Living Faith and I are about the same age. That is, if I count the years from my ordination. Throughout my ministry, the little green book has never been far out of sight. In the first couple of congregations I served, I led studies on the draft and then on the final edition. Folks agreed then that Living Faith was indeed “useful,” and more than “acceptable.” Those who remembered their Shorter Catechism were pleased to find a summing-up of the faith in contemporary language. The few who knew about the Westminster Confession breathed heavy sighs of relief.
Living Faith was a pretty good summing-up of middle-of-the-road Presbyterian belief in the 1980s. When the novelty began to wear off, we realized how much we had to add to it to flesh out a good study. The biblical proofs in the back of the book made us scratch our heads. (So do the proofs in the Westminster documents.) Living Faith didn’t turn out to be a great study resource in its own right. “Grist for the mill,” some folks said, but not enough to make flour for a whole loaf.
Then Living Faith began to become a fixture in our pew racks. We read it aloud, in pieces, usually without comment. The parts most read in worship — about God, the sacraments, and the life of faith — still sound good. They put what most of us already believe into good words. Words that “make sense,” folks still say. Living Faith is still “useful” and “acceptable.”
In 1998 we placed Living Faith alongside our other “subordinate standards,” the ancient ecumenical creeds, the Westminster Confession of Faith from 1647, and the Declaration Concerning Church and Nation from 1955. These documents help us interpret the Bible and offer us words to try on as we struggle to express our faith. The creeds, Confession, and the Declaration were all the product of processes that began with the intent to produce confessional statements. All were born out of times of crisis, or to answer questions that demanded response from the church. The study document “Confessing the Faith Today” from the 2003 Acts and Proceedings tells us that Living Faith was proposed as a new subordinate standard because it was so widely used and generally accepted. Creed-by-consensus. Not the well-worn path of struggle to confessional status.
Creeds and confessions in all eras have been bold statements. Often creating or contributing to passionate arguments. The Nicene Creed was both a dogmatic and a political statement. It may have contributed to peace in a failing empire. It didn’t end the argument over the person of Christ it was supposed to settle. Our last contemporary statement, the 1955 Declaration, was inspired, in part, by the daring words of the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany. The Declaration was also a response to the post-war rise of totalitarianism in the east and the military-industrial complex in the west. Some in our church saw a need for a statement more suited to the 20th century to stand alongside the 23rd chapter of the Westminster Confession.
The Declaration was a bold statement, controversial in its time. In the name of Jesus it lays a claim on both Christians and the state. In 2010 it deserves a second look and probably a revision. But it can still stir the blood in a way Living Faith doesn’t. We could stretch a bit and say Living Faith was a response to the oft and vaguely described “crisis of modernity.” What did, and does, it say to the modern world? It says, in language Presbyterians recognize, that we still believe pretty much what we’ve always believed. It makes no bold claim on us or the world. At least no claim the world would dispute.
The Westminster Confession, somewhat like the Nicene formula long before it, arose in response to a political reality and to answer drift and fragmentation in a kingdom’s church. It proved to be too much for the English church. Puritan and rationalist influences notwithstanding, the Scottish assessors at Westminster were happy to take the document home, where it soon eclipsed the less exhaustive and more doxological Scots Confession. The Westminster Confession did little to cement unity within the kingdom, or in the church south of the auld sod.
Like all true confessions, it was a bold and not entirely successful experiment. Like any document, it began to decay the moment it was printed. We have been reluctant to amend or contradict it. We prefer to honour it as a product of its time, and as a foundational document. We no longer accept the rationalism that led its authors to declare double-decree predestination. The anti-papal rhetoric wounds our ecumenical souls. The Confession provokes us to think, to question, and to seek new ways of expressing ourselves that are in continuity with our old standards. Continuity doesn’t mean slavish allegiance.
Even if we passionately ignore it, as many of us now seem to do, our intentional ignorance of it is a theological statement! Living Faith started some conversations when it was young. It may still be a good conversation-starter. But as I look back over my ministry, and my life with Living Faith, I don’t see anything it provoked me to do. The Declaration, on the other hand, has shaped my attitude to government and my political duty, and set the tone for more than one sermon. It has helped me navigate my way through Biblical passages locked into their original contexts in ancient empires.
Walter Bryden delivered a masterful lecture on the 300th anniversary of the Westminster Assembly. He declared that confession is the central act of Christian life. In response to God’s grace we confess our sin and proclaim our faith. Written confessions of faith, Bryden believed, properly represent this pattern. Bryden honoured the Westminster Confession, but offered two important criticisms. It doesn’t resound with praise, as other Reformed confessions do, and it doesn’t reflect the humility that is so much a part of Christian confession. Though it allows for the fallibility of all councils, it’s hard to see where the authors genuinely admit they might be wrong.
Living Faith begins with worship and ends with a doxology. In that sense it’s more in the mould of a Reformed confession than the Westminster Confession. Nothing in Living Faith could lead a reader to conclude its authors, or its church, claim to have a corner on truth. But a reader outside the church might wonder what Living Faith and its church really stand for and believe is worth confessing as uniquely their own.
Living Faith wasn’t written to be a confession of faith in the Reformed tradition. It wasn’t crafted to become a subordinate standard. There was some demand in our church a quarter-century ago for a new resource to use in study and worship. Not a definitive, declarative document. Much of it is worth our attention, as a springboard to further inquiry. Reading some parts of Living Faith in worship can teach, at least a little, people who would never attend a study program or join in a discussion. Parts of Living Faith call for new work. Section 8.5, “World Peace,” for example, speaks today in only the broadest of strokes. It’s fixed in its time, at the end of the cold war, when threats to peace were still the big wars and big bombs of the superpowers.
We have to be careful not to ask too much of Living Faith. Paragraph 8.2.3 can’t support the weight we placed on it in 2005, when General Assembly referred to the subordinate standards to answer a question that was nowhere near the agenda when Living Faith was written. We twisted an affirmation of monogamy and faithfulness in marriage as it was only known in the 80s into a definitive statement about gender and sexuality. (We did the same to the Westminster Confession. I don’t raise this point to suggest a position one way or the other on the vexed issue of same-gender marriage. I suggest we misuse Living Faith, and our other standards, when we force them to speak on matters their authors didn’t address.) We read the Bible selectively, and take it literally, on matters that frighten us. The Bible is big enough to take our abuse. Living Faith isn’t.
The councils that crafted the ancient creeds went on for years. The Westminster Assembly met for six years. During those years much work, hard work, was done. There was debate and dissent. Drafts tried and rejected. Passions ran deep. None of the councils achieved unanimity, but no one could discount the blood, sweat, and tears that were spent in the interest of crafting creeds.
Living Faith, I’m sure, wasn’t easy to write. Its authors took their work seriously. But what they gave the church 25 years ago wasn’t a confession of faith in the Reformed tradition. It’s time for us to begin the long, hard, urgent work of finding words to confess our living faith today.
