but because this Jesus keeps seeking us, keeps shaping us, keeps inviting us to be more and more conformed to His life. So it is that I put you--Abide--before the Throne.
Honestly I'm not sure if we are divergent. I'm on board with focusing on the person of Jesus and using the confessions to focus us on him.