published in Theological Digest & Outlook (Burlington, March 2000)

How Did We Get Here?

or

The Origins of the Operative Theology of The United Church of Canada

I

In 1990 Bishop Donald Bastian of the Free Methodist Church in Canada gave me a copy of Rev. Wayne Kleinsteuber’s book, published in 1984, More than a Memory: The Renewal of Methodism in Canada. In the course of reading the book with relish and profit I was startled to find myself quoted in the text. I had no recollection of saying what was imputed to me. When I checked the endnotes, however, and saw the reference to the CMHS meeting of 1978, I recognized immediately the context and content of my assertion.

In the “question and answer” period following my CMHS address in 1978 I had been asked, “Which has had the greater influence in the theological formation of The United Church of Canada: the Calvinist tradition or the Wesleyan?” And I had responded, without reflection or hesitation, “Neither. Schleiermacher, the German romantic liberal, has been the determining influence…..”

I was reading in 1990 a book published in 1984 that quoted my comment from 1978. In 1978 several developments that continue to haunt the United Church had not occurred: the publication of In God’s Image (1980), the distribution of Sexual Orientations, Lifestyles and Ministry (1988), the decisions of the General Council later in 1988, the adoption of Membership, Ministry and Human Sexuality (1990). These pronouncements and promulgations reflected the United Church’s theological understanding underlying its statements concerning sexual conduct deemed to conform to a profession of faith. The theology of John Wesley was evident in none of this. Apart from Wesley’s doctrinal standards (the Sermons, Articles of Religion, and Notes on the New Testament), one would need to read only the single largest tract Wesley penned, that concerning original sin, to see that a chasm loomed between his theological tenor and that of United Church documents and developments.

Once the denomination’s highest court had rendered the “sexual revolution” denominational policy, other theological pronouncements followed, all of which were similarly remote from anything Wesley would have owned. I speak now of Membership, Ministry and Human Sexuality (1988), The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture (1992) (where the most that could be said of Jesus is that he is “mentor and friend”), Mending the World (1997), Voices United: The Hymn and Worship Book of The United Church of Canada (1996), Renewed Understanding of Ecumenism (1995), and not least the response of the executive of General Council to Moderator Phipps’ interview with the Ottawa Citizen (1997). When Phipps publicly announced, defended, and was supported officially in a Christology that was manifestly non-apostolic, and when Phipps’ declaration and defense were located in a succession spanning the last two decades, it could only be concluded that liberal theology of the late 18th century and the entire 19th century had become the operative theology of the denomination.

I am not pretending that liberal theology is monochrome. Undeniably there are significant differences in the work of Ritschl, Harnack, and Troeltsch. None the less, in many respects they all stand on the shoulders of Schleiermacher. The lattermost thinker is the progenitor of the theological movement.

Can my thesis (that Schleiermacher is the inspiration of the operative theology of the United Church) be supported? The thesis can be tested only as Schleiermacher himself is examined.

II

Early in his adult life Schleiermacher (1768–1834) became aware of the contempt that cultured (but not necessarily snobbish) people poured on the contemporary articulations of the Christian faith. He insisted that these people were held off faith not because of the offense of the gospel but rather because of the offensiveness of its current, less-than-sophisticated expression. Knowing that these people were part of that world which “God so loves”, he maintained that the church, and especially its theological spokespersons, were to love them no less. To love them meant at least to take seriously the reason they found faith repugnant (S. said it was merely the crude way faith was voiced that these people found unacceptable), and to address their objections sincerely.

Moreover, S. knew that the Christian mission is never served by the church’s deliberately refusing to relate the gospel to human reflection at its profoundest and human achievement at its loftiest. Here he could only recall God’s word to Jeremiah millennia earlier, “Seek the welfare of the city [i.e., Babylon, the place of exile where Israel was thoroughly despised], for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jeremiah 29:7) The church is never to huddle inwardly in attempted self-survival; it must always face outwardly, forever wrestling with the connection between the substance of the gospel and the thought-forms of the culture. To fear for the gospel in its engagement with society is only to declare one’s lack of confidence in the gospel’s inherent integrity and vitality and militancy. In a word, not to adapt “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) to modernity is to render the church and its proclamation museum pieces that nostalgically recall a bygone era but lack all relevance to the world around us.

Schleiermacher was born in Breslau, Germany, where he was schooled at the hands of Moravian Pietists. S.’s philosophical brilliance, however, soon transgressed the intellectual boundaries of the Pietists, and he found himself studying modern philosophy and classical Greek at the University of Halle. Here he supported himself by tutoring aristocratic families who in turn exposed him to the higher reaches of German culture, his exposure issuing in his epoch-making Addresses on Religion to it Cultured Despisers. At the University of Berlin he taught several hours per week in every subject of the theology curriculum (apart from the Older Testament), published volume after volume, and never skimped on the preparation for his weekly sermon. He remained a much-loved pastor at the same time that his intellectual gifts found him appointed to the highest echelons of the Academy of Berlin. His misshapen body, ill health and near-chronic pain never found him bitter or resentful.

From 1880 to 1930 S. was studied more than any other theologian in Europe (Luther excepted.) His thinking dominated the church in the 19th century and continues to dominate most of it in the 20th.

Schleiermacher begins his theology by identifying the nature of religion. Religion isn’t morality. (People can be moral without being religious. Furthermore, the truly free person doesn’t submit to an external moral law.) Neither is religion the rational apprehension of doctrine. (People can finesse doctrine yet remain unacquainted with God.) Neither is religion philosophical insight. The seat of religion is neither the will (as with moralists) nor reason (as with philosophers) but feeling. The religious consciousness is the “feeling of absolute dependence.” Did S. mean “the feeling of absolute dependence upon the Absolute”? Alas, he never resolves the ambiguity that surrounds him here, often speaking of “God” and “nature” interchangeably. Pantheism (the notion that God is the essence of everything) or panentheism (the notion that the essence of everything includes God) haunts S.’s theology throughout. Since religion consists in the feeling of absolute dependence, doctrine is virtually insignificant. S. assigns no weight to any statement we formulate concerning God. We can merely represent God to ourselves pictorially, imagistically, as shepherd, king, father, etc., without every saying something true of God himself.

Not surprisingly, S. everywhere reinterprets Christian vocabulary, with the result that biblical distinctiveness is forfeited and the substance of the faith evaporates. While S. retains the word “redemption”, for instance, his doing so appears pointless (even misleading) when his understanding of “sin” bears virtually no resemblance to what prophets and apostles and the church have always understood.

In the same way all the major building blocks of the Christian faith are recast. Convinced that the particularity of Jesus’ Jewish background is simply something that the “universal” Jesus must repudiate (and no doubt aware too of virulent anti-Semitism in Berlin), S. denies that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. His denial of Jesus’ messiahship is matched by his silence concerning the Incarnation. Instead of the Incarnate “God-with-us”, Jesus happens to one who possesses intensified God-consciousness. To be sure, all humans possess it in some degree; Jesus, however, more than anyone else. Jesus’ mission is to stimulate our God-consciousness until it becomes the determining influence in our life. Whereas the apostles everywhere confess Jesus of Nazareth to be the Son of God, and are careful to distinguish the Son as begotten from sons and daughters who are made such by faith, S. is content to speak of Jesus as quantitatively superior in terms of God-consciousness.

Insisting on the feeling of absolute dependence (God-consciousness) as the focus and origin of all theological expression, S. draws attention to the fact that no reflection upon religious awareness yields anything remotely resembling the church’s historic statements concerning the Trinity. The Trinity too is an instance of antiquated theological “baggage” that now understandably occasions the contempt of the cultured. Then the Trinity must be jettisoned. (Needless to say, as soon as S. forfeits the doctrine he forfeits what the doctrine always preserves; namely, the bedrock truth that what God is in himself eternally he is toward us, and what God is toward us he is in himself eternally.)

Since Incarnation is the presupposition of atonement, pivotal distortion in the former can be expected to garble the latter. S. omits any understanding of atonement as God’s making “at one” with himself those who are unable to “rightwise” their relationship with God. Reconciliation with God isn’t primarily wrought by God and owned by believers in faith. Rather, it’s something we effect as our God-consciousness frees us from self-rejection. Where scripture speaks of propitiation and expiation, the averting of God’s wrath and the sacrifice which effects this, S. says nothing. His silence here is one with his silence on other matters that loom so very large in the bible: the forgiveness of sins or justification. S. never acknowledges that sinful men and women are exposed to the judgement and condemnation of God.

In view of the fact that S. has set aside as non-essential all the historically-affirmed building blocks of the Christian faith (the election of Israel, the Incarnation of Israel’s greater Son, and the Incarnation’s raison d’etre, Christ’s atoning death — the cross being the one “word” that the apostles insist gathers up all that God as ever said or will ever say) we can only ask where S. appears to have set out on the wrong path. Most elementally he went wrong when he set aside the Older Testament. (Recall he taught every subject except the Older Testament.) This omission was his Achilles’ heel. When he denied that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel; when he denied that Jesus’ relationship to Israel’s scriptures differs in any way from Jesus’ relationship to pagan religion; when he insisted that Jesus even contradicts the Hebrew bible (since the Hebrew bible is essentially legalistic(!) while Jesus is not), modern theology was undone.

The Hebrew bible provides the unsubstitutable grammar and logic of faith in Jesus Christ. Whenever it is rejected the Newer Testament is invariably skewed to the point of being falsified. Whenever the Newer is read without the Older, the Newer becomes merely a collection of moralistic teachings (the teacher himself rendered superfluous as soon as his teachings are appropriated), or merely the depiction of a model to be imitated (imitation of the person now superseding the claim of his teachings), or merely a popularized, pictorialized illustration of existential philosophy.

S. enormously undervalues the significance of the sole physical description we have of Jesus: he was circumcized. For the apostles, plainly, it’s crucial for Christian faith that Jesus is a son of Israel. For S., however, the Jewish provenance of Jesus is an impediment to the faith of us Gentiles — and therefore must be erased. The resulting de-judaized Jesus isn’t the fulfillment of God’s centuries-long struggle with Israel. This “universal” figure is now “ideal manhood (sic) achieving itself under the conditions of history.” Religious reality isn’t the result of God’s incursion in Israel; instead it’s the product of human achievement, world history ultimately generating Jesus’ God-consciousness.

Everything in S.’s theology, every aberration in 20th century liberal theology, unravels from this point. According to scripture faith in God begins (and continues) with the fear of God — fear of the One who transcends his creation and is never to be identified with it, whether in whole or in part, or be viewed as an extension of it. S., however, illogically makes his understanding of the creation (specifically, of the contents of humankind’s consciousness) the “whence” and “whither” of his understanding of God. (Here he anticipates the “creation spirituality of the 1980s.) S.’s anthropology everywhere controls his understanding of God (so-called.) He could have avoided the disaster that overtook his theology (even as he never perceived it) if he had begun with theoanthropology, the Incarnation. If he’d begun with a full-orbed Christology he would have found himself emerging amidst the riches of the 16th Century Protestant Reformers, for whom theology ultimately is Christology — as it is in scripture. When he began, however, with anthropology alone (albeit anthropology of religion), he couldn’t avoid the abyss into which he fell, taking all of 19th and most of 20th Century Protestant theology with him. Man, even man at his noblest, is simply not the measure of God.

Victimized by his failure to grasp the Holy One of Israel’s uncompromised “Otherness”, S. appeared to confuse God with nature or at least with some aspect of nature. Not surprisingly, S. characteristically confused an experience of the admittedly awe-full, mysterious depths of the creation with an experience of the mystery of God. “God” was simply the exclamation of someone moved by the creation’s inherent beauty and depth. The confusion, while easy to make and easy to understand, wasn’t thereby rendered any less idolatrous.

S.’s misunderstanding with respect to the creature leads to his misunderstanding with respect to sin. For him sin appears to be the arrears or residue of biological primitivism. He maintains (correctly) that God ordains the conditions of human existence; he goes on to say (incorrectly) that sin arises from these conditions. Plainly he’s confused sin with creatureliness, depravity with finitude. To be sure, creatureliness is the human condition (we aren’t divine), but the human condition as created, not as fallen. Moreover, it’s human creatureliness that God fashions uniquely for dialogical partnership with him. (In scripture God clearly loves all his creatures but he speaks only to men and women. His speaking to us renders us “response-able” and therefore “response-ible.”) Sin doesn’t arise from this! S. fails to grasp the essence of sin. It’s not a carryover from biological primitivism; rather it’s disdainful, disobedient rebellion against and perverse defiance of the One to whom we owe everything. With sad but appropriate consistency S. never deploys the appropriate (biblical) categories for discussing the remedy for sin: reconciliation rooted in atonement and issuing in regeneration.

Displaying his era’s the immense confidence in the outcome of historical processes, S. regarded process as progress. And just as obviously the Hebrew mind doesn’t. S. denied that Jesus is the Son of God Incarnate according to the purpose and act of God, and affirmed instead that Jesus is someone whom history inexplicably spawned as extraordinarily God-conscious. His affirmation concerning historical processes contradicts the logic of scripture. Biblical thought, illuming this point through the Virgin Birth, insists that history cannot generate the redeemer of history. History’s redeemer must be given to it. History’s prideful insistence that it can redeem itself is reduced to absurdity by history’s oft-repeated horrors, as the genocides of our era alone attest.

Perhaps the nature of S.’s theology is most evident in his discussion of doctrine. He maintains that doctrine says nothing about God; doctrine merely reflects an aspect of human consciousness. For this reason he can say virtually nothing about truth. In scripture “truth” is used as a synonym for “reality”, and also as a predicate of statements that express this reality. Doctrine, then, is the articulation of the truth of God on the part of those who have been included, by God’s grace, in God’s self-knowing. Doctrine is the human expression of the truth of God vouchsafed to believers through God’s self-disclosure. Since it’s a human expression, any doctrinal expression is provisional; there’s no formulation concerning the being or activity of God that is beyond re-articulation. To say this, however, isn’t to say that all such formulation is dispensable with respect to the church’s life and mission. Neither is it to say that all such formulation is presumptuous. S. appears to have thought that either doctrinal statements are purely speculative (guesswork) or such statements presumptuously and prematurely (even preposterously) claim to comprehend God, humans taking it upon themselves to speak “the last word” about God. He appears not to have understood that doctrinal statements are the grace-wrought apprehension of God. Believers are admitted, by God’s grace, to a genuine knowledge of God without claiming an exhaustive knowledge of the One whose depths can never finally be plumbed. While it’s plain that knowledge of God born of an encounter with him can never be reduced to any statement about God, it’s also plain that the truth of God and faith in him can never be commended as true (i.e., real) apart from such statements. S.’s failure here meant he could never commend Jesus Christ as truth; S. could only attempt to foster the emergence of a God-consciousness that he assumed somehow to be contagious.

Yet even the crux of S.’s approach overlooked a simple point. Since nothing can be articulated of God himself, said S., and since what is commonly affirmed to be the Holy One of Israel is no more than religious primitivism that cultured people rightly despise, exactly who is the “God” of whom we are supposed to be conscious? of whom Jesus was conscious? It can’t be the God of whom the prophets spoke and whose Son the apostles recognize Jesus to be. Then “God-consciousness” is a vacuous term.

S.’s approach to doctrine (at best, undervaluation; at worst, out-and-out dismissal) continues to characterize much liberal theology, while the vacuity of his major item appears undetected.

S.’s attempt at “adapting” was commendable; his unwitting move from adapting to adopting, however, was fatal. For in adopting the assumptions of the world he de-natured the gospel, turning wine into water, when all the while water can be found everywhere and wine nowhere. Here the gospel was reduced to little more than a mirror reflecting the world’s self-understanding back to the world, even as the world’s aching spiritual need remains unaddressed because unnoticed. In moving from a commendable “adapt” to a fatal “adopt”, S. ultimately confused the offensiveness of a less-than-cultured expression of the Christian faith with the irremovable offense of the gospel itself. S. assumed the truth of the world’s postulates. Liberalism always does. These postulates are (a) the world has an accurate and adequate understanding of its own condition, (b) this condition, while perhaps needing adjustment or even correction here and there, isn’t grievous, let alone both grievous and blind, (c) if the gospel is to be heard, the church must fit its proclamation to the world’s self-understanding.

Surely the horrors of our century alone have exposed the liberal theology of the last two centuries to be intellectually shallow and substantively dilute. Then why does it continue? Why is some variant of it still the dominant theological ethos of mainline North American churches and seminaries? The reason is, liberal theology doesn’t challenge the assumption that the world has access to the ultimate truth about itself. It doesn’t question the facile confidence that the eyes through which the world sees itself have no need of corrective lenses. It doesn’t show that the presuppositions of the world contradict those of the kingdom of God. It doesn’t highlight the truth that morality and religiosity (and much “spirituality” today) are neither the same as the kingdom and therefore the solution to the world’s ills, nor even the vestibule to the kingdom. Rather they are monuments to humankind’s defiance of God and barricades behind which it attempts to hide from God. It leaves unchallenged the biblical conviction that the worst consequence of sinnership is blindness to one’s sinnership, and in the wake of such ignorance of one’s sinnership, further immersion in it.

The most chilling aspect of S.’s theology, and that of the theology of his offspring, is this: S.’s God doesn’t so transcend the world as to be able to visit it with mercy. Chilling or not, this aspect of his theology only magnifies the tenacity of those for whose theology mercy would be but an alien category. Liberal theology dominates the ecclesiastical landscape in that the majority of humankind, including the church, remains unaware that in light of the undeflectable judgement of God mercy is the one thing needful and humankind’s only hope.

Victor Shepherd

This article originally appeared in Christian Week, April 15, 1988 and later in A Crisis of Understanding (Burlington, Welch Publishing Company, Inc., 1988)

The United Church and Ordination of Active Homosexuals: A Critique

Victor Shepherd

In 1984 the highest court of the United Church of Canada, the General Council, commissioned a National Coordinating Group to prepare a report Toward a Christian Understanding of Sexual Orientation, Lifestyles and Ministry (hereafter referred to as the Report). It was endorsed by the Division of Ministry Personnel and Education and the Division of Ministry in Canada. The 118-page report was circulated among the pastors of the United Church. Many of them reacted strongly to its antitheological bias. The central thrusts of the report include:

1) A view of the Bible which uses the word “authority” but which deprives the Bible of any authority;

2) The elevation of an ideology which denatures the gospel and which denies the shape and direction which God wills to impart to human existence. The abstract category “justice” is clearly the controlling principle of the report, although the report nowhere defines “justice”;

3) An insistence that the quality of a relationship is sufficient to legitimize sexual (genital) intimacy;

4) A devaluation of the Fall so thoroughgoing as virtually to deny the Fall. (This theological tenet, which speaks of that distortion of the entire creation which rendered God’s incursion in Jesus Christ necessary, is startlingly underused in view of the place the doctrine has occupied at all times in the history of Christian thought.) With the devaluation of the Fall, there is a corresponding devaluation of redemption, there really being nothing which needs redeeming;

5) The absence of any discussion of the holiness of God and what God’s holiness requires of covenant people who are themselves called to be holy. It is incomprehensible that so central a Biblical category is overlooked when the Report claims to be “in substantive agreement with our Biblical understanding of responsible human relationships” (p. 6);

6) An unawareness of the malleability of human sexuality. (The report mentions only three “orientations”);

7) The defamation by definition of those who are still persuaded that a Biblical view of the place and purpose of sexual intimacy reflects the intention of the Creator.

Perhaps the last-mentioned point will prove to be the occasion of greatest sadness and pain for most readers of the Report. Bullying is always offensive, no less so when the bullying is verbal. It occurs, for in stance, when a word or expression used to describe the position held by someone who disagrees with the Report is defined in such a way as to slander the person of whom it is used. A lamentable case of this occurs when the Report speaks of “heterosexism” as “a systemic form of oppression in which the beliefs and actions of society reinforce the assumed inherent superiority of the heterosexual pattern of loving, and thereby its right to dominance. . . .” (17) But the issue at hand has not primarily to do with “dominance” (i.e., a heterosexual relationship which is marred by exploitation) but of obedience to the will and way of God. The category confusion is glaring. Its pejorative twist is unmistakable. “Assumed inherent superiority” ascribes haughtiness to anyone who questions the Report’s assumption that same-sex genital intimacy is righteous. In other words, the assertion here slanders by definition all who maintain that their faithfulness to Jesus Christ constrains them to uphold marriage as the God-ordained context for sexual intimacy. The vocabulary (“assumed inherent superiority . . . dominance”) equates theological disagreement with what is commonly regarded as humanly vicious and socially retarded. Readers should recognize the ad hominem approach here and shed any false guilt concerning it.

The same tactic is evident in the glossary at the end of the Report. There heterosexism is defined as “a systemic form of oppression supporting the belief that heterosexuality is the only [emphasis theirs] legitimate form of sexuality; linked to homophobia.”(66) Herein anyone who deems the Biblical understanding of sexual intimacy to reflect God’s purpose is defined as oppressive and labelled as homophobic. Homophobia, as the Report makes clear, is irrational fear, i.e., a neurosis. Accordingly, all traditional Christians who regard marriage as the God-ordained setting for genital intimacy are looked upon as neurotic.

The Report begins well enough. “Following the example and teaching of Jesus, all persons, without exception, are to be welcomed, cared for, and loved as our neighbour.”(3) The second assertion similarly cannot be faulted. “All people who profess Jesus Christ and obedience to him are eligible to be full members of the United Church of Canada.”(3) Alas, it is the only time, “obedience” appears in the entire Report. Christ’s word, “If you love me you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15) is never adduced; indeed, the Biblical conviction that there is no love for God without obedience to God, where obedience aims at conformity to God’s will and way, is entirely lost to sight.

Wesley’s quadrilateral — Scripture, tradition, reason, experience — while not identified as his, is referred to again and again throughout the Report and even regarded as a framework which comprehends the ethos of the United Church. Wesley, however, would have repudiated utterly the use made of it in the Report: the four items are looked upon as equally normative. For Wesley, Scripture was the authority, the unnormed norm; tradition (chiefly Patristics, Reformation theology and Church of England formularies) were a distinctly subordinate norm, with reason and experience less authoritative again. The Report assumes that each of the four is co-equal in authority, and then incorporates this assumption into its deliberations.

Needless to say, the crux of the Report is its approach to Scripture. The note on Scripture is prefaced by a presentation of three approaches to truth: “absolutist,” “relativist,” and “pluralist.” In every case it is assumed that there is insight (like gold nuggets) to be found in Scripture (amidst much gravel, presumably), the distinction among the three approaches being the proportion and relation of gold to gravel. Disagreement among proponents of the three approaches arises over what is insight and what is only impediment to the full flowering of one’s humanity. The deleterious assumption is that one or another of these approaches yields not only insight about the creation but even a knowledge of God. No one, however, in the Reformed tradition can agree with this, convinced as we are that only God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ yields knowledge of God.

Confusion is evident when we are told that “… both pluralist and absolutist approaches will agree on the importance of what is at stake in any discussion about what is true.”(30) But surely what is at stake does not determine what is true. Of ourselves, are we reliable guides as to “what is at stake”? Surely what is at stake for the salvation of humankind and concomitant holy living which glorifies God has to be revealed to us fallen creatures; otherwise how could we ever distinguish what is true from socially useful or personally convenient fictions? The Report is sound when it insists that a knowledge of the context is essential to gaining the fullest sense of the text. Nonetheless, this admission should not be used to posit an ambiguity in the text whenever the text does not support the view one wishes to espouse. Ultimately, all of Scripture is the contextual key to any part of Scripture. This Reformation conviction is entirely absent.

The Report’s nontheological approach to Scripture is again evident in the assertion, “The Bible, in dialogue with our contemporary experience, helps us envision ourselves and the world in new ways that will heal, liberate, and empower us.”(12) No doubt the Bible does do this. And so does a textbook on psychology, a good novel, a penetrating poem, a profound film. All of these do the same thing in exactly the same way. The capacity to do this is not unique to Scripture, this capacity being found in any product of culture which facilitates human reflection and promotes self-understanding. The next sentence in the Report confirms the misunderstanding: “The authority of the Bible is its ability to inspire.”(12) Shakespeare and Milton inspire! The authority of Scripture lies elsewhere.

The same outlook is apparent when the Bible is spoken of as “. . a resource for our identity as religious people. We are related to it intimately.”(32) This psychological statement concerning our identity yet falls far short of a theological affirmation. Different groups acquire their religious identity through different documents to which they are intimately related: Methodists, through Wesley’s hymnbook, Anglicans through the Book of Common Prayer, Lutherans through the Augsburg Confession. Still, none of the above groups affirms these documents to have the same force as Scripture, nor to function in the same way.

The same devaluation is apparent in “The Bible, in dialogue with our modem experience, gives new ways to imagine ourselves and the world that heal, liberate and empower us.”(32) But this is precisely what psychotherapy does! And when there is added, “Here is the Bible’s inspiration, and thus its authority,” the reader can only conclude that the prophetic/apostolic testimony to Jesus Christ (i.e., Scripture) has neither more nor less authority than the psychotherapist.

Missing completely from the treatment of Scripture is any understanding that the Bible is normative for Christian faith and conduct, why it is this and how it functions in the church. In other words, there is no discussion of how Scripture subserves the unique authority of Him who is head of the church and Lord of the cosmos. Surely Christians read and heed Scripture because the prophetic/apostolic testimony to Jesus Christ, vivified by that Spirit power which Jesus Himself bears and bestows, brings disciple and Lord together. In this encounter worship is elicited, obedience is constrained, and service is enjoined. In a word, the Bible functions not primarily by providing insight (although this is provided) but by being the occasion of the transformation of fallen creatures into the likeness of Him who is the pledge of a renewed creation and the agent of humankind’s renewal.

Once again the theological undervaluation of Scripture is apparent in the Report’s contention that “The Bible is the basic document for our communal and self-understanding. In it we find witness to God’s faithful love for Creation.”(12) The Reformed church, however, has always known the primary witness to Jesus Christ to be not merely the “basic” document, ie., not merely constitutive of the church, but determinative for the church. To be sure, in Scripture we do find witness to God’s faithful love. God is love. (1 John 4:8) When this love meets a fallen creation, this love “burns hot,” that is, love takes the form first of judgment and then of mercy. “Judgment” and “mercy” imply something which “love”, in its dictionary definitions, does not: God’s love for the creation contradicts us with God’s “No!” to us even as it summons us with an inviting “Yes.” “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 55:8)

While the Bible is certainly witness to God’s saving act (John the Baptist and Paul point to Jesus), as the Bible is read in faith and the Spirit is bestowed it ceases to be merely a witness to the Christ-event and becomes part of that event itself. For instance, the apostles are witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus only as they are made part of the event of the resurrection of Jesus. The event of the resurrection is the raising of Jesus to life, the vindication of Him and His way thereby, together with the transformation of the apostles in such a way that they now cannot but speak and act and suffer in His name. To affirm that the apostles are part of the Christ-event is only to affirm what Jesus himself stated during his earthly ministry when he commissioned his followers to speak in his name: “Whoever hears you hears me.” (Luke 10:16) This must not be weakened to, “whoever hears you also hears me” or “may hear me.” Obviously Jesus Christ cannot be collapsed into the apostles and prophets, cannot be reduced to those whom He calls and equips to testify to Him. At the same time, He is not heard and obeyed apart from them. To say the same thing: while Jesus Christ cannot be reduced to Peter, James, and the women who greeted him on Easter morning, neither is He known except insofar as their testimony is known. Our coming to hear, heed, love and obey the living One Himself always takes the form of hearing, heeding, loving and obeying the testimony of His witnesses. They are not to be equated with Him. Nonetheless, unless their testimony is acknowledged as authoritative, His lordship (i.e., His unique authority) is simply denied. The Report maintains that “The United Church has always located itself within ‘mainstream’ Reformed understandings about the authority of the Bible.”(33) Yet nowhere does the Report’s use of Scripture reflect a Reformed understanding. The Report fails right here.

Not surprisingly, the Report’s overall mishandling of Scripture is reflected in its approach to specific passages. For instance, it states that we are created sexual beings.(18) (Implicit in this statement and dealt with explicitly throughout the Report is the notion that to be a sexual being necessitates being sexually active, or at least provides divine sanction for sexual activity regardless of one’s being unmarried or the gender of one’s partner.) The point Scripture makes so very tellingly, however, is not that we are created sexual beings, but rather that we are created sexually differentiated. The difference between these two assertions must not be minimized. All of the distinctions in the creation which differentiate people — poverty and wealth, learning and ignorance, deprivation and privilege — can in principle be overcome and even should be overcome. Yet there is one difference which we are not to try to overcome since it has come from the hand of the Creator (and for this reason is magnified in the text): sexual differentiation. The implications of this notion, when considered alongside the implications of, “We are created sexual beings,” point up a crucial divergence which the Report nowhere probes or even acknowledges.

In the same way the Report says in several places that the Bible assumes everyone to be heterosexual. (e.g., 47) The Bible, however, everywhere understands people to be what they do. The very fact that Scripture is unbending concerning same-sex genital intimacy attests its awareness of the proclivity for this very thing to occur. When Paul speaks of such an occurrence as a sign of a disordered creation (although, of course, not the only sign) we are told that he was acquainted only with heterosexual men who “perverted” themselves by going “against their God-given heterosexual nature.”(36) In the first place the Report exaggerates unconscionably in prefacing this statement with, “according to current scholars,” implying that there is scholarly unanimity on this point. A few scholars have suggested this (R. Scroggs and V.P. Furnish come to my mind) However, anyone who is acquainted with the literature on Romans and I Corinthians knows that the categorical “according to current scholars” is unsupportable. In the second place it cannot be assumed that Paul was unaware of the supposed distinction between perversion (heterosexuals who engage in homosexual practices) and inversion (homosexuals who engage in homosexual practices). In the third place it is most likely that Paul knew his environment so thoroughly, given the sexual practices of Greece and Rome (whose citizen he was), that he was acquainted with the variety of genital practices in the ancient world.

Readers of the Report will be puzzled at the arbitrary restriction of “orientation” to three: heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual (the lattermost being new to the Report, earlier discussions in the United Church having mentioned only the first two.) Yet any pastor or family physician knows that human sexuality is extremely plastic; that is, it can be molded into any shape very readily. There are heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, pedophilia, fetishism – and several others listed in the textbooks. There is no end to the number of ways in which people are sexually aroused.

Despite the arbitrary restriction, the fact that even three are brought forward as three whose practice is equally acceptable dovetails with the Report’s repeated insistence that marriage and the family are “human-shaped institutions” (e.g., 9), and that these institutions “have evolved over time.” No one will question that many of the customs surrounding marriage and the family are “human -shaped” and vary from culture to culture. Nonetheless, to admit this is not to concede that holy matrimony (and the support of children which it provides) are merely human-shaped products of an evolutionary process. In light of Scripture as a whole and Ephesians 5 in particular, Roman Catholics speak of marriage as a sacrament. Protestants do not speak of it as a sacrament; at the same time, Protestants do recognize marriage to be no mere convention. Since marriage is the metaphor for the relationship between Jesus Christ and his people, to speak of marriage as only human-shaped implies that we are the creator and the measure of the bond between Jesus Christ and his people. To say this is but to say that there is no bond at all between disciple and Lord which can be trusted to endure amidst turbulence, treachery and death.

Time and again the Report cites the prevalence of exploitative marriages as sufficient reason for denying that marriage is divinely sanctioned. Yet there is evident logical confusion in citing the tragedy of women shackled to abusive husbands as a ground for repudiating marriage itself with its aspiration to lifelong fidelity. The fact of exploitative relationships anywhere in life cannot settle the theological issue of what God wills for our good and can redeem for our blessing. In the same way the fact of heterosexual tyranny cannot settle the theological assessment of same-sex genital intimacy. Admittedly, “the emergence of feminist consciousness and the questions that have accompanied it” (17) will properly stimulate renewed theological probing of husband/wife relationships and the manner in which marriage too is subtly marred by sin. But to say that the emergence of feminist consciousness denatures or even can denature marriage as divinely ordained is to commit a category error: sociological developments do not determine theological truth. At the very least, the fact that marriage is the description of the bond between Jesus Christ and his people means, given the election of the church from all eternity (Ephesians 1:4), that Christians do not project the nature of Christ’s bond with his people from their experience of their own (sin-riddled) marriage; rather, they repent of and reform their marriage as they look away from themselves to their Lord and recognize that unions which are meant to last forever are forged by unspeakably costly love. In sum, the election of the church means that the nature of Christ’s union with his people becomes the redemptive model for the nature and nurture of marriage. This point escaped the Report entirely in its devaluation of marriage and family. Once again, the Report has stood the truth of God on its head.

The ideological basis of the Report appears in many places, not least in its insistence that “the faithfulness, compassion and justice which characterize God’s desire for our relationship to the world undergirds our understanding of our sexuality and our sexual behaviour.”(34) Repeatedly the Report states or implies that it is the quality of a relationship — e.g., caring, committed, tender — which legitimizes sexual activity. It is argued that since love is the highest Christian virtue (which it is) therefore love is an adequate criterion by which to judge every relationship (which it is not). The presupposition here is that love is the sole guide in the Christian life; that alongside love the claim and command of God is abolished; that whatever seems to be compatible with love is by that fact good, irrespective of all other considerations. Yet there has always been Christian consensus that love continues to need the command of God to guide it. In stating that love for God and neighbor are the two great commandments, Jesus never suggested that the others had been set aside; rather, love for God and neighbor are the proper fulfillment of the others. God is loved only as God is obeyed. The notion permeating the Report, however, is that the concrete command of God concerning sexual relationships has been abrogated by the quality which we think we perceive in the relationship; this quality legitimizes sexual activity. The Report is aware of the implications of this inasmuch as it endorses sexual activity between unmarried persons, perhaps aware that the same argument legitimizes extramarital affairs, and certainly unaware that it also legitimizes polygamy.

Never mentioned in the report is a Biblical understanding of the place and purpose of sexual intercourse. Intercourse between husband and wife seals and cements marriage, marriage being the richest expression of human intimacy. Into this unique context of intimacy and self-giving and support children are born. These two functions — deepening the bond of marriage and generating children — exhaust God’s purpose for intercourse. We should note that Jesus himself endorses this. Genital intimacy for any other reason is sin. The question can be asked, “If nonprocreative sex within marriage is good in itself, then why is nonprocreative sex between adults of the same gender also not good in itself?”(82) only if it is first denied that God has a purpose for sexual activity in creatures who are sexually differentiated by God’s ordination. The absence of this understanding is glaring in the Report’s special pleading (which yet remains unconvincing) that Scripture’s prohibition of same-sex genital intimacy can be reduced to Israel’s need for children to ensure the survival of the nation.(35) Scripture also prohibits bestiality – in order to ensure the birth of children?

In the same vein had the Report had a rigorous discussion of how the holy God wills to shape the holiness of the covenant people it would have avoided its unconvincing convolutions in speaking of “sexual expression.” “If there are no appropriate, accepted ways for me to express my sexuality, then I will distort myself and attempt to deceive others, and we will both be living a lie.”(40) If “sexual expression” is meant to be genital expression,” then all people who are not sexually active are living a lie! If “sexual” and “genital” expression are not identical, then what is “appropriate” must be specified if the statement is to have any weight. Jesus, Elijah and John the Baptist (not to mention many others in the Christian tradition) were unmarried. How did they express their sexuality? If genitally, then Jesus was a fraud. If nongenitally, there must be appropriate, accepted ways which are nongenital. If there are no such ways, then all of the above-named persons were living a lie. This argument is absurd.

The slant of the Report is obvious when we are told of “. . the longing for a church that is just and faithful.”(11) The order is crucial. At the same time we are not told what “just” means in this context. And “faithful”? Faithful to what? to whom? No mention is made of that faithfulness to God which is characterized by obedience. (Romans 1:5) On the same page we are reminded that “the church must have a moral centre.” But of course that church does not have a “moral” center. To seek one is to oust Jesus Christ and replace him with an ethical construct fashioned after our own predilections. The church’s center can only he the church’s Lord, who always comes to us “clothed with his gospel.” (Calvin) And one form in which the gospel (good news) comes to us is his claim upon our obedience in concrete, specific situations.

Logical problems abound in the section on “Theological Assumptions.”(12) It is maintained that “truth is evolving; our understanding of truth is provisional and contextual.” But is truth evolving? Our perception of truth may be evolving. It may also be shrivelling. What constitutes evolution of truth and what criteria allow us to recognize it are never mentioned. Moreover, there is much ambiguity surrounding “truth.” Truth is normally predicated of a statement which corresponds to fact (e.g., it is true that the sun is 92 million miles from the earth.) Yet “truth” is also used in English to mean reality (In fact this is how the word is used in John’s gospel.) Reality is certainly not evolving, even though our grasp of it may be. (And again, may not be. Not every item of modernity is an advance on the riches of the Renaissance or classical antiquity. In many areas there has been a lamentable decline.) “Truth is evolving” is clearly a major presupposition of the Report. It is an assertion which cannot be substantiated; it has nothing to commend it; and it betrays imprecise use of language.

The same imprecise use of language is found when the Report discusses Christian understanding of truth. Our understanding of truth (not truth itself this time) is said to be “provisional, conditional and contextual.”(3) Admittedly, theological formulations are provisional inasmuch as the verities of the faith must be rethought and rearticulated in every generation in view of world occurrences; provisional as well, to the extent that our articulation of the gospel never fully enshrines the glory of the gospel itself. Nonetheless, if the above statement were to be helpful it would have to be expanded or qualified greatly. Is the elemental and essential Christian confession that Jesus is Lord provisional? that righteousness comes by faith? that the mercy which God pours unreservedly upon undeserving people grounds God’s claim upon their obedience unconditionally? Are these provisional? It is as though it were said that all theological statements are relative. The only appropriate response would be, “relative to what?” The “what” is precisely what is never enunciated in the Report.

Similar ambiguity is present – and exploited – in the statement, “We affirm the acceptance of all human beings as persons made in the image of God regardless of their sexual orientation.”(3) To say that all human beings are the beneficiaries of Christ’s cross and the recipients of God’s mercy should not be allowed to prejudge or skew the issue of what sexual conduct is acceptable to God. The fact that God embraces everyone does not mean that God endorses everything. This is but an instance of many theological assertions in the Report which are too vague or too confused to be helpful.

The Report’s urging upon the church a greater cultural captivity than that which handicaps the church already is apparent. The Report cites the fact that by the 1980s it was apparent that many single adults were sexually active and couples were living together before they were married.(16) It refers to an earlier General Council which was constrained to make a theological pronouncement on this phenomenon. The presupposition is that the church reflects society, must reflect society, in order to be faithful to God. Who, or what, then, is God? Is God simply a projection of cultural trends? Lost to sight in the early church’s conviction that faithfulness to the living God required the church to be a counter-culture movement — and to pay the price for such faithfulness. The fact that the Report wants the world to set the church’s agenda is attested by its insisting that “sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS demand that in the interest of health and survival we become knowledgeable about sexuality, and about how and with whom to engage in sexual activity.”(18) The Christian’s sexual conduct is now to be controlled by epidemiology!

The National Coordinating Group, in an apparent oversight, permitted the publication of a sentence that should have been the touchstone for the entire document: by faith and God’s saving grace, there is no aspect of our being that is immutable and immune from transformation.”(40) Alas, it was not the touchstone; everywhere the Report denies this very thing.

The question facing the United Church of Canada is the question which a puzzled Nicodemus put to Jesus about being born when one is old. Can a denomination be born again, born from above? (John 3:3) At another time, in another context, Jesus replied to skeptical disciples, “With God, all things are possible.” (Mark 10:27)

The following text first appeared in
Theological Digest & Outlook (Burlington) in July of 1996.

A Code of Ethics?

On December 1, 1995, the secretary of Ministry Personnel Policy, on behalf of the General Council Pastoral Relations Committee, sent to Conference and Presbytery Secretaries, as well as to Theological Education Centres and DMPE Standing committees, A Working Document on Ethical Conduct for Ministry Personnel in The United Church of Canada.

The General Council’s Committee has issued the “Code of Ethics” inasmuch as urgent need for such a code has surfaced throughout the denomination. Plainly, ministry personnel have failed to regulate their private, public and professional lives; they have damaged themselves, the church’s reputation, and the women and men entrusted to them; now they need assistance in recognizing and repudiating those irregularities that have proved shameful, embarrassing, and hurtful.

In view of the swelling reports of clergy misconduct, any who oppose such a code appear to endorse unacceptable behaviour. Certainly I do not endorse clergy conduct that dishonours the Lord by whom the clergy are called and in whose name they exercise their ministry; neither do I dismiss cavalierly behaviours that harm and hinder the people whom the clergy are to edify and nurture.

At the same time, however, I cannot append my signature to the document that is now before the church, for the document appears to (i) reinforce the anti-gospel theology and practice of the denomination, (ii) aim at suppressing dissent born of gospel-conviction.

If the decade-long history of the denomination were other than it is, then a charitable reader in the renewal movement of the church might interpret the document favourably; but given what has transpired for the last ten years, the judicious reader must suspect words and expressions that are manifestly ambiguous.

Consider, for instance, the item, “I will support those movements, agencies, practices and products that serve the cause of justice and care for creation.” While at first glance it may appear to be no more than wise affirmation of responsibility for the environment, it is indisputable that “justice” has been the rallying-cry and the chief ground for the homosexual agenda of the denomination. (“It’s a justice issue!” has been the foundation of the agenda rather than “It’s a scripture issue!”) Plainly, clergy who endorsed the code would thereby commit themselves to upholding all that the denomination has deemed to be a justice issue. No one in the renewal groups of The United Church could pledge to uphold “movements” and “practices” associated with what the church courts have been deemed to be justice issues.

Or reflect upon the following: “I will seek to know and to understand the various points of view within The United Church of Canada, and to respect the right of those who hold views different from my own to hold those views, recognizing that our theological, ethical and moral perspectives are constantly being formed, reformed and informed.” Admittedly, there is a profound sense in which our ethical perspectives are constantly being reformed — just as there is a profound sense in which they can never be. Ethical perspectives, after all, are generated from theological convictions; and some theological convictions are non-negotiable. The most primitive Christian conviction, “Jesus is Lord”, is one such; so is the conviction that Jesus Christ is the world’s sole, sufficient Saviour; so is the conviction that we are “justified” (set right with God) by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone. Similarly non-negotiable is the conviction that God wills faithfulness in marriage and celibacy in singleness (“marriage” being understood, as the state understands it, as a monogamous relation between two people of opposite gender, which relation the state sanctions). If the ethical perspective just mentioned is “constantly being…reformed”, we can only ask, “Reformed into what? What could it be reformed into except its negation?”

Furthermore, are the rights of those who hold “different views” — in this case, the rights of those who oppose recent denominational promulgations (same-gender sexual activity as God-willed) and denominational practices (funding delegates to the Sophia conference) — are the rights of dissidents respected in the church courts? (Note that the “code” nowhere explicitly discusses the church courts.) Members of renewal movements within The United Church are especially wary of pronouncements about respecting the right of others when “the spirit of Fergus” (the Fergus General Council’s statement that the denomination would respect diversity) seems never to have appeared.

What are people of scriptural conviction to do but wince when they read, “I will live a life that honours the commitments in all my relationships”? Glaringly absent is any deployment of “spousal”, “marital” or “familial”. What if the relationship to which the “code” aims at pledging clergy is an illicit relationship? What if it is a commitment to a genitalized relationship between two persons of the same gender? to a mistress (or the male equivalent thereof?) to an adolescent? The “code” fails to understand that there are commitments that should not be honoured but rather renounced!

Again, discerning readers will see the hollowness of “I will regard all persons with respect and concern, and undertake to minister to and with them impartially.” Have the church courts demonstrated an impartiality that elicits the trust of those in the denomination who insist on “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3)? The fact that so many clergy have had to resort to the civil courts in the pursuit of justice suggests the contrary.

Overstatement is evident in the presumptuous item, “I will stand in a respectful, supportive relationship with my colleagues in ministry.” With all my colleagues? on all issues? at all times? When the late Dr. Howard Mills pulled the plug on the loudspeaker at the Community of Concern’s rally (London General Council, 1990), who respectfully supported ministerial colleagues taking part in the rally? Just as the apostles stated, “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29 NRSV), so many clergy will be unable “support respectfully” those who uphold a theology believed to be blasphemous and ethics deemed to be unconscionable.

Particularly ominous is, “I will not actively recruit members or adherents of other congregations, denominations or faiths.” Of course manipulation, coercion and exploitation are always and everywhere to be eschewed. Still, the gospel is inherently mission-oriented. I have just returned from India where I taught seminary students who all had backgrounds in Hinduism. They did not see large commonalities or clear continuities between Hinduism and Christian faith. They thanked God, rather, that they had been delivered from error and illusion. Are we to forego “actively” inviting people of different religious orientations to come to the same discernment?

While huge questions must be asked of virtually all 23 promises (“I will…”) some of the most subtle questions pertain to the clergy’s promising to seek institutional counsel (e.g., from presbytery or conference or even General Council Staff) “should divisive tensions threaten the relationship between myself and those with whom I minister.” Any divisive tension? Three times in John’s gospel we are told, following Christ’s pronouncement, “There was a division among them”. If he divides, then it must be admitted that divisive tension may be the result of his activity! Wherever Jesus Christ is attested, he acts; and wherever he acts, he divides.

Furthermore, could those in the renewal movements seek “carte blanche” the counsel of institutional appointees? What can we reasonably expect at the hands of those who have appeared hostile to date?

It remains to be seen how many clergy will refuse to sign the “code”, just as it remains to be seen what the repercussions will be. In any case, Peter and John have established a precedent: “…they rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonour for the name.” (Acts 5:41)

Victor Shepherd

This article first appeared in Theological Digest (Burlington) in July 1992.

“Jesus as mentor and friend” is as much as he is ever acknowledged to be in the document prepared for the 34th General Council, 1992. Nowhere is Jesus confessed in accord with what the apostles knew him to be: Lord, Saviour, Judge, Son of God, Incarnate Word, Messiah of Israel. In view of the fact that “Jesus is Lord” is the most elemental Christian confession, its omission is startling. Admittedly, on the second last page of the section which discusses the nature of authority (page 10) there is reference to “God’s historic self-revelation in Jesus Christ”. Yet since it is stated elsewhere that God is revealed “…through the lives of God’s people”(42) , and since there is no indication at all of how revelation in Jesus Christ might differ, the reader is left ignorant of the nature, uniqueness and significance of Jesus Christ.

A clue as to how the report is skewed is given in the first passage of the section dealing with the context in which scripture is interpreted: “We have always sought to be deeply engaged with the realities of God’s world and the people and institutions in it”.(3) World, people and institutions (from a biblical perspective) are never “realities”, but rather actualities. As actualities they are concrete, not mythological or imaginary. Yet they are not reality, since reality, for prophet and apostle (i.e., in biblical understanding itself) is the living, personal presence of God himself (or as the sixteenth century Reformers put it, the effectual presence of Jesus Christ). So far from being real in the sense that God is real, institutions (biblically speaking) are “principalities and powers” which contradict God’s work and subserve the power of death. To speak of world, people and institutions as possessing reality (rather than actuality) is to acknowledge them as revelatory. Perhaps this is what the document invites us to do, even as prophet and apostle do not.

In the same vein, the report speaks of the questions we put to scripture.(3) And of course there are many questions that we do. Nevertheless, the ultimate context for understanding scripture is not the questions we put to it, but rather the questions it puts to us as through it God interrogates us. It can scarcely be overlooked that as often as Jesus is asked a question he never answers it, but instead puts his question to the questioner. In other words, the questions which we put to scripture betray our distorted perspective. This is not surprising, since in places other than the written gospels (reflecting the teaching of Jesus) scripture indicates that women and men whose understanding with respect to God has been darkened (even rendered “futile”, according to Paul) by the fall remain ignorant of what constitutes a proper question. In sum, then, our questions about scripture and about the one of whom it speaks must be understood ultimately by the questions God puts to us. (The first question in scripture is posed by the tempter, in the creation/fall sagas, “Did God say…?”, as doubt is cast on the goodness of God’s command and thus on the goodness of God himself. The first question God puts to humankind, on the other hand, is, “Where are you?”, when humankind is attempting to hide from God following its disobedience. The second is, “Where is your brother?”, when Cain has slain Abel. In a word, the context which readers bring to scripture, while important, is not the normative context; the normative context is God’s contention with all that opposes him, that spiritual conflict which seethes already and which has victimized even the (self-)understanding which we bring to scripture.)

In bringing forward its interpretive methodology the document refers to slavery. “In the biblical text, slavery is condoned; yet slavery is opposed by Christians on the basis of the ‘sense of scripture’ or ‘the call of Jesus’. But is slavery condoned in the bible? The preface to the Ten Commandments is, “You were slaves in Egypt, and I, God, delivered you.” Whereas it is the right of oriental potentates to enslave, it is the nature of God to free from slavery. (This is bedrock and never disappears from Israel’s self-consciousness.) To be sure, there were Israelite slaves among the Israelite people. However, the Covenant Code (Exodus 21-24) provided for their protection. For its time, the treatment accorded Hebrew slaves was exceedingly humane. For instance, if a master injured a slave so slightly as to knock out a tooth, the slave went free. The Deuteronomic Code provided for the slave’s wellbeing upon release from service: money, food and clothing had to be provided to facilitate a start-up in the person’s new life. The Holiness Code (Leviticus 25) forbade slavery. Paul is often faulted because he sent Onesimus, a runaway slave, back to Philemon. But it must always be kept in mind (i) that escaping or counselling to escape was a capital offense in Rome (is Paul to be faulted for sparing Onesimus certain death?), (ii) that Paul put Philemon in an impossible situation with respect to his slave. Philemon is to take him back “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.”(Philemon 16-17) “Receive him as you would receive me” — when Paul is a free citizen! If Onesimus is to be received as brother in the flesh (and not merely “in the Lord”), then no Christian can ever regard anyone as a slave. In view of the above considerations the text can scarcely be said to condone slavery.

The major section dealing with authority appears to confuse authority with authoritarianism. The latter, of course, is akin to coercion or arbitrary claim or tyranny. In the “world-view” which the document prefers, “authority” is understood as “power with”.(5) The reader is surprised here, since scripture points to the authority of Jesus Christ as primary, unique, and never delegated; his authority is never “power with” us. If the authority of scripture arises from its peculiar service to Jesus Christ, then it is difficult to see how the authority of scripture is “power with” us. The world-view of authority which the document rejects — “power over” — is surely closer to what is meant by the church catholic’s acknowledgement of the lordship of Christ. At the same time it must always be understood that Jesus exercises his lordship by humbling himself and giving himself up for us all. His authority, while never delegated or shared, is also never authoritarian, never arbitrary, never tyrannical. His authority is the legitimate claim upon us of the one who has gone to hell and back for us in order to salvage us. Furthermore, power is a marginal concept in scripture. Still, the document uses it extensively in its discussion of authority and assumes that power is synonymous with the capacity to wrench. In everyday usage, however, “power” simply means the capacity to fulfil purpose. The fact that Jesus Christ is not ultimately stymied with respect to his purpose — namely, a people that lives for the praise of God’s glory — does not imply authoritarianism, does not mean that “power over” has to be rejected in favour of “power with”.

Repeatedly the document speaks of the activity of God as empowering God’s people. But nowhere is it stated what these people are empowered to be or to do. More to the point, from the perspective of a biblical understanding of humankind, “empowered” as such would mean the fortification of those sunk in sinnership. Instead of empowerment the bible regularly uses the category of freedom, since sinnership is that from which humankind needs to be freed. Paul’s urging the Christians in Galatia, “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1), has the force of, “Christ has freed us from our bondage to sin so as to remove all impediments to our obedience to him.” This breathes a different air from the category of empowerment. Freedom, everywhere in scripture, is the God-restored capacity to act in accord with one’s true nature (namely, the obedient praise and service of God). Freedom, biblically, never means the God-assisted capacity to achieve one’s own agenda.

The document’s utilization of traffic-officers as the illustration of the nature of that authority we recognize and assent to is not merely unhelpful but even misleading.(7) To be sure, the document is correct in seeing that it is the community which confers authority on traffic-officers. This is but to say that the community itself is the ultimate authority with respect to the regulating of traffic. But when the church catholic acknowledges scripture as authoritative it is not saying that the Christian community has conferred authority on scripture; it is not saying that the church is the ultimate authority for regulating the community’s faith and conduct. To say this would mean that the church is self-authoritative with respect to its knowledge of God; i.e., God is but an extension of the church.

Confusion is apparent regarding the place of the community of faith in the economy of God’s revelation and the place of scripture within that economy. For instance, when scripture is said to be the foundational story for us (does this mean the paradigmatic story? the normative story?), which story is “hallowed by the continual use of the ongoing community”(9), it is therein asserted that it is the community which renders scripture holy (hallowed). Surely scripture is holy inasmuch as it uniquely attests the incursion and ongoing activity of the Holy One of Israel in the person of his Son. Similar confusion is apparent in the highlighted affirmation, “God’s historic self-revelation in Jesus Christ is crucial in establishing what has legitimate authority in Christian community”.(10) But the church throughout history has confessed not that Jesus Christ is crucial for establishing this or that as having legitimate authority for the church, but rather that Jesus Christ himself is the authority for faith since he is the church’s sole sovereign. He does not determine what has authority; he has authority, for he is the Word Incarnate. He constrains our glad acknowledgement of his authority by the Spirit-vivified illumination of his self-giving on our behalf. In addition, what is granted with “God’s historic self-revelation in Jesus Christ” is taken back on the same page with “interactive sense of authority — scripture as power with us.” “Scripture as power with us” does not reflect the nature of Christ’s authority, for the Incarnate One is never “lord with us”.

The ghost of the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” (an expression which Wesley himself never used) is brought forward from the previous document on scripture in the listing of “at least four sources of Christian faith — heritage, understanding, experience and the Bible”.(8) (For Wesley scripture was always the primary source and norm of Christian faith and the obedience born of faith.) When understanding is discussed it is said that “the work of biblical scholars and reflections of members of the community” are “methods of understanding” which are “seen as more consistent with the Methodist and Reformed traditions…”.(10) But in fact the view of scripture advanced by the document does not reflect that of the Reformers (and of Wesley, who was thoroughly Protestant in his view of scripture). The Reformers acknowledge scripture as authoritative precisely because it does uniquely attest Jesus of Nazareth as Son of God, Lord, Saviour, the one in whom the “fulness of deity dwells bodily”.(Col. 2:9)

When the category, “experience”, is expounded we are told that “part of the authority of scripture is found in its ‘givenness’ — the fact that the story has been passed down from generation to generation”.(11) Surely the “givenness” of scripture resides not in the fact that “the story” has been passed down from generation to generation but rather because the apostolic testimony is unique and unrepeatable. Other stories, such as fairy tales and Norse myths, have been passed down too, but are not regarded as authoritative in any sense. Then how can mere transmission constitute even part of the authority of scripture? When it is stated that “another part of the authority of scripture is its relevance to our experience”(11) the reader longs to seen greater theological subtlety and sophistication. Is it our experience which renders scripture authoritative (or induces us to ascribe authority to scripture)? If, as was mentioned earlier in this comment on the document, fallen humankind does not know which questions are genuine and which are but pseudo-questions, then human experience cannot be the measure of the relevance of scripture; scripture (animated by the Spirit so as to confront us with Jesus Christ himself) is instead the measure of the relevance of our “experience”! (Our experience, so far from being the measure of the relevance of God’s nature, purpose and truth, is chiefly a contradiction of this — or why should we have to be redeemed?) Again the reader is puzzled by the juxtaposition of “God’s historic self-revelation in Jesus Christ is crucial for establishing what has legitimate authority in Christian community”(10) and “part of the authority of scripture is found in its relevance to our experience”.(11) How is Jesus Christ related to that human experience which is said to confer (part-)authority upon scripture?

There appears to be theological confusion in the section, “CONVICTIONS”. (39-42) Six affirmations are emphasized in bold-faced type; e.g., “God calls us to engage the Bible as a foundational authority as we seek to live the Christian life”. Each of the six begins, “God calls us to engage the Bible…”. But how do we know that God calls us to do this, since nowhere does the document relate scripture to a doctrine of the knowledge of God? (Here its departure from the Reformers is evident.) While it is affirmed that God calls us “through the infinity of grace”, how do we know that God is gracious, even “infinitely” so?(39) Why are we now told that God calls us to engage the Bible as a foundational authority? (Earlier, it was as “the” foundational authority.) What other foundational authorities are to be considered? On the same page we are told that “the Bible continues to be the predominant witness to belief in God’s liberating and transforming activity”. But the church catholic acknowledges scripture to be normative, not merely predominant. Furthermore, the apostolic testimony testifies in the first instance not to human belief in God’s activity but to the activity of God himself. Again, logical order is inverted when we are told that “God calls us to engage the Bible as a church seeking God’s community with all people…” before “God calls us to engage the Bible to experience the liberating and transforming Word of God.”(40) After all, it is those whom the Word of God has freed for the praise and service of God who constitute the church! To elevate the church above the Word is to deny the Reformation. It is also to deny that where this Word acts, division occurs — as the fourth gospel makes plain several times over (e.g., John 9:16). It cannot be denied that the ministry of Jesus is divisive. When the document states that “legitimate authority in every case enhances community”(40) one can only cite the dominical precedent. The community of Christ’s people, on the other hand, is the result of God-wrought reconciliation. This community knows that while sinners are reconciled to God through the faith-quickening intercession of the Son, sin is never reconciled to righteousness, disobedience to obedience, the evil one to the Holy One. For this reason John insists repeatedly that when Jesus Christ acts and speaks, his community is formed and division is precipitated.

The ideological slant of the document becomes apparent when we are told that The United Church must recommit itself to the struggle for justice. Needless to say, that church which aspires to faithfulness will pursue justice. Yet nowhere in the document are Christians urged to pursue holiness, even though they are characteristically urged to do so throughout scripture. (And Christians, we must not forget, are typically called “saints” or “holy ones” in the New Testament, rather than “just ones”.) To pursue “love and justice”(40) without pursuing truth and holiness can only issue in the corruption of love and justice. Apart from truth, love becomes indulgence or sentimentality; apart from holiness, justice becomes at best, merciless, and at worst, vengeful.

The reader cannot help wondering about the agenda behind “the Word of God, in every case, is larger than the text of the Bible”.(41) Of course it is, since the Word is the eternal self-utterance of the fathomless Triune God. Nevertheless, does “larger than” mean that the Word of God can or does contradict scripture? If so, then scripture is deceptive and impedes our knowledge of God. And what is meant by, “We also experience the sacred mystery in the connections between our personal and collective lives…. This confirms our understanding that truth is relational…”?(41-42) In the New Testament “truth” has two meanings: (i) reality, substance, (ii) the quality of a statement which accurately reflects what is real. “Truth is relational” fits neither of these. Then what does it mean? What purpose does utilizing it serve?

It appears that naturalism is the presupposition of The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture; that is, that human reason, assessing scripture, can discriminate between wheat and chaff, between what must be heard and heeded and what not. There appears to be no recognition that human reason, with respect to our knowledge of God, has been impaired by the fall and now cannot, of itself, give us knowledge of God; no recognition that in the wake of the fall women and men “became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened”(Rom. 1:21); no recognition that revelation — which is never merely ideational but is rather the redemptive/restorative action of God upon us as God includes us in his own self-knowing — is necessary if reason is to regain reason’s own integrity. So much of the content of scripture is stood on its head despite the deployment of seeming truth of scripture; e.g., “Transformation is the activity of divine grace with us that changes individuals and communities. For Christians these activities are uniquely personified in Jesus of Nazareth”.(40) Yet since the categories of sin, estrangement, unrighteousness, blindness, condemnation appear nowhere in the document, the reader is not encouraged to think that “transformation” has very much to do with what scripture holds up: the salvation of those who cling in faith to the one who is God’s provision for us. The reader is left too with the frustration of seeing Jesus Christ undervalued yet again. For if transformation is God’s changing of individuals and communities, and if Jesus of Nazareth “uniquely personifies” such change, then what did he change from? change into? Furthermore, Christians confess Jesus not to personify anything but rather to be the Word Incarnate. Surely we are better to repeat with the unknown author of the book of Hebrews whose rescue at the hands of the world’s only Saviour and Lord wrung from him the confession that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever”.(Heb. 13:8)

The document rightly insists that we should approach scripture with all the scholarly tools available to us. Since the Bible is a book of antiquity, it is only fitting that it be investigated with the assistance of those aids which probe any writing from antiquity. At the same time, however, the document is one-sided in its endorsement, for biblical scholars are not free from agendas and ideologies. One need only review the work of twentieth century New Testament scholars where it is obvious that assorted philosophical assumptions are not generated by the text but rather are superimposed on the text, thereby controlling the interpretation of the text. One need only think of C.H. Dodd and his borrowing of British historiography, of Rudolf Bultmann and Heideggerian existentialism, or several American New Testament scholars and different theories of literary criticism. (In this regard it is worth noting that in Bultmann’s massive, two-volume New Testament theology no mention is made of prayer. In view of the attention which prayer receives throughout the New Testament — not to mention the life of Jesus — the philosophical determination of the “meaning” of the biblical text is undeniable.) The philosophical presuppositions of The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture are never identified. Still, they remain no less determinative. They should be rendered explicit, for then readers will be able to see what philosophy has shaped the writers.

Victor A. Shepherd

This paper first appeared in Theological Digest & Outlook (Burlington)
in January of 1993.

Faced with the cultural and religious pluralism of the latter part of the twentieth century the church, at least in the west, appears extraordinarily anxious or extraordinarily accommodating, and perhaps extraordinarily accommodating just because extraordinarily anxious. The church, regarding its pluralistic setting as novel, is tempted to fear the world and therein tempted to think it can preserve itself by isolating itself from the world; or else it is tempted in its bold engagement with the world to tailor itself to the world and therein to squander the “deposit” (2 Timothy 1:12) that it has been charged to guard. Those prone to anxiety are more likely to insist on retaining a doctrine of the Trinity, if only to preserve continuity with their forebears in faith and discontinuity with the mindset of modernity, not realizing that “if only” reduces the doctrine to an artifact, even curiosity-piece, in the museum of intellectual history. On the other hand, those eager to meet challenges are more likely to jettison any doctrine of the Trinity as an encumbrance that inhibits the church in its witness to the gospel and its exemplification of the gospel amidst the common life of the world.

One issue facing the church, then, is this: is the doctrine of the Trinity baggage that is not only unnecessary but is actually a threat to the seaworthiness of the ship (church) as it appears to founder in the storms of secularity? or is it ballast in the ship’s keel apart from which even moderate winds will blow the ship hither and thither, eventually to capsize it?

I submit that apart from the doctrine of the Trinity “gospel” is rendered indistinguishable from religious aspiration or projection, while “Spirit” is reduced to a magnification of anything that the Fall-darkened heart and mind of humankind may conceive, and “church” becomes nothing more than one more social group (albeit in religious guise) which seeks to promote the agenda of its constituents. In short, without the doctrine of the Trinity the arch counter-miracle will occur: wine will be turned into water as the gospel is denatured.

In maintaining the doctrine of the Trinity to belong to the being of the faith rather than merely to its wellbeing I am not holding up as etched in stone the expression of any one thinker’s understanding; neither Augustine’s nor Aquinas’s nor Calvin’s nor Barth’s. Nonetheless, I am convinced that just as these thinkers were impelled to speak on behalf of the Triune God in order to forestall the acculturation of the gospel in their day, we must do as much in ours, all the while endeavouring to obey the fifth commandment; namely, to honour our parents (including our theological foreparents) in order that the days of the church may be long in the land which God gives us.

II: — I agree with those who maintain that a fully-articulated doctrine of the Trinity is not found in scripture. Nonetheless, the building blocks of the doctrine incontrovertibly are. Consider the following:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19)

This Jesus God raised up…. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear. (Acts 2:32f)

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Corinthians 13:14)

For through [Jesus Christ] we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. (Ephesians 2:18)

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all…. But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. (Ephesians 4:4-6)

…God chose you from the beginning to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 2:13)

Chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood. (1 Peter 1:2)

Throughout its consistent attestation of the incursion of the Word, scripture constrains us to understand God as eternally Triune. A doctrine of the Trinity makes explicit what is everywhere implicit in the “the faith once delivered to the saints” and for which faith, the apostle tells us, we must ever “contend”. (Jude 3)

III: — Christian faith is rooted in the oneness of being between Jesus Christ and God the Father. In the gospel God has revealed himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (Without the divine activity of the Holy Spirit we should not know of the deity of Father and Son.) In this self-unveiling God has revealed himself in such a way as to disclose that what God is in himself God is toward us, and what God is toward us God is in himself, throughout his saving acts in history. In other words, what God is eternally in himself, that is, in his internal relations as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is in his activity toward us through the Son and in the Spirit.

If the oneness in being between Jesus Christ and God the Father is cut, then the substance and heart of the gospel is lost. For if what Christ does is not what God does, then before God humankind’s predicament is unrelieved. Again, if God himself has not come among us in the Incarnation, then God’s love for us (despite God’s good intentions!) stops short of God’s full identification with us sinners; in truth it is not finally love (or at least is woefully deficient and defective love) and the redemptive activity of God is finally ineffectual.

The oneness in being among Father, Son and Holy Spirit, however, does not imply any oneness in being between the Creator and the creation. In fact there is no intrinsic ontological similarity between the eternal being of God and the contingent being of creatures. The two spheres of being — divine and creaturely — are ontologically distinct and are joined only by grace. Scriptural monotheism is never conflated with philosophical monism. The knowledge of the foregoing, it must be noted, is a predicate of the Triune God’s self-disclosure as Triune. In short, knowledge of God (with all that this implies with respect to knowledge of the relationship of divine to creaturely being) is the work of God himself, never the work of rational inference or philosophical speculation. To say the same thing slightly differently, faith in this Triune God arises only as God himself generates it; only as God himself attests and interprets (the activity of the Holy Spirit) God’s own Word (the activity of the Son). This can only mean that the fact of faith; that is, the presence of men and women who believe, testifies to the utter priority of God over all thought concerning him. We can think correctly about God at all only because God includes us in his self-knowing.

In conjoining “Spirit” and “Holy” scripture insists that God is the only fit witness to himself; only God can disclose God. And since God has given himself to us in the person of the Son or Word, then Spirit and Son (Word) are inextricably linked. Or in the idiom of the written gospels, Jesus Christ is the unique bearer and bestower of the Holy Spirit. This is but to say that one cannot pronounce “Spirit” except in reference to Jesus Christ. (In this way the apostles insist that while Christless spirits do indeed abound, they can only be less than holy!) This point is reinforced by scripture’s depiction of the Spirit as being sent from the Father in the name of the Son, never in the Spirit’s own name; the Spirit speaks only of the Father and of the Son, never of himself. Put simply, the Spirit is like floodlighting. Floodlights are positioned in such a way that one does not see the floodlight itself, only that which it lights up and to which it therefore directs attention. (Recall our Lord’s words, “He (i.e., the Spirit) shall glorify me”. John 16:14) The Spirit imports no new substance into faith’s knowing, but rather facilitates faith’s knowledge of the Son, who is the “substance” of the Father.

IV: — While the foregoing is formally espoused throughout the church catholic it is materially contradicted frequently in the various “unitarianisms” found at all levels in all denominations. (While the stated theology of any Christian body is trinitarian, the stated or official theology should not blind us to the operative theology that tends to characterize the denomination or at least aspects of it. Several of these operative unitarianisms are outlined briefly below.)

(i) A UNITARIANISM OF THE FATHER This popular “unitarianism” certainly preserves the truth that God is exalted, “high and lifted up”; that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts nor our ways God’s ways. (Isaiah 6:1; 55:8) God is the sole, sovereign, eternal one. God is not an aspect of his creation-at-large (the cosmos) nor an aspect of his creation-at-small (humankind). While by God’s permission, invitation, and facilitation we may genuinely apprehend God (in both senses of “apprehend”: understand the nature of God and seize him as we are first seized by him), we never comprehend God. We never “grasp” God so as to master him, domesticate him, render him an object. The one who is irreducibly subject never gives himself over to us (while always giving himself for us and to us!), never allows himself to be that upon which we can perform those operations which submit natural objects, for instance, to our purposes and our control. God is inviolably GOD, never a tool that we may deploy, never one with whom we may trifle.

However, the God who is only “high and lifted up”, without differentiation, tends to be so exalted as never to humble himself, so far beyond us as not to render himself accessible, sovereign with more than a suggestion of severe, unknowable in the sense of arbitrary, a creator who is also (or may be) capricious.

Eighteenth century deism portrayed God as the creator who fashioned the universe and then effectively absented himself from it. Here God was “high and lifted up” so as to be inaccessible. On the other hand, seventeenth century Protestant scholasticism portrayed God not so much as remote in himself but as inaccessible with respect to his “ways”. The notion of double predestination, for instance, could only render God ultimately capricious in his activity on behalf of humankind. God, it was said, foreordained elect and reprobate as such even before they were born, and therefore before they even had opportunity to sin. When confronted with the arbitrariness of the twofold decree (all alike merit condemnation, even as some are condemned prior to their being able to merit anything, while others are recipients of a Spirit-facilitated gospel-pronouncement which the reprobated are never permitted genuinely to “hear”) its proponents insisted that its irrationality was only seeming; God has his “reason”, and to this reason no person is privy. The “reason” is hidden inscrutably in the innermost recesses of God. Therefore it is not our place to enquire, only our place to adore. While all Christians would admit that it is our place to adore the Holy One whose ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8), it is not our place — i.e., it is never God-honouring — to “adore” an absurdity. The more the hidden justice of this arbitrariness and irrationality was advanced, however, the more apparent the injustice of it all was to many. In view of the unqualified remoteness of God, or the arbitrariness of God, or the injustice of God that a unitarianism of the Father seems to imply, this particular unitarianism, paradoxically, ends in the denial that God is parent in any sense.

(ii) A UNITARIANISM OF THE SON Undifferentiated transcendence is overcome as Jesus Christ is acknowledged to be God-with-us. So far from disdaining the complexity and sin, anguish and frustration of the human situation, God has identified with it all in its variegated multi-dimensionality. Jesus Christ is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, is tempted at all points as we are (Hebrews 4:15), even becoming one with sinners, as his baptism attests, by “being made sin” for us.(2 Corinthians 5:21) In the same manner he is subject to the “principalities and powers”; he can restore a creation now groaning in its futility (Romans 8:21-22) just because he identifies himself fully with it.

At the same time, to collapse God into God the Son distorts even the truth of the Incarnation. For the Christian understanding of Incarnation, it must be remembered, is not to be confused with pagan incarnations wherein the deity collapses itself into the creaturely in such a way as to forfeit transcendence. In such a subtly paganized “unitarianism of the incarnate one” the nearness of God the Son is affirmed at the expense of God’s holiness; affirmed, that is, at the expense of God’s very Godness. Here God-with-us is demeaned as pal. This saccharine Jesus finds no paradigm in scripture. No one who met Jesus Christ in the flesh ever spoke of him in this manner or found him cosy. The written gospels, rather, customarily depict him as one whom people do not understand and cannot tame. Even disciples, newly made aware in his presence of their systemic sinnership, can only plead with him to leave them alone. The apostles never confuse proximity with presumption. So far from being the grand aider and abettor and guarantor of human schemes, Jesus is the one who does not supply answers to questions, always refusing to endorse whatever understanding the people before him have brought with them. Throughout the written gospels Jesus refuses to answer the questions put to him, preferring instead to reply with his own question. Plainly he will not underwrite the standpoint or the perception or the purpose of the questioner; plainly he will not endorse the questioner’s question as a legitimate question. In disallowing the question put to him, in insisting on interrogating the questioner so as to change the latter from aggressor to defendant, he shows the speaker to dwell in spiritual unreality; i.e., suffer from spiritual psychosis. In the same way he does not lend himself to the schemes and dreams of those who think that their piousness concerning him supplies the “boost” that is needed to ensure the full-flowering of their plans for themselves. And lest we think this to be an insignificant over-subtlety, the apostolic discernment that makes the stories of Simon Magus, plus Ananias and Sapphira, normative for Christian understanding should correct us!

(iii) A UNITARIANISM OF THE SPIRIT It is the Spirit who imparts vitality and vibrancy in believer and congregation alike. It is the Spirit who supplies zeal, warmth, boldness, effectiveness. It is the Spirit whose gifts equip the congregation for ministry and whose fruits adorn the gospel, in all of this exhibiting the truth of God as the power of God and not mere ideation.

One New Testament word for the Spirit, ARRABON — “down payment” or “pledge”, (in modern Greek it means a woman’s engagement ring) — plainly means that there is more to come. While the Spirit satisfies the restless human heart the satisfaction it yields never satiates; believers, contented as never before and nowhere else, are nonetheless “hungrier” than ever even as they know that one day they will be fed so as to leave them hungering no more. The entire experiential aspect of primitive Christianity (e.g., “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” (Galatians 3:2) plainly directs the attention of readers of the epistle to identifiable experience) is much undervalued in most expressions of the church today.

Notwithstanding, when the Spirit is magnified disproportionately and experience put forward unnormed, then “Spirit” ceases to be the power in which Jesus Christ acts himself and which he pours forth on his people. “Spirit” instead lends itself to frenzy, the suspension of the intellect, and the identification of God with that which is indistinguishable from the intrapsychic proclivities and pressures of the devotees themselves; indistinguishable as well from the supra-individual forces that thrive amidst institutions, ideologies, images, and diverse “isms”.

It appears that whenever the Trinity is denied through the aforementioned unitarianisms redemption, the heart of scripture, is denied as well. In the first instance God’s transcendence is upheld in such a manner as to render God remote, distant, inaccessible, with the result that the creation is left unaffected. The older discussions of God’s impassibility had the same result: the God who is beyond suffering is scarcely able (or willing) to do anything for those whose suffering is as undeniable as it is inescapable. In the second instance God is so identified with the creation as not to transcend it so as to be free for it. This was surely the problem with Schleiermacher and his theological descendants, indeed with the liberal school of theology that accepts the world’s self-understanding as the presupposition for humankind’s understanding of God. In the third instance God is identified with human intra-psychic processes so as to deify them.

It is the Triune God who alone saves, for it is the Triune God who alone can. Only that God can save who transcends the world and is therefore free from it so as to act for it; who also loves it and identifies himself with it so as not to forsake it in any respect; and who also invites the beneficiaries of his love to know him in such a way as to distinguish themselves from him and their psycho-physical immediacy from intimacy with the one who ever remains “other”.

V: — In many areas of the church catholic today the doctrine of the Trinity is denied not merely materially but formally as well. Such a denial occurs whenever, for instance, the deity of the Son is impugned. “Son of”, in scripture, has the force of “of the same nature as”; to modify “same nature” is to deny what the church has always confessed in terms of the Incarnation.

Here we must recall the cruciality of Athanasius’s triumph over Arius at the Council of Nicaea. While both Athanasius and Arius spoke of Jesus as “Son of God”, the Athanasius’s insistence on homoousios (the same nature or substance) over against Arius’s homoiousios (a similar nature or substance) was nothing less than the preservation of the gospel. For if the Father is not essentially identified in the activity of the Son, then all that the Son said, suffered and did is without saving significance; devoid of redemptive significance, it is also without revelatory significance. (Those who are impatient with this discussion and others like it, speaking disdainfully of the controversy over an iota, the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet, must be reminded that there is no little difference between asking others to run your business for you and asking them to ruin it!)

Formal denial need not be blatant; in fact it is no less a formal denial for being subtle. Whenever the question, “Is Jesus the Son of God?”, is answered, whether waggishly or sincerely, “Of course he is; all of us are sons and daughters of God”, Incarnation is denied and therefore Trinity as well. And since the being of God is intrinsically related to the knowledge of God, any departure from acknowledging the Tri-unity of God imperils the knowledge of God. The current preoccupation with “Creation Spirituality” is such a subtle yet formal denial.

The question, “Who is God?”, is a question that scripture answers only indirectly. It answers this question by first asking and answering two others: “What does God do (outside of us, yet for our sake)?”, and “What does God effect (in us)?” We can know who God is only as we first learn what God has done on our behalf, for our sake, in the Son (and learn this from God), and also only as we become beneficiaries of this work on our behalf through the power of the Spirit. In sum, we know God as we are included in God’s work for us and as we are illumined concerning this work. To become acquainted with the living God, then, is to be drawn into God’s own life and be made a participant in God’s self-knowing; it is to “overhear” God talking to himself as we are permitted to “listen in on” him and therein have answered our question, “Who is God?”.

An unavoidable implicate of this is to understand that the creation is not God. It is too frequently overlooked that the non-divine status of the creation has to be revealed — or else why should the creation not be assumed to be divine, as in fact it often is? As it is only by grace (i.e., by the action of God himself) that we learn that the Triune one is God, so it is only by grace that we learn that the creation is not God but rather is creaturely. “Creation Spirituality”, on the other hand, is predicated on the postulate that the creation either is God or mediates God. This postulate prophet and apostle reject consistently. Since God is God and we are but creatures of God, the order or logic of revelation generates the order or logic of our knowledge of God. And since the creation does not reveal the Triune God, the creation (itself fallen and in bondage to death) is not the vehicle of that life which the Spirit (who is God) alone effects.

Any diminution of the Son as one with the being of the Father is an explicit denial of the Trinity. Such diminution of the Son invariably fosters an idolization of the creation. And idolatry, everywhere in scripture, is not merely ignorance of God (in the sense of lack of information about him) but rather an estrangement from him whose consequences are unimaginably deleterious.

VI: — Any sundering of Spirit from Son is a similar denial with similar consequences. Sundering the Spirit from the Son means that the “Spirit” ceases to be holy, ceases to be intrinsically related to the Word (as the reformers, following the apostles, were careful to note), and becomes instead the religious legitimation of human fancy or fantasy. Since, as was seen above, it is only through the truth that truth is known and non-truth recognized, only by reality that illusion is discerned, then only through revelation can we gain proper perspective on and understand assorted claims to truth, reality, godliness and goodness.

(i) RELIGION Despite its apparently ascendant secularism our era is startlingly religious. It is assumed that religion is good and that Christianity is religious. Christianity may indeed be, but is faith “religious”? Prophet and apostle attest that the gospel exposes religion as non-gospel, non-faith; i.e., unbelief. Elijah on Mount Carmel does not suggest to the Baal spokespersons that they are religious, he is religious, and therefore they should all pool their religiosity, seeking out a common denominator, maximizing convergence and minimizing divergence. On the contrary Elijah maintains that shortly Yahweh will act in such a way as to expose Baalism for what it is. This is not to say that Israel’s faith remained free of religion; the prophets continually deplore the religious invasion of Israel and continually recall Israel to the God who displayed his outstretched arm in delivering them from slavery and formed them his people at Sinai, and now nurtured them like a mother with her child at her breast.

It seems that the church today thinks itself to be meeting religious pluralism for the first time, when in fact the faith of Israel and of Israel’s greater Son came to birth and had to survive in the context of competing religious claimants. To be sure, this pluralism always encroached upon the faith of God’s people, threatened to dissolve them, and therefore had to be resisted as grace freed faith to be irreligious. Significantly, while Paul begins his sermon on Mars Hill (Acts 17) by acknowledging the phenomenon of religions (the Greek word he uses — deisdaimon — also means “superstition”, it should be noted), he quickly moves to an unambiguous declaration of Jesus Christ, his resurrection, and the coming judgement. Nowhere do the apostles counsel seeking commonalities with contiguous religious manifestations.

Unless the church recovers its discernment of how revelation discloses itself as distinct from religion, how will the church be able to recognize — and repudiate — the religious accretions to the gospel, and even the most subtle (yet no less spiritually harmful) psycho-religiosities that attach themselves to our own believing and attempt to transmogrify faith? How will it distinguish between the truth that God, for the sake of his glory and our salvation, has freely justified us of his own free grace, and religion as the insidious attempt at justifying ourselves before a god whose mercy and pardon we plainly doubt?

(ii) CULTURE Again, as soon as Spirit is sundered from Word (Jesus Christ is the one Word of God we are to hear and heed in life and in death, according to the Barmen Declaration), the “Spirit” is co-opted as the legitimization and even the divinization of culture. Aesthetic riches with their concomitant delight are then spoken of as “spiritual experience”. All experiences of the creaturely order in its own mysterious depths are denoted “spiritual” and, because genuinely mysterious (i.e., non-reducible in terms of psychology, sociology or biology) are confused with the work of the Holy Spirit of God. The obvious conclusion from this confusion is that cultured people are spiritually superior and that culture saves.

The Germans, as usual, have a polysyllabic word for it: Kulturprotestantismus. The culture-religion which had permeated the German church left people unable to distinguish between God himself and the awesome depths of God’s creation, between having “God’s love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us”(Romans 5:5) and being moved by natural beauty or artistic talent. When Kulturprotestantismus went beyond viewing aesthetics as the vestibule to the kingdom and affirmed culture and kingdom to be synonymous, the nazification of the land of Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven — not to mention the world’s leading medical research — demonstrated that culture can readily cloak the conflict between Holy One and evil one. It demonstrates too that Kulturprotestantismus supplies neither the ability nor the urge to remove the cloak.

(iii) SELF-INTEREST The spectacle of most television religious programming, replete with references to “God”, “Holy Spirit” and “faith” raises the issue of narcissism. Narcissism is preoccupation with oneself, preoccupation with one’s own comfort, advantage, recognition, advancement and reward. Narcissistic people look upon themselves (however unconsciously) as the focal point of the universe and the measure of it as well. The televised “gospel” enhances this more often than not. It is only as the Spirit is known to be always and only the Spirit of him who had nowhere to lay his head, of him who appoints would-be followers to leave all and shoulder a cross; it is only as the Spirit is known to be the Spirit of him to whom all judgement has been given (John 5:22) that the self-preoccupation of pietistic self-measurement is identified as the narcissistic counterfeit of faith.

(iv) PATHOLOGY In the same way once the Spirit is divorced from the one who is the guarantor of the kingdom (i.e., the creation healed), once pneumatology is separated from Christology, people are theologically/spiritually defenceless against psycho-religious pathology. Jonestown need not be recalled; suffice it to recollect those whose “faith” has rendered them ill, or rendered them more ill.

Less dramatically, once pneumatology is separated from Christology, once the Spirit is (falsely) identified with “religiously-tinged” interiority, there appears to be little or no ground for distinguishing between neurotic and real guilt, little or no help for disentangling them or for seeing how the neurotic may cloak the real or the real obscure the neurotic.

In short, once pneumatology is separated from Christology it becomes difficult to see how pastoral psychology can be genuinely pastoral; i.e., how it subserves a “cure of souls” and not merely a “cure of psyches”.

VII: — When Jesus Christ is confessed as the unique bearer and bestower of the Spirit; when the Spirit is known as the power in which Jesus Christ acts, to the glory of God the Father, then distortions that bedevil the church are avoided and Trinitarian doctrine preserves proper balances.

Reference has already been made to the question Paul put to the Christians in Galatia, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?”. The question directs his readers to recall and reflect upon an aspect of their life in Christ which they cannot deny, an event (however protracted), moreover, which is so common as to provide an indisputable beginning-point for his subsequent reasoning with them.

As the church today recovers experience of God (for experience of God is the only experience the Spirit of Jesus Christ facilitates) the theological content of the gospel will never be arid intellectualism. It is the Spirit who prevents the gospel (so-called) from becoming the preserve of the intellectually gifted, from degenerating into a western philosophy that happens to employ a religious vocabulary. The gospel must not become one more abstraction to be assessed along with other “world-views”, when in truth the gospel, ultimately, is the presence and power of the living Lord Jesus Christ in his person. Doctrine, indubitably, is necessary — or else we have renounced all notion of truth and any suggestion that we can apprehend truth (however fragmentarily) and articulate truth (however provisionally). Yet in the light of the Spirit’s repudiation of intellectualism, faith can never be reduced to the grasp of doctrine.

When the Spirit is honoured as the power of God which renders Jesus Christ forever contemporaneous then living faith will always triumph over traditionalism. “I’m a Lutheran”, when uttered in the apparent absence of throbbing faith in the living Word, usually means that the Lutheran Church is the one someone stays away from! The same phenomenon is seen in those whose Protestantism consists in their anti-Catholicism.

Faith’s triumph over traditionalism in no way belittles the place of tradition. Tradition, as G.K. Chesterton reminds us, allows the dead to vote! Permitting the dead to vote is crucial, since a church without tradition resembles an amnesiac. The most ominous feature of those afflicted with amnesia isn’t that they cannot remember where they have left their umbrella; rather, it is that they cannot be trusted. A church disdainful of tradition is a church not to be trusted.

When “Spirit” and “Word” are acknowledged to imply each other then institutionalism will not supplant adventurous discipleship. No longer subserving itself or an un-gospel agenda, the institution will subserve the community which lives for the praise of God’s glory. The institution will resist calling for that obedience which is owed God alone. Neither will it attempt to forfend criticism by accusing dissidents of disloyalty. In trusting the promise that the powers of death shall not prevail against Christ’s people who, like John the Baptist, point to him who baptizes with a most fiery Spirit, it will soberly remember that institutional remains litter the landscape of history even as “God’s peculiar treasure” is safeguarded unto the day of its vindication.

Where the Spirit is recalled as the Spirit of him who insists that harlots and tax-collectors enter the kingdom of God ahead of the “righteous” the placebo of moralism will be detected and dropped. The Christian life will not be impoverished until it becomes precisely what the world misunderstands it to be: conformity to a code, success at which enterprise breeds self-righteousness while failure precipitates despair. Since Jesus died for the ungodly and not for the immoral, morality will be seen for what it is: the barricade behind which people attempt to hide from God rather than the vestibule to God’s kingdom. Evident instead will be glad obedience to the living person of Jesus Christ, motivated by gratitude for deliverance from the sin of moralism.

Where the Spirit is trusted to lend effectiveness to proclamation in Christ’s name evangelism will not give way to assorted techniques for proselytizing or garnering adherents. To evangelize is to set forth the gospel of the Son in reliance upon the God whose Spirit is sufficient to empower the saints’ testimony. In other words, the outcome of our evangelism can be left in God’s hands.

A church which does not trust the Spirit to honour witness borne to the Son is a church which confuses evangelism with conversion; which is to say, a church which cannot distinguish between its work and God’s work. Moreover, a church which thinks that conversion (rather than witness) is its responsibility is a church which coerces; the harassment can be physical, social or psychological, but it remains coercion. Paradoxically, the church which thinks that it has to generate the fruit of its diligent “God-talk” announces to the world that it does not believe in God, since it cannot trust God to vivify God’s own Word! To trust that the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son or Word is to be freed from anxiety concerning the results of mission and therein spared the fear of failure and the concomitant temptation to coerce.

As the Spirit brings women and men to faith in the crucified, the Son’s cross will be recognized as the limitless vulnerability of the Father, and the Son’s resurrection as the limitless triumph of this vulnerability. Trusting the triumph of God’s vulnerability, God’s people can allay all anxiety concerning the prosecution of the Christian mission, even as they forego the seeming shortcut of strong-arm tactics.

VIII: — A recovery of the doctrine of the Trinity would do eversomuch to assist mainline denominations with respect to the catholicity of their mission. Despite mainline Protestantism’s protestations that it sides with the victimized, the marginalized, the oppressed, and those disadvantaged in any way, it remains almost exclusively an occurrence within the ascendant middle class. That segment of the socio-economic spectrum from which the mainline draws its people is becoming smaller as it also becomes more affluent: we are attracting fewer and fewer people, virtually all of whom are more and more wealthy. We attract no poor people, even remarkably few who are not upwardly socially mobile.

In times of economic turbulence the rich are cushioned against material misfortune and remain rich; the poor are not cushioned, but neither do they have anything to protect, with the result that they remain poor. The rising middle class, however, is unrelievedly vulnerable. In times of economic dislocation it is precipitated downwards. It collapses into that segment of the socio-economic spectrum with which mainline denominations have no credibility at all. In other words, simply as a result of uncontrollable economic convulsions they would be deprived of their constituency. A recovery of Trinitarian faith, especially with respect to the self-appointment of God in the person of the Son, would commission us to re-examine our socio-economic exclusiveness. After all, the Word of God is baptized in dirty water at the hands of someone who will be forever out of place among the socially slick. The pronouncement heard at this baptism — “Thou art my beloved Son; with Thee I am well pleased” — is a conflation of Psalm 2 and Isaiah 42. Psalm 2 is God’s appointment of the royal ruler, the one possessed of genuine authority. Isaiah 42 speaks of God’s approval of the “Servant of the Lord”, commonly known as “the suffering servant”, the one who “was despised and rejected by humankind…and we esteemed him not”. The mission of God himself in the Son will ever be effective (God is sovereign), but its effectiveness will materialize through a servanthood that entails hardship and sacrifice and social rejection. Then to be Christ’s follower is to be commissioned to a ministry of service, not domination; of self-forgetfulness, not personal advantage; even of social rejection rather than public congratulation. Would not a new appreciation of the Son’s mission, when the Son is one with the Father himself, be the recovery of our identification with the Son who cherished the very people to whom the mainline churches cannot relate? In that Son who is of the same substance and nature as the Father God effectively loved the world — not merely one aspect of the world, i.e., social aspirants whose psycho-social needs church-affiliation appears to serve — for now.

The recovery of the doctrine of the Trinity will foster the recovery of Trinitarian faith; this in turn will mean a return to the catholicity of the gospel. And such a return will spell recovery of mission and service on behalf of the all the “far off” who have been “brought near in the blood of Christ”. (Ephesians 2:13) For “through him we both [i.e., Jew and Gentile, which is to say all human beings equally despite apparently insurmountable barriers] have access in one Spirit to the Father.” (Ephesians 3:18)

The tetragrammaton, , contains no vowels. Lacking vowels, it is unpronounceable. Because it is unpronounceable it is untranslatable; for this reason there can be no substitute for it. There can be no substitute for the name of the God who has named himself Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To know God, honour and obey and adore God, is to find that the doctrine of the Trinity is neither the museum-like security-blanket of the nervous nor the jettisonable baggage of the naive. The doctrine of the Trinity, rather, will ever orient us to the living God whose love for a dying world commissions us to love it no less.

Victor A. Shepherd 1995

No one could ever object to the specific actions that the document recommends. Christians are urged to form groups to alleviate the loneliness of senior citizens, to collaborate with non-Christians in supporting residences for battered women, to encourage the development of affordable housing, etc. Yet as unobjectionable as these recommendations are, they are to the same extent unremarkable. Who would ever oppose them, think them unworthy of Christians’ endorsement, or suggest that they contradict the gospel?

At the same time, the theological and biblical articulation that underlies the document is both remarkable and objectionable in view of the reductionistic theological conclusions and the distorted biblical exposition.

Major theological assertions are largely one-sided. We are told, for instance, that the great prophets of Israel were convinced that God cared about every aspect of the world’s life. (Correct). Conspicuously absent, however, is the heart of the prophets’ passion: the thunderous announcement of unavertible judgement, the exquisite urgency of repentance, the undeflectable insistence that oppression and exploitation and desolation are the result of culpable defiance of the Holy One of Israel and of his reaction to this.

The skew just illustrated pervades the document: the undeniable theocentric thrust of scripture gives way to the anthropocentric bent of the document. We are told that the fact that “the world is in serious trouble” has galvanized the new understanding of ecumenism. (Hasn’t the world been in trouble since the Fall and since God’s holy hostility to humankind’s disdainful dismissal of him?) Absent entirely is the “downbeat” of scripture: God’s central concern is his vindication of his “name” (reputation), upon which name the nations and the church have alike heaped slander. Throughout scripture God acts to clear his name of the slurs now besmirching it. It is as a result of God’s vindication of himself in the face of outrageous vilification that the church is called, identified, equipped and preserved as God’s “peculiar treasure” — even as one aspect of the church’s vocation is its intercession for the world!

Difficulties bristle when we are told to “discern and celebrate God’s Spirit, not only in the people of the churches, but also in people of other faiths and ideologies.” No qualification is added! Then how are we to recognize, where are we to look for, God’s Spirit in them? Ideologies abound: Marxism, materialism, antisemitism, the North American way of life, sovereignty-association for Quebec, hedonism, new ageism. How is the Spirit to be discerned here? To what end? (According to the New Testament Jesus Christ uniquely bears and bestows the Spirit. To say this is to not say that those outside the church are God-forsaken.)

Theological inaccuracy and inadequacy surface in such statements as, “For Paul, all human beings are one in their tendency to sin.” Are we one in the tendency? Is Jesus Christ our tendency to righteousness? According to 1 Cor. 1:30 he is our righteousness — as sin is our oneness, according to Paul.

Difficulties with scripture abound. First, there is a failure to recognize the context of scripture passages (e.g., of the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25). Second, there is a failure to appreciate the point of the text (e.g., when Paul speaks in Romans 2:15) of the law’s being written on the heart his point is the inexcusability of humankind before God, not a natural theology supporting “whole-world ecumenism”. Third, there is one-sidedness arising from referring to only part of the text (e.g., while 2 Cor. 5 certainly does assert that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, it also asserts — while the document does not — that we are ourselves to be reconciled to God). Fourth, — and very damaging — is the denial of the truth-claim of key texts (e.g., John 14:6, where John’s vocabulary is reduced to “love-language” , the gushing sentimentality of someone whose admiration has eclipsed objectivity and recognition of truth).

OIKOUMENE, a Greek word, originally meant “the entire inhabited world”. Then “ecumenical” meant the witness of the church catholic before the world; then interdenominational cooperation. In the document before The United Church of Canada it has come to mean something akin to “lowest common religious denominator”.

This ought not to be countenanced.

Victor A. Shepherd

This sermon was preached in January of 1997

I: — Prostitution is tragic under any circumstances. Prostitution is demeaning. Prostitution, however, that is enjoined as a religious act and defended by a religious argument is more than tragic and demeaning: it’s disgusting.

In the city of Corinth one thousand women were attached as religious prostitutes to the temple of Aphrodite. Needless to say the Christian congregation in Corinth stood out starkly against the backdrop of the temple and its sordid traffic in devotees who did obeisance to Aphrodite and all that the goddess represented. At least the Christian congregation in Corinth largely stood out starkly against the backdrop of sexual irregularities. We know, however, that the spirit of Aphrodite always lapped at the Christian congregation and occasionally infected a member or two of it.

Centuries earlier the Canaanite nations that surrounded Israel had trafficked in religious prostitution too. The word to Israel that had thundered from Sinai, however, had repudiated such degradation. The prophets in turn denounced it unambiguously. Even so, the spirit of sexual irregularity always hovered over Israel, always had to be guarded against, and occasionally had to be exorcised.

Throughout the history of humankind, whenever a goddess has been worshipped as the arch-deity, wherever “Mother-god” has been held up, the final result has always been religious prostitution and widespread sexual promiscuity. For this reason Israel refused to call God “Mother”, and refused as well to speak of the deity as “goddess”.

Throughout the history of humankind goddess-worship (Mother-god-worship) has been associated with the worship of fertility. The worship of fertility includes fertility of all kinds: agricultural fertility, animal fertility, human fertility. A key element in such worship, a key element in the chain of events, has been “sympathic magic”. Sympathic magic means that when humans are sexually active the god and goddess are sexually active too. The sexual activity of god and goddess in turn ensures the fertility of animals and crops.

When Israel was led to call God “Father”, Israel didn’t think for a minute that the God of Israel was equipped with male genitalia rather than female. Israel knew that the true and living God is not equipped with genitalia of any kind; God is not gender-specific in any sense. In calling God “Father”, however, Israel was deliberately refusing to call God “mother”; Israel was deliberately repudiating everything that the fertility cults around it associated with female deities. Israel repudiated the notion that the deity is sexually active, the notion that human sexual activity is sympathically magical, the notion that the entire enterprise is sacramentally abetted by sacral prostitution, the notion that the concomitant promiscuity has any place at all in God’s economy. Israel repudiated all of it.

Yes, Israel did occasionally use female imagery to describe God. In scripture God is said to be like a mother or a nurse or even a she-bear not to be trifled with. But while God is said to be like a mother, for instance, God is never said to be a mother, never called “mother”. On the other hand God is said to be a father and is called “Father”. Why the difference? — because of everything detailed above.

In view of all this I am stunned to find Voices United naming God “mother” and “goddess” in six hymns and three prayers. Two of the prayers name God “Father and Mother” (as in the rewritten prayer of Jesus, “Our Father and Mother…”). This plays right into the hands of Canaan and Aphrodite where sexual intercourse among the deities creates the universe. (In the creation stories of the bible there is no suggestion anywhere that the universe came into being as the result of sexual activity among the deities.) It also plays into the hands of the old notion that when a worshipper is sexually joined to a religious prostitute, worshipper and prostitute themselves become the god and the goddess. In other words, to speak of “Our Father and Mother” lands us back into everything that Israel’s prophets fended off on account of the character of Israel’s God. Hymn #280 of Voices United exclaims, “Mother and God, to you we sing; wide is your womb, warm is your wing.” This hymn squares perfectly with the fertility cults of old, together with their sacral prostitutes and their religiously sanctioned promiscuity.

II: — As expected, then, Voices United denies the transcendence of God. By transcendence we mean the truth that God is “high and lifted up”, as Isaiah tells us. Later a Hebrew prophet, knowing himself addressed by the holy One Himself, finds seared upon his own mind and heart, “…my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) God is radically different from His creation, radically other than His creatures.

The distinction between God and His creation is a distinction that scripture never compromises. “It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves”, cries the psalmist. In last week’s sermon I mentioned that the root meaning of “holy” is “set apart” or “different”. God is holy in that He is radically different. God is uniquely God. His creation is other than He, different from Him. To be sure, His creation is good (good, at least, as it comes forth from His hand, even though it is now riddled with sin and evil); but while God’s creation is good it is never God. The creation is never to be worshipped. Idolatry is a horror to the people of God. The creation isn’t God; neither is it an extension of God or an aspect of God or an emanation of God. God remains holy, high and lifted up. He and His creation are utterly distinct. He alone is to be worshipped, praised and thanked. We who are creatures of God are summoned to trust Him, love Him, obey Him, and therein know Him. We are summoned to know God (faith is such a knowing); but we are never summoned to be God. Indeed, the temptation to be God, to be our own lord, our own judge, our own saviour — this is the arch-temptation. Any suggestion that any human activity can render us divine (as is the case with sacral prostitution) is a denial of God’s transcendence. The old hymn known as “The Doxology”, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow/Praise Him all creatures here below…”, reflects God’s transcendence. In Voices United, however, “the Doxology” has been altered to “Praise God from whom all blessings flow/Praise Him all creatures high and low…”. “All creatures here below” affirmed the truth that God is above us; “All creatures high and low” makes no such affirmation. In the mother-goddess mind-set God is no longer radically other than His creation; God is no longer discontinuous with the world; God and the world are a function of each other. Here God is an aspect of the world — which is to say, God (so-called) is useless to the world.

The loss of God’s transcendence is reflected in the psalm selections of Voices United. Of the 141 psalm selections in the book, only 9 retain the name LORD. (When LORD is spelled with every letter capitalized, it translates the Hebrew word YAHWEH, “God”.) Voices United has virtually eliminated “LORD” from the Christian vocabulary. The reason it has done so, according to the hymnbook committee, is because “LORD” is hierarchical and therefore oppressive. The hymnbook committee is correct concerning one matter here: unquestionably “LORD” is hierarchical; God is above us; He is “high and lifted up”; he does transcend us infinitely. But does this make Him oppressive? So far from making Him oppressive, the fact that God is above us is the condition of His being able to bestow mercy upon us. Only if God is above us, only if God transcends us, is He free from us and therefore free to act for us.

The loss of God’s transcendence shouldn’t surprise us in view of the fact that the New Age movement has infected everything in our society, the church not excepted. The New Age movement endorses pantheism (that heresy, says C.S. Lewis, which always tempts the church). Pantheism insists that God is the essence of everything or at least that God is in everything. If God is in everything or the essence of everything, then there is nothing that isn’t God. However, if there is nothing that isn’t God, then evil doesn’t exist, since evil is that which contradicts God and aims at frustrating Him, that which He in turn opposes. And if evil doesn’t exist, then neither does sin, since sin is that expression of evil that has overtaken humans. In other words, the loss of God’s transcendence plunges men and women into a confusion, a maze, where such crucial bearings as sin and evil are lost too.

Yet we are plunged into more than mere confusion; we are plunged into hopelessness. When God’s transcendence is denied, God is unable to judge us (the New Age movement finds this convenient). However, the loss of God’s transcendence also means that God is unable to save us. Only He who transcends the world so as to be able to judge it is also free from the world so as to visit it with mercy. Only the “hierarchical” God can finally be for us. Hierarchy is the condition of God’s helpfulness. The God who isn’t LORD is the God who has been handcuffed.

III: — Since God’s transcendence is compromised in Voices United, no one will be surprised to learn that the foundational doctrine of the Christian faith, the doctrine of the Trinity, is undervalued. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In The Hymnbook the Trinity is referred to in over 50 hymns out of 506. In Voices United the Trinity is referred to twice out of 719 hymns. Plainly, the Trinity has all but disappeared. This is no surprise. After all, if God isn’t to be called “Father”, then God certainly isn’t going to be known as “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.

Why is the doctrine of the Trinity important? How is it foundational to the Christian faith? The question “Who is God?” is a question scripture never answers directly. By way of answering the question “Who is God?” scripture always directs us to two other questions: “What does God do?” and “What does God effect?” “What does God do?” refers us to God’s activity on our behalf, what he does “for us”. “What does God effect?” refers us to God’s activity “in us”.

What does God do for us? He incarnates Himself in Jesus of Nazareth. He redeems His creation in the death of Jesus, restoring its access to Him. He raises Jesus from the dead, vindicating Jesus and declaring him to be sovereign over all, Lord and Messiah.

What does God do in us? He visits us with His Spirit and seals within us all that He has done outside us. He steals over our spiritual inertia and quickens faith. He forgives the sin in us that He had already absorbed for us on the cross. He brings us to submit to the sovereign One whose sovereignty He had declared by raising him from the dead. In short, the God who acts for us in His Son acts in us by His Spirit so that all the blessings provided in the Son may become ours as well.

What God does for us in the Son is known, in theological vocabulary, as Christology. What God does in us through the Spirit is known as pneumatology. Christology and pneumatology add up to theology. Who God is is made known through what He does for us and what He does in us. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In place of the Trinity Voices United speaks of “Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer”. But the two expressions are not equivalent. “Father, Son, Spirit” speaks of God’s being, who God is in Himself eternally, as well as of God’s activity, what He does for us and in us in time. “Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer”, on the other hand, speaks only of God’s relation to the world in time. According to scripture God’s relation to the world means that He is also judge, sovereign and inspirer. Then instead of “Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer” we could just as readily say “Judge, Sovereign and Inspirer” — plus ever so many more. We could say them all with equal justification, even as we still wouldn’t be saying what is said by “Father, Son, Spirit”: namely, that God is for us and in us in time what He is in himself eternally, and He is in Himself eternally what He is for us and in us in time.

There is another point to be made here. “Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer” is sub-personal. But God isn’t sub-personal. God is Person in terms of whom we understand what it means for us to be persons. Again, for this reason, we must call God “Father” even as for reasons already mentioned we mustn’t call God “Mother”.

There is yet another point to be made here. When we speak of God (or speak to God) as “Father, Son, Spirit” we are calling God by that name wherewith He has named Himself. My name is “Victor”. I always introduce myself as “Victor” because I expect to be called Victor. I don’t care to be called “Vic” or “slim” or “mack” or “You, there”. I think it’s only courteous to call me by that name wherewith I name myself.

Surely we can be no less courteous to God. Yet more than a courtesy/discourtesy is at stake concerning God. According to our Hebrew foreparents name means nature. A change of name means a change of nature. “Jacob” means “cheater”; his name is changed to “Israel” — “he who wrestles with God”. Why the name change? Because the man himself has ceased to cheat and has become someone who will wrestle with God for the rest of his life.

To change the name of God from “Father, Son, Spirit” to anything is to repudiate the nature of the true God and to pursue a false god. To trifle with the name of God at all is to reject the One who is our only God and Saviour.

IV: — It’s only fair to admit that there are some fine hymns in Voices United. Not only are there fine older hymns, there are also fine newer hymns. The puzzling feature, then, is why they are mixed up together. Why does the one book contain hymns that are unexceptionable as well as those that are heretical and worse?

On second thought I don’t think there’s a puzzle. I think the mix-up is the result of the age-old temptation of syncretism. We human beings are exceedingly uncomfortable when we face a fork in the road anywhere in life. We prefer to “have our cake and eat it too.” We don’t want to have to say “No” to anyone or anything. It’s always easier to include all the options and endorse all the alternatives. We are syncretists in our fallen hearts.

Syncretism is a temptation that has always tempted God’s people. When Joshua, successor to Moses, confronted the people with his ringing challenge, “Choose this day whom you will serve. The deities of the Amorites? The deities of the region beyond the Jordan? Choose! But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD!” — plainly Joshua knew that his people could serve either the LORD or the Amorite deities but not both.

As a matter of fact Israel wasn’t customarily tempted to repudiate God; Israel was tempted customarily to combine God and Baal, God and Ashtareh, God and whatever deity the neighbouring nation was extolling. The temptation is easy to understand. God promised His people His fatherly care and protection; Baal promised the people unrestrained licence. Why not have both? Why not have holiness and hedonism at the same time? Holiness guaranteed them access to God, while hedonism guaranteed them endless self-indulgence. Why not have both? Why not have God and mammon? Why not? Because Jesus said it’s impossible. Because the prophets before him said it’s impossible.

All of which brings us to a refrain that reverberates repeatedly throughout God’s history with His people. The refrain is, “I am a jealous God.” God is jealous not in that He’s insecure and He needs to have His ego strengthened; neither is He jealous in that He craves what someone else possesses just because He lacks it. God is “jealous”, rather, in that He insists on our undivided love and loyalty. He insists on our undivided love and loyalty for two reasons. One, since He alone is truly God, He alone is to be worshipped and obeyed. Two, since He alone is truly God, He wants us to find our true wholeness in Him. He knows that since He alone is truly God we shall fragment ourselves if we don’t worship Him alone. He cares too much for us to allow us to fragment ourselves. If we persist in gathering up the gods and goddesses and add the Holy One of Israel for good measure we shall fragment ourselves hopelessly.

Everybody knows that exclusivity is of the essence of marriage. To say that exclusivity is of the essence of marriage isn’t to say that husband and wife live in a universe of two people, ignoring everyone else. But it is to say that at the heart of marriage there is that which can be shared with no one else. Two married people who relish the marvel and the riches their union brings them don’t then say, “Since marriage is so rich with the two of us in it, let’s make it richer still by adding a third person!” So far from enriching a marriage, adding a third person annihilates the marriage. To the extent that exclusivity is of the essence of marriage, then, there is a kind of jealousy that is necessary to marriage.

Israel always knew that “God and…” , “God plus…” meant “not God at all”. Syncretism is fatal to our life in God.

Voices United combines fine hymns and terrible hymns on the assumption, apparently, that “nothing should be left out; no one should feel left out; there should be something here for everybody.” For this reason what we call the “Lord’s prayer” has been re-written, “Our Father and Mother”, even as “Father, Son, Holy Spirit” is retained (twice only) for die-hard traditionalists.

But the one God we are to adore knows that if our hearts go after Him and after some other deity then we shan’t have Him and we shall fragment ourselves utterly. Apart from the folly of our self-fragmentation, He insists on being acknowledged for who He is: the One alongside whom there is no other God, even as the Hebrew language reminds us that the word for “idols” is the word for “nothings”. He is a jealous God, knowing that adding another deity will affect the marvel and richness of our life in Him exactly as adding another party affects the marvel and richness of marriage: it terminates it.

V: — What’s at stake in all that has been discussed today? Is only a matter of taste at stake (some people like old-fashioned hymns while others don’t)? Is only a matter of poetical or musical sophistication at stake? What’s at stake here is a matter of life or death, for what’s at stake here is nothing less than our salvation.

As soon as we understand what’s at stake here — everything — we understand the intransigence of our foreparents in matters of faith. Jude insists that we are to “contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3) Why must we contend for it? Because the faith once for all delivered to the saints is under attack. It is assaulted from without the church and undermined from within the church. The assault from without isn’t unimportant; nevertheless, the undermining from within is far more dangerous. Unless we contend for, fight for, the faith once for all delivered to the saints, the truth of Jesus Christ will be cease to be known.

Peter cautions his readers against false teachers. Peter tells us that false teachers “secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them.” (2 Peter 2:1)

Paul accosts the Christians in Galatia who are already flirting with gospel-denial, “…there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ….Who has bewitched you?” (Galatians 1:7; 3:1)

Jude, Peter and Paul aren’t horrified because an alternative religious opinion is being made known; they aren’t heartsick because disinformation is being disseminated; they react as they do inasmuch as they know that where the gospel is diluted, denied, compromised, or trifled with, the saving deed and the saving invitation of God can’t be known. Where the gospel is sabotaged through “destructive heresies”, the salvation of God is withheld from men and women whose only hope is the gospel.

We must be sure we understand something crucial. We don’t contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints because we are quarrelsome people who relish controversy. We don’t contend because we are ill-tempered people are annoyed with anyone who disagrees with us. We don’t contend because we are doctrinal hair-splitters who wish to make conceptual mountains out of molehills. We contend, as apostles and prophets contended before us, because we can’t endure seeing neighbours whom we love denied access to that truth which saves.

Then contend we shall. But of course we can contend properly only if we are discerning. For this reason John writes, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (1 John 4:1) Will our discerning, our testing, and our contending prevail, or are we going to be defeated? We shall prevail, for “faith is the victory that overcomes the world.” (1 John 5:4) Once again the apostle John writes, “…you are of God, and have overcome them [the false prophets]; for He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)

Victor Shepherd February 1997

The following sermon was preached in December, 1997

The Incarnation and the Moderator of The United Church of Canada

I: — Seeing film clips of sneering guards who are herding children into railway cars destined for the death camps does it for me. Looking at the convicted child-molester or the serial rapist does it for others. Seeing the brutal murderer does it for others still. What does it for you? What fills you with revulsion, with repugnance, with pure loathing? For the Jew of yesteryear it was the spectacle of idolatry. Nothing repulsed the Jew so much as having to behold idolatry. When Paul visited Athens and saw the idols thronging the city, his stomach turned over.

The essence of idolatry is mistaking something creaturely for the Creator himself, and thereafter worshipping the creature instead of the Creator. Since the earliest Christians were Jews, we know that they had a heightened sensitivity to idolatry, never confusing creaturely with Creator, never mistaking the work of God’s hand for God himself. And yet the earliest Christians fell on their knees before Jesus Christ, a fellow-creature like them, and worshipped him. John exclaims, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” The Word is God’s outermost expression of his innermost heart. John recognized that God had identified the outermost expression of his innermost heart with one human creature (and one only), Jesus of Nazareth. Paul exclaims, “He is the image of the invisible God….In him the fullness of deity dwells bodily.” Peter, possessed of a conviction that neither turbulence without nor treachery within would ever take from him, said to the Master himself, “You are the Christ [God’s uniquely anointed], the Son of the living God.” Peter, possessed of a Jewish mind, knew that “son of” meant “of the same nature as.” Thomas cries before the risen one, “My Lord and my God!” The four apostles I have just quoted were all Jews. They dreaded idolatry as they dreaded nothing else. Yet when they beheld their fellow-human, Jesus, they worshipped.

There are only two possibilities here. Either Jesus Christ is Emmanuel, “God-with-us” and the apostles were devout in worshipping him, or Jesus isn’t Emmanuel and the apostles were idolaters, even if unwitting idolaters. Either generations of Christians have been devout in adoring Jesus as Saviour and Lord, or they have been supremely superstitious, even if sincere. Christians of every era have hailed Jesus of Nazareth as the world’s sole, sufficient judge and saviour and sovereign. He can be this only if he is Emmanuel, God-with-us. Otherwise he is no more than a charlatan and we are no more than suckers. In confessing him to be Emmanuel, the church catholic has always known that any diminution of Jesus, however slight, in fact is a total denial of him.

II: — Just as the church catholic has always confessed Jesus Christ to be the Word made flesh, it has also always been afflicted with those who want to diminish him and thereby deny him. While perfidious attempts at diminishing him and resolute resistance to such denial have occurred in every era, there was one period in the church’s life when all of this was brought to sharpest focus. The year was 325. The place was Nicaea, a city in present-day Turkey. The contenders were Athanasius and Arius. At different times both had been bishop of Alexandria, Egypt. Athanasius insisted that Jesus Christ is precisely he whom the apostles acknowledged and confessed. Arius, on the other hand, felt he could “improve” on the apostles. Since the wording of the apostolic confessions couldn’t be altered (that is, since the vocabulary of scripture couldn’t be changed), Arius “weasled” different meanings into familiar words. For instance, “son of” is a Hebrew expression meaning “of the same nature as.” Arius, however, “weasled” a different meaning into “Son of God.” Now he told everyone that “Son of God” meant “similar to God.” Now the Son was said to be similar to the Father; the Son was like the Father.

The obvious question was, “How like? A lot like or a little bit like?” Athanasius replied that the real issue wasn’t how much like whether a little or a lot. The real issue, rather, was this: if Father and Son aren’t of the same nature, it makes no difference how much similar or how little similar they are, since a miss is as good as a mile. The apostles had acknowledged that the nature of the Father and the nature of the Son are identical: Father and Son have identical essence or substance or being.

Arius continued to disagree. He insisted that Jesus is a prophet, as Hosea and Amos and Jeremiah had been prophets before him. Jesus differed from the prophets, however, in that he was somewhat more than a prophet. Jesus is “prophet-plus.” Plus what? Plus a little more of the Holy Spirit, plus a little more righteousness, plus a little more obedience; it all added up to the “plus” of greater God-likeness. “Weaseling” yet again, Arius agreed that the Word had become flesh in Jesus of Nazareth but insisted that “Word” didn’t mean God’s outermost expression of his innermost heart. It was similar to that, said Arius, very much like that, almost that, but not exactly that. Then what became flesh at Christmas? What became flesh, continued Arius, was a message from God, an idea from God, a truth from God, but not God himself.

“This won’t do!”, replied Athanasius, “it isn’t what the apostles knew and confessed; it isn’t the faith by which the church has always lived.”

Athanasius then asked Arius what he meant when he said spoke of the incarnation. Arius replied that “incarnation” meant that Jesus is God’s agent on earth. “God’s agent on earth”, fumed Athanasius, “the Son isn’t God’s agent at all; the Son possesses the same substance or essence or being as the Father, and therefore the Son is the exact expression of the Father. As for God’s agent on earth, the Son is the Father’s exact expression eternally, irrespective of any earthly incarnation.”

Arius wouldn’t give up. (He also wouldn’t be corrected.) And therefore Arius came back, “Since the Son is only a prophet, albeit a prophet raised to the nth degree, the Son doesn’t know the Father fully; in fact the Son doesn’t really know the Father at all; God the Father infinitely transcends his creation and is ultimately unknowable. The Son knows something of God, is acquainted with truths of God, possesses notions of God, but in the final analysis the Son doesn’t know the Father fully. God remains unknowable ultimately.” Now Athanasius was almost beside himself. “If God isn’t knowable ultimately, on what grounds can we know him now at all? Yet the apostles were unshakably certain that they knew God himself; they didn’t merely know something about him”, said Athanasius.

Arius came back one more time. “Since the Son teaches us about the Father, therefore the Son points us beyond himself to the Father. The Son directs our worship beyond himself to the Father. The Son isn’t the focus of faith; the Father is.” Athanasius, by no means defeated, replied that the newness of the New Testament consists in its recognition of the unprecedented newness of God’s act: he has rendered himself, his nature, incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. Everywhere in the New Testament faith is faith in Jesus Christ. Everywhere in the New Testament faith in Jesus Christ and faith in God are synonymous. To worship him is to worship God; to obey him is to obey God; to love him is to love God. Why? Because Father and Son are possessed of the same nature, substance, essence, being.

Finally Athanasius formulated the theological expression for which he remains deservedly famous to this day, homoousios. Homo is Greek for “same”; ousios Greek for “substance, being, essence, nature.” Athanasius contrasted his expression, homoousios, with homoiousios, homoi being Greek for “similar.” The difference is the Greek letter iota, the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet, as the letter “i” is the smallest of the English alphabet. Is the letter iota so very small as to be insignificant? Is the letter “i” so very small as to be insignificant? Surely there’s a difference between asking someone to run your business for you and asking him to ruin it. Homoousios means that Father and Son possess the same nature, not similar natures.

And there the debate ended, for the church catholic agreed that Athanasius had faithfully reflected the conviction of the apostles, even as the church catholic agreed that Arius was an anti-gospel heretic.

III: — What does it all add up to for you and me today? Does it add up to anything crucial? As a matter of fact the difference between “same” and “similar”, homoousios and homoiousios, is the difference between gospel and no gospel, therefore between faith and superstition, therefore between our salvation and our ultimate loss. Let’s look at what would be the case if Athanasius hadn’t carried the day.

(i) The gospel wouldn’t be the self-bestowal of God. The New Testament declares that in Jesus of Nazareth God gives us himself, nothing less than himself, all of himself. God doesn’t give us something; he doesn’t give us a message or a notion or an ideal or a truth. In the gospel God communicates himself, bestows himself.

(ii) The love of God would be a niggardly love, a stingy love, a miserly love, a tight-fisted love. It wouldn’t be the love that gives all, costs all, holds back nothing. Instead it would be but a truncated love. According to the gospel, in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, God has condescended to us; not merely condescended to us as creatures, but condescended all the way down to us as sinners. God has condescended to us and numbered himself among us transgressors. God has condescended to us and become one with us. God has identified himself with us sinners fully in the person of his Son.

But if the Son were only similar to the Father, only like the Father (however close the resemblance), then the Son’s love for us sinners would be profounder than the Father’s; the Son of God would have identified himself with us in our sin but God himself wouldn’t have. Then we could only conclude that God’s love for us stopped short of ultimate condescension to us and ultimate identification with us.

(iii) The acts of Jesus would not be the acts of God. Think of Christ’s acts of forgiveness. We know that everywhere in life only the offended party can forgive. Since our sin offends God, only God can forgive sinners. When Jesus pronounces sinners forgiven, what’s going on? Are they forgiven? What right does Jesus have to pronounce people forgiven when God alone is offended? What power does Jesus have to render sinners forgiven when God alone is offended? His only right, his only power, is that he and the Father are one (as he tells us himself.) His only right, his only power, is that he and the Father are identical, not similar, in nature, substance, being.

(iv) What Jesus did on the cross would have nothing to do with atonement, that act of God whereby God makes God himself and an alienated world “at one.” What Jesus did on the cross would be nothing more than the pointless torture of a third party, all of such pointless torture of a third party having nothing to do with either God or world. The apostles insist that in the cross of Jesus, which cross is God’s judgement on and penalty for sin, God himself takes on his own judgement and penalty concerning the sin of humankind. It’s correct to say that as Jesus absorbs in himself the penalty for sin the Father absorbs the same penalty at the same moment if and only if Father and Son are one in substance. If Father and Son are merely similar, however, then the death of Jesus has no more salvific significance than the death of Abraham Lincoln or the death of D’Arcy McGee.

IV: — All of which brings me to the moderator of our denomination, Mr. William Phipps. Phipps persists in saying that Jesus isn’t who the apostles recognized him to be and what the church has always confessed him to be. Phipps persists in saying that Jesus Christ, in his very humanity, isn’t the presence and power of God. Phipps persists in saying that Jesus is a window through which it’s possible to see God. While there are many such windows, continues Phipps, Jesus is that window which happens to be the most relatively smudge-free. (Phipps never tells us why Jesus happens to be the relatively smudge-free window.) The apostles, however, suffered and died in allegiance to that Lord whom they found to be not a window through which one looks to God, but that incarnation upon whom one looks as God. Jesus Christ isn’t a window to a deity beyond him; Jesus Christ is the presence and power of the deity identified with him. No wonder the apostle Paul exulted, “In him the fullness of deity dwells bodily.” No wonder Charles Wesley wrote, “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity.” Phipps persists in denying the foundation of the church; he persists in denouncing what the apostle Jude calls “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” When Phipps is reminded of this he retreats, saying, “I’m no theologian, I’m no theologian.” True enough. But since he manifestly isn’t, then where theological matters are concerned why doesn’t he simply shut up?

Phipps insists that he hasn’t said anything that United Church moderators haven’t said for 35 years, all the way back to Ernest Marshall Howse. Phipps is correct. His perfidy isn’t new and is no greater than theirs. Well do I remember Ernest Marshall Howse’s public denials of the incarnation when Howse was moderator. Well do I remember Howse’s Easter sermon of 1968. I as flat on my back, encased from neck to groin in a body cast as a result of a three-fatality car accident in which my spine had been fractured. Since I was encased in plaster, I didn’t go to church in Easter ’68; instead I turned on the T.V. set and watched the Howse’s broadcast from Bloor Street United Church. Howse managed to get through the entire sermon, on Easter Sunday, without once mentioning the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This, of course, was no accident, since Howse had already said many times over that such matters as incarnation and atonement and resurrection he disdained. Phipps is right: he’s no different from his predecessors in the office of moderator.

Then what are we going to do? People are always asking me what I’m going to do; many are forever telling me what I should do. One man phones me over and over and tells me every time that if I were possessed of any integrity at all I would leave a denomination whose official representative is plainly heretical.

I have no intention of leaving. Instead I encourage myself by recalling my old friends, the Wesley brothers. On 21st January, 1739, Charles Wesley preached a sermon in which he deplored Anglican clergy who, like him, had promised at ordination to uphold the gospel but who were now, unlike Charles, glibly spouting the Arian heresy. These clergy, theologically degenerate, were perforce unitarians as well. Since these men were denying the faith of the church catholic, Charles correctly pronounced them “schismatics.” And since they were now denying the faith they had sworn in their ordination vows to uphold, Charles’s unhesitatingly pronounced them “perjured schismatics.” Charles, however, would never leave the Anglican church, for he didn’t disagree with the doctrinal standards he had sworn in his ordination vows to uphold and that his denomination had never changed.

The Arian heresy was to predominate in Anglicanism for decades. Forty-seven years after Charles Wesley had spoken against it, John Wesley did as much in his tract, “On Schism.” On 30th March, 1786, at age 83, John explained to his fellow-Methodists why he wasn’t going to leave the Anglican church despite its theological degeneration, even though many of his people wanted him to leave and take them with him. Wesley’s reasoning was twofold. In the first place, regardless of the current theological miasma, the Anglican church’s official doctrinal standards had never been changed and Wesley continued to honour them. In the second place, the denomination neither requested him to do what scripture forbids nor prevented him from doing what scripture commands. As long as this was the case, said John, he had no valid reason to leave.

Three days before Wesley penned his tract, “On Schism”, he had taken a boat from Holyhead (Wales) to Dunleary, a coastal village in Ireland. Once ashore at Dunleary he had been unable to find a horse and carriage to take him to Dublin, and so he had walked to Dublin. How far? Twenty-five miles! At age 83! Why? He wanted only to visit and minister to the small group of Methodists in Dublin. They were few in number and they were harassed. The Methodists in Dublin were so very dear to him that he would have walked 25 miles on broken glass to get to them. As for the denominational defection in 18th century Anglicanism, as for the perjured clergy who ruled it; all of this was nothing compared to his love for his people and their love for him. At age 83 he gladly walked 25 miles to be with the people he loved. Nothing else mattered.

Nothing else matters still.

Victor Shepherd
December 1997

• Testimony of Dr. Victor Shepherd
• Judgement rendered by Madam Justice Norma Wade-Miller of the Supreme Court of Bermuda
• Media coverage of the case

The case concerns a small congregation in Bermuda which has sought to withdraw from The United Church of Canada on the basis of the UCC’s deviation from Christian doctrine. The congregation wished to sever association with the UCC while retaining title to church property. The deed to the property states that it must be used for the worship of God in accordance with the doctrine of the Methodist Church as articulated in the Twenty-Five Articles of Religion of John Wesley. Favorable outcome for the Bermuda congregation therefore hinged on evidence that The United Church of Canada contradicted the Twenty-Five Articles of Religion. Expert testimony given by Dr. Victor Shepherd demonstrated that the UCC has intentionally and repeatedly contravened its own Basis of Union in its formal theology as well as its day-to-day operative theology.

The judgement of Madam Justice Wade ruled in favour of the congregation. The United Church of Canada has appealed this ruling.

Dr. Shepherd was accepted by the court as an expert witness based on his theological scholarship, particularly in the theology of John Wesley and Methodism. His testimony outlines the United Church’s deliberate deviation from its own Basis of Union in documents and pronouncements since 1988:

• Membership, Ministry and Human Sexuality: A New Statement of The United Church of Canada by the 32nd General Council
• The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture (34th General Council, 1992)
• Voices United (the Hymn and Worship book of The United Church of Canada)
• Executive of General Council Response to Issues Raised by the Interview of the Moderator, the Rt. Reverend Bill Phipps, with “Ottawa Citizen”
• Response of the Executive of General Council K. Virginia Coleman, General Secretary – Anderson Appeal

---

Testimony of Dr. Victor Shepherd

Dear Mr. Outerbridge,

You have asked me to compare the theology and doctrine of The United Church of Canada today (1998) with the theology and doctrine of the Methodist Church as exemplified by the Twenty-Five Articles of Faith of John Wesley and the doctrinal beliefs and practices of the Methodist Church of Canada in 1925.

Preamble

(1) The listing of the twenty-five articles of the Methodist Church is prefaced by the statement, “The Doctrines of the Methodist Church are declared to be those contained in the twenty-five Articles of Religion, and those taught by the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., in his Notes on the New Testament, and in the first fifty-two Sermons of the first series of his discourses, published during his lifetime.” Here the Methodist Church of 1925 (Canada)and 1930 (Bermuda) demonstrates its oneness with its predecessors and its continuity with classical Methodism in the era of Wesley himself, for the standards of doctrine were defined as Sermons and Notes on five occasions:

1. in the conference of 1773,

2. in the conference of 1780,

3. in the conference of 1781,

4. in Wesley’s letter to the conference of 1783,

5. in the conference of 1784.

This point is most important, for in the event of any seeming theological lacuna in the Articles themselves, judgement will have to be reserved pending an examination of Wesley’s Sermons and Notes. Methodist churches have always included these three items in their standards; i.e., the Articles of Religion alone have never exhausted the standards of Methodist bodies.

(2) Lest confusion arise concerning the meaning of “doctrine” (particularly in The United Church of Canada today), it should be noted that in scholarly theological discourse “doctrine” and “theology” are not co-terminous. In order to promote clarity it should be noted that the church catholic customarily speaks of dogma, doctrine and theology.

Dogma is the received apostolic faith. It consists of the unalterable “building blocks” of the faith arising from the developments in salvation-history. (E.g., creation, fall, the election of Israel, incarnation, atonement, resurrection, etc.)

Doctrine is the consensus of a church about its faith at a given time. Such a consensus has normative significance for a church at that time and until such time as the consensus is formally altered. Doctrine is embodied in confessions, catechisms, and liturgies. In those liturgical churches where liturgies are prescribed by the church and admit no deviation, liturgy is not merely the vehicle of public worship but is also a confessional standard. The church acquaints its people with normative doctrine by means of an unvarying worship-pattern.

Examples of doctrine are The Augsburg Confession (for Lutherans), The Thirty-Nine Articles (for Anglicans), The Westminster Standards (for some Presbyterians.) In light of the reference to liturgy in the preceding paragraph, it should be noted that John Wesley, as an Anglican clergyman, upheld the Anglican Church’s subordinate standards (i.e., subordinate to scripture): The Thirty-Nine Articles, The Book of Common Prayer, and The Edwardian Homilies. When he seeks affirmation of a scriptural point in extra-scriptural sources, he quotes the Prayer Book (i.e., the liturgy) first. Accordingly, Wesley cannot be accused of theological dereliction simply on the grounds that a theological item is missing from his Articles. It would have to be shown (first) that the same item is not found in the Prayer Book, and then as well in the remaining subordinate standards.

Theology is contemporary interpretation and articulation of the church’s faith. While creation and incarnation, for instance, are dogma and therefore non-negotiable, the church engages in theological exploration of such in light of the history of the church’s thought and in light of contemporary developments in science and philosophy, all of this in the thought-forms and language of modernity. Any “church”, however, that explicitly or implicitly repudiated creation or incarnation as such would be deemed heretical and be considered to have written itself out of the church-catholic.

(3) With respect to Methodist uniqueness, it must be understood that John Wesley abhorred theological novelty. For him novelty amounted to heresy. He affirmed as theologically sound only what he found in “scripture and antiquity”; i.e., in scripture and in the Church Fathers (Patristics.) Wesley was always at pains to show that Methodist Christians were neither heretical nor sectarian. They exemplified the Vincentian Canon (from Vincent of Lerins, first half of the fifth century): Consensus veterum: quod ab omnibus, quod ubique, quod semper creditur or “the ancient consensus: what has been believed by all [Christians], everywhere, always.” (See p. 324, Vol I, Wesley’s Works, Bicentennial Edition) In 1742 Wesley published his Character of a Methodist. It expounds what Wesley regarded as the distinguishing features of his people. What appears is a description of biblical Christianity that would equally pertain to any Christian of any persuasion. This is but another confirmation of Wesley’s insistence that Methodists are non-sectarian. It should be noted that when Wesley published Plain Account of Christian Perfection twenty-three years later (1765), which document sets forth that for which Wesley said God had raised up Methodism and that by which Methodism has been identified historically, the much shorter Character was largely reproduced in the much fuller Plain Account. When Anglican bishops accused Wesley of importing novelty into his churchmanship through his doctrine of Christian Perfection, Wesley turned the accusation back on them. Had they not that very morning prayed the collect for purity in the liturgy for Holy Communion (“…that we may perfectly love Thee”), and had they not been sincere in so praying? Then why should he (Wesley) be faulted for magnifying what Anglicanism endorsed in its liturgy and “antiquity” had always affirmed?

The point here is that while it is undeniable that Methodism admitted distinct emphases (e.g., sanctification or perfection as surely as Lutheranism underlined justification), Methodism was not doctrinally bizarre in any sense or programmatically unbalanced. Methodist churches, therefore, cannot be faulted for appearing non-catholic. Wesley believed that God had raised up Methodism, with its strong emphasis (amounting to a uniqueness in the period of classical Wesleyanism) for the sake of restoring to the church-catholic what the latter had traditionally upheld but had allowed to attenuate; in other words, Methodism was to be the means whereby the “savour” of the church-catholic’s “salt” would be recovered.

A COMPARISON OF THE UNITED CHURCH’S TWENTY ARTICLES OF FAITH (BASIS OF UNION)
AND
THE METHODIST CHURCH’S TWENTY-FIVE ARTICLES OF RELIGION

Concerning the Incarnation

BU II: “God has perfectly revealed himself in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, who is the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of his Person.”

Comment: The language here (e.g., God’s “brightness” [“reflects the glory of God” RSV, Heb. 1:3] and “express image of his Person” [the very stamp of his nature”, Heb. 1:3]; see also Col.1:15 for Jesus Christ as the “image” of the “invisible God”), together with “Word made flesh” attest unambiguously the apostolic confession of the incarnation.

BU VII: “…the Lord Jesus Christ…who, being the Eternal Son of God, for us men and for our salvation became man….”

Comment: The language here is that of the Nicene Creed, and can be read only as unambiguously attesting the apostolic confession of the incarnation.

25Ars II: “The Son, who is the Word of the Father, the very and eternal God, of one substance with the Father…so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and manhood, were joined together in one person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very man….”

Comment: This statement, in borrowing more exactly the wording of the Nicene Creed, also affirms the singularity of the incarnation.

The words “never to be divided” are most pertinent, for UCC spokespersons have, for the past several years, insisted that the two natures can be divided, even must be. Former moderator Dr. Bruce McLeod, for instance, in a television interview immediately following that with Mr. Ian Outerbridge (Jan. 1998, CTV), insisted that “Jesus” has to do with the first-century man from Nazareth, while “Christ” can be attached to anyone (or any development) and appear anywhere at any time. McLeod’s assertion, typical of many latterly in the UCC, explicitly denies what the apostles mean by “the Word become flesh.”

Concerning the Mediatorship of Jesus Christ

BU VII: “…the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and man….”

25Ars VI: “…everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man.”

Comment: Both standards agree perfectly — and both will be seen to say that Jesus Christ, as sole Mediator, is known as surely under the economy of the Old Testament as under that of the New. (See below)

Neither standard admits of any suggestion that humankind can be saved by anyone or anything other than or in addition to Jesus Christ.

Concerning the Sovereignty of Jesus Christ

BU VII: “…above us and over us all He rules; wherefore, unto Him we render love, obedience and adoration as our Prophet, Priest and King.”

Comment: The explicit statement “He rules” is reinforced by the implicit meaning of “King.” It is the function of the king to rule. Not only is Jesus Christ the incarnate Son of God; not only is he sole Mediator and Saviour; he is also sovereign in that he has been installed as the rightful ruler of the cosmos. There is nothing in the creation that is beyond his jurisdiction; and there is no aspect of human existence that he doesn’t claim for an obedience rightly owed to him.

25Ars III: “…He ascended into heaven, and there sitteth….”

Comment: In biblical symbolism to be seated is to be in a position of authority. (E.g., Jesus begins to deliver the Sermon on the Mount only after he has “sat down.” Matt. 5:1) The Twenty-Five Articles, borrowing the pithy language of the historic creed, regards “He ascended into heaven, and there sitteth…” as encapsulating all the church has said and continues to believe about the fact and significance of Christ’s session.

Concerning Judgement by Means of Christ

BU XIX: “…the Son of God, who shall come to judge the living and the dead….”

25Ars III: “…until He return to judge all men at the last day.”

Everywhere in scripture judgement is God’s prerogative, and his alone. Here, that which is exclusively God’s has been assigned to Jesus Christ. This is plainly another instance of the apostolic discernment of the incarnation.

Concerning Scripture

BU II: “We receive the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, given by inspiration of God, as containing the only infallible rule of faith and life, a faithful record of God’s gracious revelations, and as the sure witness of Christ.”

Comment: (i) Old and New Testaments are alike authoritative. (ii) They are “given by inspiration of God”. This vocabulary is not used of other Christian (or non-Christian) literature. Herein the Basis preserves the uniqueness of scripture.

(iii) They “contain” the only infallible rule. They contain it but are not it, since Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, alone is this. Here the Basis carefully avoids positing scripture (rather than Jesus Christ) as Saviour and Lord. The Basis cannot be faulted for a theologically naive biblicism. (iv) They are “infallible” in that they unfailingly fulfil that purpose for which they have been inspired and given. They are neither defective nor deficient with respect to their aim and its accomplishment. (v) They are the only infallible “rule of faith and life” in that they promote true faith (where the nature of faith is always controlled by the one who is the author and object of faith, God-incarnate) and the conduct or discipleship appropriate to true faith. (vi) Scripture is “the sure witness of Christ.” In other words, Jesus Christ, the sole Mediator (and therefore sole Saviour), is attested in both testaments and is the substance of both testaments. Here the Basis repudiates any form of Marcionism, whether ancient or modern, wherein the Old Testament is said to attest a deity different from that attested by the New (and be or cease to be authoritative for faith and life.)

25Ars V: “The Holy Scriptures contain all things necessary to salvation….”

Comment: The 25Ars uses the same vocabulary (“contain”) with the same intent as the Basis. Note that scripture contains all things necessary to salvation; scripture does not require supplementation. It should be noted here that while the Twenty-Five Articles do not use the word “infallible”, Wesley himself customarily did: rarely does Wesley speak of God’s being the author of scripture without speaking of infallibility. He customarily underlined the conviction that scripture can be trusted to deliver that of which it speaks: our salvation in Jesus Christ.

25Ars VI: “The Old Testament is not contrary to the New; for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ….”

Comment: (i) Old and New Testaments are not contrary; i.e., the substance of both is identical. In both “everlasting life” (i.e., salvation) is offered by Christ, “who is the only Mediator between God and man.” The same Christ known to the apostles is known to the prophets and their people (albeit under the economy of the Torah.) To say anything else would reproduce Marcionism and deny the claim of the Decalogue, for instance, on Christians today.

25Ars VI: “Wherefore they are not to be heard who feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises.”

Comment: Jesus Christ does not cancel the Old Testament but rather fulfils it and therein preserves it as a normative witness to Him. To say anything else would (i) deny that “the law and the prophets [i.e., the Old Testament] bear witness” to Jesus Christ (Romans 3:21) and to say instead that law and prophets contradict Jesus Christ (ii) posit two wills in God, as if God suffered from a Dissociative Identity Disorder (“multiple personality”.) (“Old” and “New” Covenants are the one covenant of God renewed.)

Concerning Moral Law

BU XIV: “We believe that the moral law of God, summarized in the Ten Commandments, testified to by the prophets and unfolded in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, stands for ever in truth and equity, and is not made void by faith, but on the contrary is established thereby.”

BU VI: “We believe that God…gave to His Son a people, an innumerable multitude, chosen in Christ unto holiness, service and salvation.”

Comment: The moral law of God is not undermined by faith (i.e., salvation by faith includes obedience); on the contrary, faith upholds the law in that faith recognizes the rightful claim of God the “salvager” (saviour) upon those whom he has rescued.

With respect to “chosen in Christ unto holiness”, it should be noted that while holiness cannot be reduced to matters of sexual conduct, as a matter of fact virtually all discussions of holiness in the New Testament occur in a context of sexual conduct.

25Ars VI: “…no Christian whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral.”

Comment: It should be noted that Wesley dreaded antinomianism (the notion that the moral law had been relaxed for Christians) as he dreaded little else. His denunciation of antinomianism and his caution to Methodists concerning it are found in his Works passim. One particular instance of his concern here is illustrated by his three sermons printed consecutively in his Fifty-two Standard Sermons (numbers 34,35, 36):

The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law,

The Law Established through Faith, I,

The Law Established through Faith, II.

Note his insistence in the lattermost tract, “`We establish the law’…when we so preach faith in Christ as not to supersede but produce holiness: to produce all manner of holiness, negative and positive, of the heart and of the life.”(p.38, Volume 2, Wesley’s Works.) It should be noted too that Wesley everywhere regarded “enthusiasm” (the elevation of experience above scripture) as the godless parent of its godless offspring, antinomianism. It is no surprise, then, to see him follow his three sermons on the Law of God with The Nature of Enthusiasm.

Conclusion

The Basis of Union (Twenty Articles) is entirely congruent with Wesley’s Twenty-Five Articles. The latter are a condensation and simplification of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. In using the doctrinal basis of the Church of England Wesley sought (i) to bring to sharper focus the doctrinal core of Methodism, (ii) to demonstrate Methodism’s doctrinal continuity with the Church of England. Had Methodism been doctrinally dissonant with the Church of England Wesley would have had to conclude that Methodism was sectarian and schismatic; i.e., not Christian and therefore not part of the church of Jesus Christ. His Twenty-Five Articles attests Methodism’s catholicity. Wesley’s emphatic insistence (1767) must be heard and honoured: “But whatever doctrine is new must be wrong; for the old religion is the only true one; and no doctrine can be right unless it is the very same `which was from the beginning.'” (Wesley, Works, Vol. I, p.324; italics his throughout)

The Basis of Union (1925) is congruent with the theology of Wesley in all respects. There is nothing that he deemed essential to the catholic faith, nothing that he regarded as an emphasis characteristic of Methodism, that fails to be included in the Basis. Careful readers have noticed that Wesley’s Twenty-Five Articles contain no particular Methodist emphasis. This observation is correct. So eager was Wesley to avoid the slightest suspicion of heresy that his Twenty-five Articles set forth an understanding of the Christian faith that is evangelical, Protestant and catholic. The more specifically Methodist emphases were to be found in his occasional writings and his Sermons. It should be noted in this context that all of the particularly Methodist emphases are recognized in The UCC’s Basis of Union: e.g.,
– holiness: Christians are”…chosen in Christ unto holiness.” BU VI: the Holy Spirit dwells “…in every believer as the spirit of truth,of power, of holiness.” BU VIII
– the universality of the offer of salvation: God “…freely offers His all-sufficient salvation to all men.” BU VI (Many Presbyterians, for instance, maintained that God offered salvation to some only; namely, the elect.)
– assurance as a concomitant of faith and love for God as the essence of sanctification: “…full assurance of faith whereby the love of God is made perfect in us.” BU XII Historic Wesleyanism was not denied in any respect when the Methodist Church became one of the ingredients of The United Church of Canada.

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Membership, Ministry and Human Sexuality:
A New Statement
of
The United Church of Canada
by the 32nd General Council

(Page 1, d) The document quotes approvingly Gift, Dilemma and Promise (30th General Council, 1984), and affirms a three-fold purpose of sexual intercourse while omitting any reference to procreation as one such purpose. In view of the extremely controversial document that preceded MMHS, Sexual Orientation, Lifestyles and Ministry, wherein a theological rationale was developed for homosexual liaisons (i.e., homosexual intercourse, where procreation is inherently impossible), the omission is very telling. According to the creation sagas in Genesis procreation is not the only purpose, or even the chief purpose, of intercourse between husband and wife (not between any man and any woman.) While the uniting of husband and wife is put forward as the chief purpose (therein overcoming “aloneness”), to omit any reference to procreation is (i) to deny the plain meaning of the scriptural text and the totality of the narrative, (ii) to imply that sexual activity can occur legitimately where procreation is inherently impossible, (iii) therein to lend to sexual activity that meaning which any societal context (the society as a whole or any sub-group within it) endorses.

From a biblical perspective, the promotion of marital intimacy and the engendering of children exhaust God’s purpose for intercourse. It should be noted that Jesus himself endorses this. Genital intimacy for any other reason is sin. The question can be asked, “If non-procreative sex within marriage is good in itself, then why is non-procreative sex between adults of the same gender also not good in itself?”, only if it is first denied that God has a purpose for sexual activity in creatures who are sexually differentiated by God’s ordination. (See below.) The special pleading of SOLM (which report was “received” while MMHS was “approved”) to the effect that scripture prohibits same-gender genital intimacy because Israel needed children to ensure the survival of the nation; this pleading remains unconvincing given (i) scripture’s abhorrence passim of same-gender genital intimacy (ii) scripture’s prohibition of bestiality, the indulgence of which would not yield nation-sustaining children.

It is to be noted too that nowhere does MMHS state (i) that marriage (and the faithfulness essential to it) is the commonest metaphor in scripture for faith (and the faithfulness to God essential to it), (ii) that the model for marital self-giving is the self-giving of Jesus Christ for his people. (Ephesians 5:21-33) The absence of a theological/Christological basis to the UCC’s understanding of marriage highlights the UCC’s variance with the understanding of the church catholic.

(Page 1, f) “We recognize the commitment that is present in many relationships other than Christian marriage….” The subtext of this statement is to be found in SOLM, where it was argued that the intensity of the commitment legitimated assorted relationships. Intensity, however, does not overturn the law of God; there can be relationships of unspeakable intensity that are illicit nevertheless. (Many illicit relationships are possessed of such intensity, and for that reason are not readily relinquished.)

(Page 2, 8) “We confess our inability at this time, given our diversity in our understanding of the authority and interpretation of Scripture, to find consensus regarding a Christian understanding of human sexuality, including homosexuality.” “Confess” is used ecclesiastically of (i) confession of the faith, (ii) confession of sin. It may be acknowledged that someone is unable to find consensus, but it cannot properly be said to be confessed, for (i) such inability is not an item of the faith, (ii) such inability as such is not sin, finitude or creatureliness not being sin. Furthermore, while The UCC may lack consensus concerning homosexuality, the church catholic manifests no such lack. In addition, scripture is unambiguous in its condemnation of homosexual behaviour. The reference to “our inability at this time, given our diversity in our understanding of the authority and interpretation of scripture” is in fact a blatant denial of the authority of scripture. Nowhere is scripture vague or ambivalent concerning the sin of homosexual behaviour.

(Page 2, 1) “We confess that God is the Creator of the earth and all that is, including humanity in all its diversity.” God is not the Creator of all that is; sin and evil “are”, yet God is not their Creator. (At present they contradict God; he opposes them and ultimately will not tolerate them.) God is not the Creator of every aspect of humanity’s diversity. In fact God is the Creator of but one: gender specificity. All of the distinctions that differentiate people (poverty and wealth, learning and ignorance, deprivation and privilege) are products of the Fall, not gifts of the Creator. They can be overcome and are mandated to be overcome: by means of the redistribution of income (Year of Jubilee, Lev. 25), the prohibition concerning interest on a loan advanced for life’s necessities, the learned instructing the ignorant. The diversity of language, for instance, is the result of God’s judgement (Genesis 12). The one “diversity” that is not the result of sin/judgement but is rather built into the created order is therefore a diversity that cannot be transcended. Any attempt to transcend it is eo ipse sin. This diversity (male-female distinctiveness, specifically genital distinctiveness) is to be affirmed. Here The UCC has contradicted once again the faith of the church.

(Page 2, 10) “We agree that God’s intention for all human relationships is that they be faithful, responsible, just, loving, health-giving, healing and sustaining of community and self.” God’s first intention (and determinative intention) is that relationships be God-ordained; i.e, not inherently sinful, not a violation of the law of God. No relationship that upholds what God forbids and endorses what God deems illicit can ever be just or responsible. No Christian can exalt a relationship that God condemns; no Christian can pretend that it is loving or responsible to confirm someone else (or oneself) in sin. While “faithful” is mentioned first, it ought not to be thought that faithfulness within an adulterous relationship, for instance, exemplifies God’s intention in any respect. Sin can never be healthy. So far from sustaining the self, sin destroys it.

(Page 3, 1) “(Council declared) [T]hat all persons, regardless of their sexual orientation, who profess Jesus Christ and obedience to Him, are welcome to be or become full members of the Church.” In light of SOLM, “sexual orientation” undeniably includes “sexual activity”. (This equation was the occasion of the furore in The UCC in 1988). Unrepented and unrepudiated behaviour arising from sexual orientations other than heterosexual orientation expressed in the context of marriage is a contradiction of “profession” and a denial of “obedience.” (See Acts 15:20, I Cor. 6:9-11.) Discipleship does not accommodate illicit sexual behaviour.

(Page 3, 2b) “All Christian people are called to a lifestyle patterned on obedience to Jesus Christ.” Certainly obedience (an aspect of faith) is always obedience to the person of Jesus Christ, not conformity to a (non-person) text. At the same time, obedience to Jesus Christ always takes the form of obedience to the apostolic witness to him. When Jesus Christ commissions the missioners he states, “Whoever hears you, hears me.” (Luke 10:16) This must not be weakened to, “Whoever hears you also hears me” or “may hear me.” Clearly Jesus Christ cannot be collapsed into the apostles, cannot be reduced to those whom he calls and equips to testify to him. None the less, he is not heard (obeyed) apart from them. Our coming to hear, heed, love and obey the Lord always takes the form of hearing, heeding, loving and obeying the testimony of his witnesses. They are not to be equated with him. None the less, unless their testimony is acknowledged as authoritative (which testimony is now scripture), he cannot be obeyed. In disregarding scripture with respect to sexual conduct The UCC has denied the logic of “Whoever hears you [apostles], hears me.” In (i) ordaining self-admitted, practising homosexual persons, (ii) seeking to place such in pastoral charges, The UCC has contradicted its assertion purportedly extolling “a lifestyle patterned on obedience to Jesus Christ.”

It should be noted in this regard that John Wesley explicitly condemned homosexual behaviour in his longest tract, The Doctrine of Original Sin (1757). The “pederasty” of which he spoke includes homosexual sodomy between adult males as well, more specifically, that between adult and juvenile males. In his Notes on the New Testament (one of the standards of Methodism) Wesley comments on the reference to homosexual behaviour in Romans 1:26-27, “Receiving the just recompense of their error — Their idolatry, being punished with that unnatural lust, which was as horrible a dishonour to the body, as their idolatry was to God.” Concerning the “base fellows” of Judges 19:16-30, men who were bent on homosexual indulgence, Wesley, following the English text of the Authorized (King James) Version of the bible, speaks of “sons of belial”, and adds, “Children of the devil, wicked and licentious men.” With respect to Jude 7, “Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them, which in the same manner with these gave themselves over to fornication…” (“the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust…” RSV), Wesley comments on “fornication”: “The word here means unnatural lusts: are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire — That is, the vengeance which they suffered is an example or a type of eternal fire.” The passage from the “Holiness Code” of Leviticus (“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” — Lev. 18:22) Wesley addresses by referring the reader to his comments on Romans 1:26-27. He does as much with a similar passage in Lev. 20:13. He plainly thought that a point he had made unambivalently once he could make thereafter by referring the reader to it without the bother of rewriting it. Several points need to be made here:

(i) While Wesley says relatively little about homosexual behaviour, scripture as a whole says only enough to remind readers of what everyone is supposed to know: homosexual behaviour is an abomination to God and is to be shunned by men and women. (Jesus nowhere comments on spouse-abuse. No one would conclude, given the silence of Jesus on this matter, that he was in favour of it. Everything that Jesus says in the course of his earthly ministry militates against it. In other words, the explicit teaching of Jesus himself, together with his endorsement of the wisdom of Israel (he said he came not to abolish the law and the prophets [the Old Testament] but to fulfil them), provides the context that interprets not only what Jesus says but what he does not bother to mention in that it is indisputable. It cannot be imagined that in the primitive Christian communities a spouse-abuser could expect to be exonerated on the grounds that his Lord had not explicitly forbidden it.)

(ii) In Wesley’s era it would not be contested that homosexual behaviour was immoral, even perverse, falling outside what God pronounces “good”, and therefore to be eschewed.

(iii) Wesley’s civility and good taste (deemed desirable in an Oxford-educated, 18th century Anglican clergyman) would prevent him from amplifying a matter in which he knew everyone in the church catholic to agree with him in any case.

(iv) There is nothing in Wesley’s theology or hymns or correspondence that suggests he approved in the slightest or regarded as permissible same-gender genital contact.

(v) As someone ordained in the Church of England (and as someone whose Holy Orders were neither revoked nor surrendered), and as someone who always insisted that the theology, liturgy and governance of the Church of England were the finest to be found in Christendom, Wesley would unquestionably have rejected as a candidate for ordination or as a leader in local congregations anyone who engaged in homosexual behaviour.

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The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture

(34th General Council, 1992)

This document fails utterly to acknowledge Jesus in conformity with the apostles’ confession of him: Lord, Saviour, Judge, Son of God, Incarnate Word, Messiah of Israel. “Jesus as mentor and friend”, something that could be predicated of anyone, is as much as the document will say. Since “Jesus is Lord” is the most elemental Christian confession, its omission is telling. The document nowhere speaks of the nature, uniqueness and significance of Jesus Christ. In what it says and in what it refuses to say the document is a stark violation of the whole of BU XII.

On p.3 the document states, “We have always sought to be deeply engaged with the realities of God’s world and the people and institutions in it.” From a biblical perspective world, people and institutions are not realities but actualities. As actualities they are concrete, not mythological or imaginary. Yet they are not reality, since reality, for prophet and apostle (i.e., according to scripture’s self-understanding)is the living, personal presence of God himself (or as the sixteenth century Reformers put it, the effectual presence of Jesus Christ.) If anything besides God is described as real, then God has to be fitted to this reality, accommodated to it — and this is a tacit denial of the reality of God. To speak of world, people and institutions as possessing reality (rather than actuality) is to acknowledge them as revelatory. Undoubtedly the document wants to do so (as is evidenced by the jejune comment, “Jesus is mentor and friend”); i.e., the document tacitly affirms that world, people and institutions bespeak God in a way that Jesus Christ does not. Here the document violates BU I and II.

On p.3 the document presupposes what scripture everywhere denies: the capacity of humankind to ask the right questions concerning God and humankind. Unquestionably humankind asks questions of scripture. Scripture itself, however, discounts all such interrogating, and contradicts human presumption and pretence by posing its own questions. The logic of scripture is exemplified by the questions scripture puts to humankind as through it God interrogates humankind, thus exposing the falsehood and illusion of the latter’s starting point. Briefly, scripture is the vehicle of God’s calling into question (disallowing) all such pseudo-questions and therein correcting them. It cannot be denied that as often as Jesus is asked a question, for instance, he refuses to answer it; instead he puts his question to the questioner. Humankind’s confidence in addressing its questions to scripture is (according to scripture) a groundless confidence. Such a confidence betrays a distorted (i.e., sin-warped) perspective of which the questioner remains unaware. Scripture everywhere indicates that humankind’s understanding with respect to God has been “darkened”, even darkened so as to have become “futile”. (Rom 1:21) Humankind’s questions about the substance of scripture (rather than the deployment of scientific tools of investigation) are in fact its disdain for God’s self-disclosure concerning God’s nature and purpose and provision. All such questions God disallows as God radically transfigures humankind’s questions by means of the questions God addresses to it. The questions humankind brings to scripture may be humanly or humanistically significant; they are not, however, the normative context or interpretative key to scripture. The latter is God’s ongoing contending with all that opposes him, that spiritual conflict which seethes everywhere and which has victimized even the (self-)understanding that humankind brings to scripture.

On p.5 the document confuses authority with authoritarianism. The latter, foreign to scripture, is arbitrary claim or coercion or tyranny. In the “world-view” which the document prefers, “authority” is understood as “power with.” Scripture, however, insists that the authority of Jesus Christ is primary, unique, and never delegated or shared. His authority is never “power with” humankind. Since the authority of scripture arises from its service to Jesus Christ (“the sure witness of Christ” BU II), the authority of scripture can never be “power with”; i.e., the authority of scripture can never be the authority of “scripture-and-humankind.” The “world-view” that the document rejects (“power over”) is what the church catholic acknowledges in recognizing Jesus Christ as Lord. However, it must be recognized instantly that lordship in the sense of tyranny Jesus contrasts with his own lordship. Jesus Christ exercises his lordship by humbling himself, identifying himself with sinners (those meriting the judgement and condemnation of God), and giving himself up for humankind. Christ’s authority, while never delegated, shared or surrendered, is also never authoritarian, never arbitrary, never tyrannical. He is Lord but never by “lording it over” humankind. His authority, rather, is the legitimate claim upon humankind as the one who has been condemned “in our place”; his claim is the rightful claim of the salvager upon the salvaged. The document misunderstands the nature of Christ’s authority, and thereby misconstrues the consequent authority of scripture, and thereafter rejects the genuine authority of scripture. Herein it violates BU II formally and BU passim materially.

In the same vein, on p.7, the document’s utilization of traffic-officers as the illustration of that authority we recognize and assent to is not merely unhelpful but even misleading. Admittedly, the document is correct in seeing that it is the community that confers authority on traffic-officers. This is but to say that the community itself is the ultimate authority with respect to the regulating of traffic. But when the church catholic acknowledges scripture as authoritative it is not saying that the Christian community has conferred authority on scripture; it is not saying that the church is the ultimate authority for regulating the church’s faith and conduct. To say this would mean that the church is self-authoritative with respect to its knowledge of God; i.e., “God” is but a projection of the church. Herein the document violates all of BU XX.

There occurs a similar confusion amounting to a doctrinal inversion regarding the place of the church, the community of faith, in the economy of God’s revelation and the place of scripture within that economy. When scripture is said to be the foundational story for us (without any acknowledgement that what is foundational must also be paradigmatic, normative, lest the “superstructure” {i.e., denominational pronouncements} come to contradict the “foundation”), which story is “hallowed by the continual use of the ongoing community (p.9), it is therein asserted that the community renders scripture holy (hallowed.) Scripture is holy, rather, in that it uniquely attests the incursion and ongoing activity of the Holy One of Israel in the person of his Son. Similar confusion is evident again in the assertion,”God’s historic self-revelation in Jesus Christ is crucial in establishing what has legitimate authority in Christian community.” (p.10) Throughout history, however, the church has confessed not that Jesus Christ is crucial for establishing this or that as having legitimate authority for the church, but rather that Jesus Christ is the authority for faith since he is the church’s sole sovereign. In other words, “God’s historic self-revelation in Jesus Christ” can never be “crucial” in establishing the lordship (authority) of something other than the Lord. Furthermore, what is granted with “God’s historic self-revelation in Christ” is taken back on the same page (10) with “interactive sense of authority — scripture as power with us.” “Scripture as power with us” does not reflect the nature of Christ’s authority, for the Incarnate One is never “lord with us.”

On p.8 the document commits egregious errors in its reading of history. The theology of John Wesley is denied concerning the normativity of scripture. The document speaks of “at least four sources of Christian faith — heritage, understanding, experience and the Bible.” (p.8) Under “understanding” it is said that “the work of biblical scholars and reflections of members of the community” are “methods of understanding” that are “seen as more consistent with the Methodist and Reformed traditions….”(p.10) This is patently false. Both the Reformed tradition (Calvin) and Wesley speak of scripture as “the oracles of God.” Both Reformed and Methodist traditions acknowledge scripture as authoritative precisely because it uniquely attests the One in whom “the fulness of deity dwells bodily.” (Col. 2:9)

False too is the document’s discussion of Wesley’s notion of “experience.” It states that Wesley’s “experience” includes the notion that “part of the authority of scripture is found in its `givenness’ — the fact that the story has been passed down from generation to generation.” (p.11) For Wesley, “experience” was two-fold: (i) the private confirmation of believers’ faith in the gospel and their inclusion in God’s salvation, relieving doubt and anxiety concerning their favour with God and future blessedness, (ii) the public signs of the gospel’s efficacy: by it the drunkard is rendered sober, the wife-beater kind, the gambler compulsion-free, the indolent industrious. The document states that according to Wesley the trans-generational transmission of the church’s story lends scripture partial authority. First, the church catholic does not recognize partial authority concerning scripture; secondly, what is attributed to Wesley he explicitly denies; thirdly, no support is adduced for the (illogical) assertion that mere transmission constitutes even part of scripture’s authority. Wesley abhors any suggestion that human experience is the measure of scripture. While he undoubtedly emphasized the experience of salvation (rather than the bare notion of it) in the course of the revival, he also cautioned Methodists against relying on that experience rather than on scripture. They were “to be tried by a farther rule, to be brought to the only certain test, `the law and the testimony'” — i.e., scripture (Wesley, Works , Vol. XIX, p.73)) Any elevation of experience above scripture constituted one an “enthusiast”, and enthusiasm, he does not hesitate to say, gives rise to “wild, ranting antinomians.” (Wesley, Works, Vol I, p.324) Unnormed experience was “the mere, empty dreams of an heated imagination.” (Wesley, Works, XIX, p.296) The document is illogical in its juxtaposing “God’s historic self-revelation in Jesus Christ is crucial for establishing what has legitimate authority in Christian community” (p.10) with “part of the authority of scripture is found in its relevance to our experience.” (p.11) How is Jesus Christ related to that human experience which is said to confer (part-)authority upon scripture?

Confusion and contradiction abound in the section, CONVICTIONS. (pp.39-42) Six affirmations are emphasized in bold-faced type; e.g., God calls us to engage the bible as a foundational authority as we seek to live the Christian life. Each of the six begins, “God calls us to engage the Bible….” But how do we know that God calls us to do this, since the document nowhere relates scripture to a doctrine of the knowledge of God? (Here its departure from Wesley and the BU is obvious.) Now we are told that God calls us to engage the bible as a foundational authority. Before it was the foundational authority. Plainly other “foundational” authorities are to be accommodated. The document states that “the Bible continues to be the predominant witness to belief in God’s liberating and transforming activity.” But the church catholic acknowledges scripture to be normative, not merely predominant. Furthermore, the apostolic testimony attests in the first instance not belief in God’s activity but the activity of God himself. In the first instance scripture attests God’s self-disclosure and only in the second instance a human response thereto. The contradiction of the Basis of Union and of the Twenty-Five Articles is glaring in the document’s placing “God calls us to engage the Bible as a church seeking God’s community with all God’s people” ahead of “God calls us to engage the Bible to experience the liberating and transforming Word of God.” (p.40) The document fails even to reflect familiarity with the text of scripture in its assertion, “legitimate authority in every case enhances community”; after all, when Jesus Christ acted in the course of his earthly ministry, John indicates repeatedly that division ensued. (E.g., John 9:16)

It is obvious that naturalism is the presupposition of the document: that is, that human reason, assessing scripture, can discriminate between wheat and chaff, between what must be heard and heeded and what not. There is no recognition that human reason, with respect to knowledge of God, has been impaired by the Fall and now cannot, of itself, yield knowledge of God. (Wesley insisted that no reasoning about God provided acquaintance with God. The Doctrine of Original Sin, 293) There is no recognition that revelation (which is never merely ideational but is rather the redemptive/restorative action of God upon us as God includes us in his self-knowing) is necessary if reason is to regain reason’s integrity; no acknowledgement of Wesley’s tirelessly quoted text, “…that holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” (Heb. 12:14) Not confused but problematic nonetheless are such statements as “Transformation is the activity of divine grace with us that changes individuals….For Christians these activities are uniquely personified in Jesus of Nazareth.” (p.40) What did Jesus Christ change from? change into? The addition of “For Christians” denies the truth-claim of the gospel. Moreover, Christians confess Jesus to personify nothing but rather to be the Word Incarnate. Despite much talk about transformation, there is no mention at all of transformation concerning holiness. Here alone the document fails utterly to reflect the spirit of Wesley.

Wesley’s laconic comment must be heard: “I allow no other rule, whether of faith or practice, than the Holy Scriptures.” (Wesley, Works, Vol. XIX, p.73)

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Voices United
The Hymn and Worship Book of The United Church of Canada

It should be noted that for John Wesley, hymns were the vehicle for acquainting people with the theology of Methodism. Methodists, then, do not regard a hymn book as a collection of songs; it is rather that which delivers the theology of the denomination, acquaints people with it and enables them to absorb it. Treachery in a hymnbook, then, is never merely or even primarily a matter of music; it fosters unbelief in those who are victimized by it, putting their eternal wellbeing at risk.

It should be noted additionally that Voices United is subtitled the “worship book” of the denomination. Lex orandi lex credendi is a truth that has reconfirmed itself in every era: what is prayed (or sung) is what is actually believed.

Anthropologists are aware that whenever a goddess has been worshipped as the arch-deity, wherever “Mother-god” has been exalted, one outcome has always been prostitution and widespread sexual promiscuity. Israel knew its own mind in refusing to call God “Mother” and in refusing to speak of the deity as “goddess.”

Throughout history goddess-worship (Mother-god-worship) has been associated with the worship of fertility of all kinds: agricultural, animal, human. A key element in such worship, part of the chain of events, has been “sympathic magic.” Sympathic magic means that when humans are sexually active the god and goddess are too. The sexual activity of god and goddess in turn ensures the fertility of animals and crops.

In calling God “Father” Israel was not ascribing gender-specificity to God. In insisting on “Father”, however, Israel was knowingly refusing to call God “mother”; Israel was deliberately repudiating everything that the surrounding fertility cults associated with female deities. Repudiated together were the notion that the deity is sexually active, the notion that human sexual activity is sympathically magical, the notion that the entire enterprise is sacramentally abetted by sacral prostitution, the notion that the concomitant promiscuity has any place in God’s economy.

Israel did occasionally use female imagery to describe God. In scripture God is said to be like a mother or nurse or even a she-bear not to be trifled with. But while God is said to be like a mother, God is never said to be mother, never called “mother.”

Voices United disregards the aforementioned and names God “mother” and “goddess” in six hymns and three prayers. Two of the prayers name God “Father and Mother” (as in the rewritten prayer of Jesus, “Our Father and Mother….”) This notion dovetails with the myths of Canaan and the Greek myth of Aphrodite where sexual intercourse among the deities creates the universe. (In the creation stories of scripture there is no suggestion anywhere that the universe came into being as the result of sexual activity among the deities.) It also supports the old notion that when a worshipper is sexually joined to a religious prostitute, worshipper and prostitute themselves become the god and goddess. In brief, to speak of “Our Father and Mother” transports the church into everything that Israel’s prophets fended off on account of the character of Israel’s God. Hymn #280 exclaims, “Mother and God, to you we sing; wide is your womb, warm is your wing.” (It should be noted that when God is called “Father” there is no reference at all to male reproductive organs.) In this regard the hymnbook is a sustained denial of the holiness of God.

Voices United denies the transcendence of God, the biblical conviction that God is radically different from his creation, radically other than his creatures. Scripture never compromises this distinction. While God’s creation is good (at least as it comes from God’s hand, even though it is now riddled with sin and evil) it is never God. The creation is never to be worshipped; idolatry is horrific to the people of God. Human beings are summoned to know God; they are never summoned to be God. (The temptation to be God, to be our own Judge and Saviour, is the arch-temptation.) Any suggestion that humankind can render itself divine (as with sacral prostitution) is a denial of God’s transcendence. The old hymn known as “The Doxology” (“Praise God from whom all blessings flow/ Praise him all creatures here below”) reflects God’s transcendence. In Voices United, however, “The Doxology” has been altered to “Praise God from whom all blessings flow/Praise him all creatures high and low.” “All creatures here below” affirms the truth that God transcends us; “all creatures high and low” denies it.

The loss of God’s transcendence is reflected in the psalm selections of Voices United. Of the 141 psalm selections in the book, only nine retain the name LORD. (When LORD is spelled with every letter capitalized, it translates the Hebrew word YAHWEH, “God”.) Voices United has virtually eliminated “LORD” from the Christian vocabulary. According to the hymnbook committee it has done so because “LORD” is hierarchical and therefore oppressive. Unquestionably “LORD” is hierarchical; God is “high and lifted up”, transcends us infinitely. But so far from rendering him oppressive (see earlier note on scripture where the humility, even humiliation, of “hierarchy” is discussed) God’s transcendence is the condition of his being able to bestow mercy upon us. Only if God is free from us is he free to act for us. It should be noted that the loss of God’s transcendence condemns humankind to hopelessness. The God who is unable to judge us is eo ipse unable to save us. Only the “hierarchical” God can finally be for us. The God who isn’t LORD has been handcuffed; i.e., not God at all. (The “God” espoused by the hymnbook violates the Basis of Union at all points.)

Voices United undervalues the doctrine of the Trinity, the elemental truth of the Christian faith. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In The Hymnbook (1971) the Trinity is referred to in over 50 hymns out of 506. In Voices United the Trinity is referred to twice only out of 719 hymns. The Trinity has virtually disappeared. (If God cannot be called “Father”, plainly God will not be known as “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”) Overlooked in this undervaluation is the fact that the question, “Who is God?” is a question scripture never answers directly. In “replying” scripture directs us to two other questions: “What does God do?” and “What does God effect?” The former question refers us to God’s activity on our behalf; the latter, to God’s activity within us. In acting for us God incarnates himself in Jesus of Nazareth. He redeems his creation in the death of Jesus, restoring its access to him. He raises Jesus from the dead, vindicating Jesus and declaring him to be Messiah and Lord. In acting within us God visits us with his Spirit and seals within us all that he has done outside us, for us. He steals over our spiritual inertia and quickens faith. He forgives the sin in us that he had already absorbed for us on the cross. He brings us to submit to the sovereignty of the One whose sovereignty he had declared by raising him from the dead. What God does for us in the Son is known as Christology. What God does within us through the Spirit is known as pneumatology. Christology and pneumatology together add up to theology. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In place of the Trinity Voices United speaks of “Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer.” The two expressions are not equivalent. “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” speaks of God’s being, who God is in himself eternally, as well as of God’s activity, what he does for us and in us in time. “Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer”, on the other hand, speaks only of God’s function, God’s relation to the world in time. The doctrine of the Trinity is essential in preserving the truth that what God is for us and in us in time he is in himself eternally; conversely, what he is in himself eternally he is for us and in us in time. To abandon the doctrine of the Trinity is to violate BU I, II, VI, VII, VIII, XVI, XVII.

Voices United denies the biblical conviction that someone’s name bespeaks that person’s nature. A change of name always reflects a change of nature. To change the name of God from “Father, Son, Spirit” to anything is to disavow the nature of the true God and to pursue a false god.

Voices United disregards the unalterable jealousy of God. When scripture speaks of God as jealous it does not mean that God is insecure and needs to be flattered, nor that God craves what someone else possesses just because God lacks it. To say that God is jealous, rather, is to say that God insists on our undivided love and loyalty, and does so for two reasons: (i) since God alone is God, he alone is to be worshipped and obeyed, (ii) since we can find our wholeness in him alone, we are to seek it nowhere else. In other words, God cares too much for us to allow us to fragment ourselves. Exclusivity is of the essence of faith, worship and wholeness as incontrovertibly as it is of the essence of marriage. Voices United contradicts the characteristic logic of the biblical revelation of God.

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Mending the World
An Ecumenical Vision for Healing and Reconciliation

This document was “affirmed” at the 36th General Council, 1997. It announces its agenda forthrightly on page 1: “We hold the conviction that the world is at the centre of God’s concern.” Nowhere, however, does “world” have the meaning it has in John’s gospel: the sum total of disobedient, rebellious men and women resolute in their defiance of God. While MW speaks of “God…who loves the world”, therein obviously borrowing from John 3:16, it does not go on to quote or allude to the remainder of the well-known verse: “…that whoever believes in him [i.e., the `only Son’ that God’s love `gave’] should not perish but have eternal life.” (p.3) Instead, because God loves the world (“world” understood as per MW but never explicitly defined) and works for its mending, God “calls the church to make this work its first priority.”

The section, “An Affirmation”, amounts to an inversion of “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3) In this document the six paragraphs beginning, “We believe” displace Jesus Christ as the author and object of faith and substitute the church’s adoption of an agenda of social/political/economic transmutation, many items of which are highly debatable. Concerning the lattermost point, for instance, MW states, “We believe that God calls the Church…to discern and celebrate God’s Spirit in people of other religions and ideologies.” (p.4) The earliest church regarded Jesus Christ as the unique bearer and bestower of the Spirit. Scripture simply does not predicate “Spirit” of other religions. (Prophet and apostle do not thereby imply that God has abandoned people of other religions, but it is to say that “Spirit” has a precise content, which content — if MW is aware of it at all — has been illegitimately transferred where prophet and apostle do not speak of “Spirit.”) As for “ideologies”, ideology, according to contemporary understanding, is not merely a system of values and concepts that are deployed as tools for effecting an all-encompassing societal end, but rather (as the French Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century understood the word they had invented) a system that legitimized any and every means to such an end. “Spirit” and social engineering are presuppositionally disparate.

In the same section MW states, “We believe God calls the Church”, and immediately refers to six tasks of the church, only to conclude with “[and] to trust in God.” (p.4) Readers cannot help contrasting the “ideology” here with Psalm 20:7 where the psalmist differentiates between those who “boast of” (i.e., trust in) chariots and horses with those who trust in God, concluding that the former will “collapse and fall.”

Puzzling throughout is MW’s assumption that Christians today are facing sheer novelty. Repeated references to religious pluralism, however, call to mind the fact that the people of God came to birth and thrived in the midst of such pluralism: Israel amidst Canaanite religions, the church amidst gnosticism, mystery religions, emperor-worship. In the same way MW emphasizes (by means of italics), “in the world in which we live, we are faced with urgent moral issues.” (p.7) No era of the church (or the world’s existence, for that matter) has ever lacked urgent moral issues!

Presupposed everywhere is a common understanding of key terms when in fact no common understanding can be assumed. When MW states that “the Church will often need to work with other communities of good will”, no definition of the latter term is offered. MW assumes that good will can be readily identified either in the church or in the world, when in fact no such identification is widespread. (And of course theologically informed readers of “good will” will recognize that throughout the history of Christian thought “good will” refers to that human will which has been freed from bondage and renewed by Jesus Christ so as to give it the freedom and the desire to will the godly.)

The ideological nature of MW is evident in the bold declaration, “We are called to set as priority for The United Church of Canada God’s work of earth-healing….” (p.8) “Earth-healing (throughout MW the term is freighted with a particular socio-political agenda) has never been the priority of the Christian and community and never will be, for Jesus Christ himself delineates the church.

The section, “Theological Foundations”, introduces itself by quoting the first two lines of The United Church’s “creed”:

“We are not alone; we live in God’s world

We believe in God, who has created and is creating…”

Needless to say, the “creed” is no creed at all, since it has failed to find ecumenical consensus (in the historic sense of “ecumenical”, meaning the church throughout the world.) Moreover, since a creed is the pithiest declaration of faith (compared to longer confessions and still-longer catechisms)

it is difficult to grasp how there came to exist a creed whose first sentence is, “We are not alone.” It is puzzling as to what faith is being confessed here.

The Christology sections of MW are as highly tendentious as they are heretical. MW speaks for the reader’s putative bewilderment with, “How do we get to Jesus?” — when, in the gospel of John, for instance, it is the function of the Holy Spirit to “floodlight” Jesus Christ. (John 15:26; 16:14) God’s Spirit overcomes any problem with accessing Jesus Christ. While MW states, with respect to Christology, “Jesus was fully human”, the most it will say of his deity is, “The tradition of the church affirms the deity of Christ.” While it says, “Jesus was a Jew”, it never says what scripture confesses: Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. While it acknowledges that “Jesus is the one affirmed as God’s child”, the statement means nothing in light of the denomination’s speaking of all men and women as “God’s children.” With respect to how God has reconciled the world, it avoids committing itself to the historic understanding of the cross and instead takes refuge in, “tradition responds by saying that Jesus died to save us from our sins.” (p.14) The section, “Jesus, representative of God”, exudes heresy. Jesus is not a representative or even the representative of God; Jesus, the apostles insist, is God: God-with-us, Emmanuel. The proffered rationale, “The nature of a representative is to face two ways — to be capable of mediating the concern of one party to the other, and vice versa”, is theologically incorrect. While in labour- negotiations, for instance, a mediator between two parties is neither, Jesus Christ as mediator is both: both God and human.

Shocking in its shallowness and illogical as well is the quotation from Dorothee Soelle, brought forward as a rationale for all of the foregoing: “We have to give up obedience and find solidarity….As Eckhardt says, we become quit of a God who commands and dominates.” (p.14) Christians are never released from obedience, since obedience is an aspect of faith! (Paul states “the obedience of faith” is the purpose of his apostleship! Rom. 1:5) Furthermore, the God who commands does not dominate: he submits himself to us and gives himself up for us. Overlooked completely is the logic of scripture at this point: invitation or permission is always the form of the divine command. This point is illustrated profoundly in “Come unto me…and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11:28)

Questions are begged throughout MW. When it states approvingly the “pluralist” notion that “all authentic religions can mediate salvation”, no definition of “authentic” is offered. One is left guessing as to what inauthentic religion might be, and for whom it might be inauthentic, since its devotees would never pronounce it such. Admittedly, the next sentence speaks of “the life-transforming encounter by which we turn from life centred in the self to life centred in God.” But the “ideologies” embraced earlier in the document do not do this, qua ideology. Furthermore, in view of the errors in Christian theology throughout MW to this point, it cannot be assumed that “self” and “God” continue to have any meaning common to Christians. In the same vein reference is made to “lifting up the image of Christ as present in and to all of life” while there is no reference to lifting up Christ himself. (p.17) The same skew is seen in “as humans we are driven to give priority to ethics….” (p.19) The apostles do not; they give priority to Jesus Christ in the totality of his reality.

MW contradicts the theology of John Wesley at virtually every point. While Wesley would agree with MW’s approval of job-creating investment (p.20), Wesley’s motivation for doing so and his understanding of the place of gainful work (in a capitalist economy) within the kingdom are different. When MW states, “One of the criticisms levelled against Western Civilization is that we have put ourselves at the centre of things”, Wesley would agree only to stand amazed before a report that endorses a blatant anthropocentricity. Upon hearing “God calls the Church to make this work [earth-healing] its first priority” the tireless evangelist would shout, “No!” Any notion of “Spirit” other than that which is borne and bestowed by Jesus Christ Wesley would pronounce “enthusiast” and “antinomian”. The implicit denial of the incarnation Wesley denounced thoroughly in his sermon, “Catholic Spirit”, insisting he could never countenance any indifference concerning the foundation of Christian faith. Where MW is content to speak of “the image of Christ”, Wesley summarized his work repeatedly in four words: “I offered them Christ.” Upon reading, “The signs are clear that without a change of behaviour, humankind may not be long for this world”, Wesley would assume that God’s apocalyptic judgement had been pronounced against sin, the end-time disaster being not ecological pollution but the exhausting of God’s patience with human unbelief. At his most pointed Wesley would see MW as a whole as an illustration of the statement used as a rationale for “Our Ecumenical Journey”; namely, “Spiritual betrayal on the part of one of us affects the faith of all of us.” (p.7) Wesley would deem MW to be such a betrayal. Absent a forthright espousal of the incarnation, that Word-made-flesh which entails a new creation, Wesley would find MW’s reiteration of “new world” groundless.

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Executive of General Council Response to Issues Raised
by the Interview of the Moderator,
the Rt. Reverend Bill Phipps, with the “Ottawa Citizen”

The correspondence directed to various persons and offices connected with the administration of The United Church of Canada resulted in a statement from the Executive of General Council that intended to identify the role of the moderator and to describe the manner in which The United Church theologizes.

The document herein referred to, in section 1, Continuity, maintains that “our membership in the World Council of Churches today links us to a fellowship of churches `which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures.'” While such a position has remained that of The United Church officially, in light of what has been analyzed to this point and detailed within this submission it can be said that The United Church of Canada does not “confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures.” In other words, two contradictory principles are upheld at the same time. While the former is the stated theology of The United Church, the latter is its operative theology, and of course operative theology, per definitionem, is the ascendant ingredient in forming and informing the belief and conduct of its people. The next sentence in the same section states, “Above all, we trace our continuity in faith to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, whose witness is the ultimate standard for Christian faith and life.” While the denomination has never formally rescinded its subscription to scripture as unnormed norm, materially the denomination has done just this, as attested heretofore.

In section 3, Diversity, it is stated, “we do not believe that faithfulness consists in assenting to particular statements.” Category-confusion is evident here, for faithfulness never consists in such by definition; i.e., faithfulness is always fidelity to the person of the living God, not to a verbal description of God’s act and being. (In the same way faithfulness in marriage is loyalty to a person — the spouse — and not mental assent to propositions about marriage.) While faithfulness, then, pertains to a relationship and not to statements about the relationship (“doctrinal standards”), any refusal to assent to doctrinal standards renders the use of “faithfulness” inappropriate. (In the same way the refusal to voice and sign a marriage vow renders becoming married impossible, and therefore renders pointless any differentiation between assenting to vows and faithfulness to the person who would have been spouse.) While it is correct for the Executive of General Council Executive to say that faithfulness does not consist in assenting to particular statements, it means nothing in view of the fact that no one ever said it did; i.e., assenting to statements has never been sufficient for “faithfulness”, even as, however, such assent has always been necessary. It is this lattermost point that the document fails to grasp and reflect. While assenting to doctrinal standards and a living relationship with the living God are categorically distinct, they are none the less intrinsically related; the doctrine to which one assents cognitively and volitionally describes the God to whom one is related personally. To say anything else is to render “God” devoid of any content and to deprive doctrinal standards of any truth-claim.

The next sentence in Diversity is similarly problematic. It states, “Rarely, if ever, do we use doctrinal standards to exclude anyone from the circle of belonging.” It has to be admitted that “we” (i.e., The United Church) do this all the time. In the previous paragraph of Diversity it was stated without qualification that ordination and commissioning require that a candidate for same be in “essential agreement” with the Articles of the Basis of Union. In other words, if a candidate withholds agreement from the aforementioned doctrinal standards, ordination or commissioning cannot proceed. Plainly, then, doctrinal standards are used to exclude (i.e., are used as a test of admission), and are so used not “rarely” but in every request for ordination or commissioning. Furthermore, when The United Church speaks of doctrinal standards it means standards and not suggestions or possibilities. For otherwise the church would be left saying that ordination can be conferred on someone who espouses what contradicts the church’s raison d’etre, and even on someone who espouses what can only damage and threaten the church. If this in fact is the position at which The United Church has arrived, then its position must be tested by means of a remit.

Confusion is evident once more in the next sentence of Diversity: “Rather, we lift up Jesus Christ and his way….” To contrast “Jesus Christ and his way” with “doctrinal standards” is to say that a denomination’s doctrinal standards have no more than an accidental relationship to (no intrinsic connexion with) the unique status of Jesus. (“Christ” means “anointed one” and is fraught with a plethora of meanings reaching back into Israel’s centuries-long engagement with God.) It is also to say that a denomination’s doctrinal standards have no intrinsic connexion with discipleship (“the way”). If this is the case, then what can be meant by “lifting up Christ”? — and by “lifting up the way”? If the aforementioned contrast is allowed to stand, then the words “Jesus Christ” and “way” are utterly devoid of content (or at least utterly devoid of Christian content.)

When, in section 3, Diversity, it is stated, “our grasp of the truth of God is finite and fallible” (i.e., doctrinal formulation is provisional), the assertion is unexceptionable. However, to speak of “finite and fallible” in such a way as to keep open the possibility (even the necessity) of doctrinal reformulation is to invoke the Manual of The United Church wherein a remit is prescribed for any proposed doctrinal reformulation.

The document clearly assumes that “essential agreement” means “more-or-less agreement”; the kind of agreement needed to proceed with ordination or commissioning is approximate or “loosely interpreted.” However, the accepted meaning of “essential” is actually “indispensable” or “constituting the essence of a thing.” (See O.E.D.) “Essential agreement” does not mean “partial agreement.” Once again, since “essential” means “indispensable”, then non-compliance with “essential agreement with the Basis of Union” can only mean that doctrinal standards must exclude “from the circle of belonging.” And once again, if “essential agreement” has in fact come to be understood as “partial agreement”, then the doctrinal standards are no longer the standards of the denomination, and a remit must be deployed.

In summary, the Response of the Executive of General Council to issues raised by Rev. Phipps’s interview with the Ottawa Citizen reflects considerable confusion and inconsistency in the role of doctrine within The United Church of Canada.

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January 28, 1998
Response of the Executive of General Council
K. Virginia Coleman, General Secretary
Anderson Appeal

Having scrutinized the aforementioned document I must state my disagreement with K. Virginia Coleman on several matters. She writes, “Nowhere do I find an indication that the Doctrinal statements contained in the Basis of Union are the only place where the doctrine of the (sic) United Church is to be held, nor that the Articles of Faith are the only statements of doctrine which the United Church is permitted to have.” (sect. 2, underlining hers) Her statement confuses doctrine and theology (see pp. 1-2 of my submission). Moreover, “Articles” has a peculiar force for at least those members of The United Church who were Methodists prior to the union of 1925. “Articles” has a weight and normativity not applicable to subsequent theological assertions. When KVC speaks of “subsequent statements of doctrine” she appears to speak inconsistently (albeit unknowingly, perhaps), for if doctrine is stipulated subsequently then according to the Manual a remit is unquestionably necessary;if such subsequent theological statements are not doctrine, then they have no standing within The United Church. KVC has not indicated which position she wishes to adopt.

In section 2 of her missive KVC quotes the Manual, reminding readers that the Twenty Articles are a “brief summary” of our common faith. (underlining hers) KVC then opines, “there is nothing in the polity of the United Church which prevents further expressions of our doctrine and faith.” Confusion arises here once more, for “further expressions of doctrine” and “further expressions of faith” are not categorically similar. For one could exercise faith in a matter consonant with the truth of Jesus Christ (and therefore such faith would be genuine faith) when the same matter might not be included in the doctrine of a denomination.

In section 5 KVC asserts that since the Twenty Articles merely summarize the agreements of 1925, “The General Council is empowered to make statements which expand these summaries but do not contradict the Articles or the Holy Scriptures.” Even if it is granted that the Twenty Articles are summaries only, they are normative summaries and therefore are not to be contradicted by subsequent doctrinal developments. In fact several recent (post-1988) positions adopted by The United Church do contradict the aforesaid summaries. Documents enshrining matters related to homosexuality, for instance, contradict the consistent teaching of the Holy Scriptures forbidding homosexual behaviour. In the same way the coherent testimony of scripture concerning itself lends no support to the view of scripture advanced in Authority and Interpretation of Scripture (1992).

KVC (sect. 5) insists that documents of 1968, 1978 and 1992 “are all in essential agreement with the Doctrine section of the Basis of Union.” Authority and Interpretation of Scripture, to cite only one, manifestly is not in essential agreement. KVC’s reiteration that all “further expressions” of doctrine (setting aside for now the fittingness of the word “doctrine”) does not spare her the obligation to demonstrate the point she is advancing, particularly in view of the widespread conviction throughout the denomination that such “further expressions” have not been in essential agreement.

In summary KVC has blurred crucial matters that must be carefully distinguished. At several places her argument is frequently not cogent, and her conclusions (e.g., with respect to the doctrinal force of United Church papers and positions even as it is denied that remits are necessary) are incorrect.

CONCLUSION

On the basis of my having perused both the Twenty-Five Articles of the Methodist Church (which articles were written by the late Reverend Mr. John Wesley) and the many documents The United Church of Canada has issued (the content of which documents became positions the denomination espoused as policy), it is my opinion that The United Church of Canada has, in its articulation of its formal theology and its fostering of its day-to-day operative theology, contravened the aforementioned Articles. Such infringement has occurred not once but many times, and not witlessly by inadvertence (as might be the case with a denomination that drifted doctrinally on account of theological naiveness); such infringement has occurred, rather, as successive positions and policies have been adopted intentionally.

It is my opinion that neither in its formal theology nor in its informal theology can The United Church of Canada be said to be congruent with the doctrine of the Twenty-Five Articles of the late Reverend Mr. John Wesley. Any one of these documents published by The United Church standing alone is directly contrary to John Wesley’s theology and doctrinal statements as they are reflected in the Twenty-Five Articles. The documents on sexuality cannot be reconciled and would be rejected outright by Wesley. The New Creed and the amendments to the Hymn Book “Voices United” are non-Methodist. The authority of Scripture is totally offensive to Wesley’s Twenty-Five Articles and Mending the World violates the principal centrepiece of the Christian faith and therefore of Methodism namely the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. Finally, the whole exchange with the moderator of The United Church and the Executive of General Council brings into focus the continuing violation of the Twenty-Five Articles of faith down to the present day. The United Church in its interpretation of its own doctrinal statements is in conflict with the same Twenty-Five Articles.

Rev. Victor Shepherd, B.A., B.D., M.A., Th.D., S.T.D.