While I was still in my early 20s, a little green book appeared in the hymnbook racks of my home church. That little green book did two things. First, it added to the existing clutter in the pews (and the amount of work that had to be done to straighten them each week), and, second, it gave me my first real introduction to systematic theology.
I grew up in an age when there’d long ceased to be any mention of the Westminster Shorter Catechism in our Sunday school. My instruction in the faith came from flannelgraph and David C. Cook. My theology (though, at the time, I didn’t know that’s what it was called) was pieced together from Sunday school Bible stories, the land of Narnia, and bits and pieces of sermons that “stuck.”
That little green book opened a door to something new, beginning with a realization which all generations ought to have––that life’s biggest questions aren’t new and that you and I aren’t the first ones to ask them. For me, that realization was accompanied by another––that my living faith in Jesus Christ could provide me with a coherent response to those questions. Sunday by Sunday, we read responsively from that little green book and my faith in the Saviour found new roots.
By the time General Assembly was wondering whether to make Living Faith a subordinate standard, I’d already completed my theological training — and several years of pastoral 00
ministry as well. As someone who was now familiar, not just with the Shorter Catechism but with the Westminster Confession as a whole, as well as with John Calvin’s primer on the faith (all 1,500 pages of it), I wondered why we’d ever consider elevating that little green book to the ranks of doctrinal standard. Sure, it was fine for the pew, I thought. But why quote from a little green book when you could quote the Westminster divines?
And yet, Living Faith set out to do something which I’m now convinced those same divines would’ve supported wholeheartedly. It “confessed the faith anew” (to quote from Living Faith‘s own introduction). And those who composed it 25 years ago understood what “confessing the faith anew” actually meant. Again to quote the introduction: “That confession must at one and the same time be the ancient faith of the church and yet spoken into the mood and questions of its own time.” In the closing decades of the 20th century, that little green book was intended to be that kind of confession for people who might not be able to make heads or tails of Westminster’s post-Elizabethan English. It was an attempt to restate the ancient faith for modern people — people who were beyond flannelgraph, but perhaps not yet ready for 1,500 pages of Calvin.
In the years since the little green book became one of our subordinate standards, I’ve had reason to be grateful, over and over again, that its authors understood their task so well. For all its brevity, they gave us a reliable guide to the Truth.
How many of the issues and questions which we face as a denomination today are addressed clearly and succinctly by that little green book?
How to read the Bible: “It is the standard of all doctrine by which we must test any word that comes to us from church, world or inner experience. We subject to its judgement all we believe and do.”
The nature of marriage: “Christian marriage is a union in Christ whereby a man and a woman become one in the sight of God.”
The uniqueness of Jesus Christ: “Jesus is the Mediator through whom God has come to us and through whom we come to God.”
The nature of saving faith in a pluralistic world: “It is trust in God, involves personal repentance of sin, acceptance of Jesus Christ as Saviour and commitment to him as Lord. It includes assent to the truth of the gospel. By faith we receive the very life of God into our lives and joyfully discover that God knows, loves and pardons us.”
How to approach those who don’t have this faith: “We should not address others in a spirit of arrogance implying that we are better than they. But rather, in the spirit of humility, as beggars telling others where food is to be found, we point to life in Christ. We witness to God in Christ as the Way, the Truth, the Life, and invite others to accept from him the forgiveness of God. We are compelled to share this good news.”
In the face of so many these days who seem so willing to not only re-state the faith but to rewrite it, Living Faith bears witness to a Word which, though always living and active, is yet unchanging and unchangeable as well. Thanks be to God!
