Being and Belief: A Plain View of the Christian Confession

By Douglas Vickers

The confession the church makes to the world sits oddly in the contemporary cultural complex. Intellectual fashions in the marketplace of ideas have moved beyond an accommodation of biblical-theological categories. Philosophy is unsure of its status in an amorphous postmodernism, and theology threatens to degenerate into intellectual experimentation. They have become mutually suspicious and hesitant of conversation. But a heavy fault lies with the church's own confessional status. For what is it the church has to say to the world? Has it preserved confessional continuity with the Reformation theology that rediscovered its biblical foundations and liberated it from intellectual and confessional shackles? Has the church surrendered the possibility of relevance by having lost its own historic identity? And is it necessary to conclude, as a result, that contemporary culture is no longer penetrable by any word from the old wells of divine disclosure?

In this brief but challenging book, Douglas Vickers brings the Christian confession to the forefront of consideration and reestablishes a theology grounded in historic verities sustained by the scriptural declarations. In straightforward and accessible terms, Being and Belief addresses the meaning of biblical truth for Christian understanding and Christian life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jan 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781621896487

Douglas Vickers

Douglas Vickers (PhD, University of London) is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts. Among his recent titles in theology are Discovering the Christian Mind: Reason and Belief in Christian Confession (2011) and The Cross: Its Meaning and Message in a Postmodern World (2010).

Book preview

Preface

The title I have chosen, Being and Belief, aims to throw light on two important questions that arise in my brief examination of the Christian confession. They have to do with the being of the Christian, or what it is that makes the confessing Christian who and what he is, and what it is, as a result, that the Christian confesses as to his system of belief. My objective throughout is to provide a summary statement of the principal biblical doctrines that determine and inform the Christian confession.

It is not part of my intention to present a systematic theology of the Christian faith. That is available in many other places. Nor, in my discussion of the Christian confession, do I take into account the many Confessional statements of the church, such as appeared following the Reformation. Those also are readily available. My sole reference in that connection is to the Westminster Confession of Faith and its associated Shorter Catechism.

The unity of the book is established by its consistent focus on the doctrinal content and the apologetic and practical implications of the Christian confession. That is accomplished, first, by an initial statement of the gospel, followed by a discussion of the church as the principal institutional form, in both the Old and the New Testaments, of the administration of the Covenant of Grace. Then as to the meaning and implications of the confession for individual Christian being and conduct, those introductory chapters are followed by a slightly longer discussion of Christian personhood. At a later stage of the book that practical significance is reinforced by the chapter on Christ Our Sanctification, with its implications for the Christian life.

The apologetic aspect of the work is contained principally in a chapter that discusses the main aspects of non-Christian philosophic thought, with an emphasis on epistemology as developed by Kant and other principal authors, as that has impacted theological doctrine. That throws further light at several relevant stages on comments on historical developments in Christian doctrine. The prominence of the divine covenants as an important element of the Christian confession, as they give rise, in turn, to an articulated covenantal theology, is also addressed.

The book concludes with a summary that recapitulates the threads of discussion, and the authority of the Scriptures as the revealed word of God is reinforced as providing the foundation of the Christian confession. At that final stage the apologetic implications of the work are recalled, and the question of the prerogatives and responsibilities of the Christian church in the marketplace of ideas is addressed.

I would like to take this opportunity to observe that during a long professional life in a non-theological academic discipline, and in the writing of numerous books and papers in theoretical and applied economics and in doctrinal and apologetic theology, I have had the editorial support of Ann Hopkins. I record my thanks for her excellent work and the skill with which she has assisted me in bringing my manuscripts to publication. I thank also Dr. Lars Larson for his careful reading of the manuscript and his generous evaluation of the work.

For the blemishes and infelicities that have remained I take full responsibility.

Chapter 1

The Gospel in the Christian Confession

The Christian confession, to the extent that its aims and claims are rightly understood, speaks clearly to the contemporary human condition. For what the church has historically believed, and what it has declared as the gospel of the grace of God, remains the sole effective address to the twofold question: What is the explanation of man’s estrangement from God; and what establishes the possibility of reconciliation with God? What, we are challenged to ask, has the church to say to the cultural complex in which it stands at this time? In that complex of social and cultural issues, truth, crushed by its own capitulation to truths, has abdicated claim to authority. And against that condition, where, the question persists, do criteria of truth, validity, and meaning reside? Our age is confused on what is to be said, or held with any sense of security, on the levels of being, knowledge, and behavior.

On the level of being, the problem of our time is that of understanding the meaning of our status in the world, of knowing whence we came, who we are, the why of our existence, and what can be held as to meaningful destiny. On the level of knowledge, we seem willfully to have surrendered the possibility of sustainable criteria of truth and validity. On the level of behavior we have forsaken the simplicity of rightness to embrace a heterogeneous and tangled individual autonomy. We hear again the lament of the final verse of the book of Judges at an earlier time of social and cultural dissolution: Every man did that which was right in his own eyes (Judg 21:25).

The testimony of the church steps, but only uncertainly, it seems, into the conversation. But the questions press: What is it the church has to say? Who speaks for the church? What does the church in this time confess? Has its confession surrendered the possibility of relevance? Is contemporary culture no longer penetrable by any word from the old wells of divine disclosures? Is theology relevant, or is it blunted by the surrender of its historic identity to the exhilaration of intellectual experimentation? The questions multiply.

My objective in this book is to reflect on some aspects of the Christian confession as that has been historically understood, and to raise in brief terms the question of its continuing relevance. In doing so, it is not my intention to write a theology of the Christian faith. My intentions are more modest than that. But in the chapters that follow I shall endeavor to suggest some possible answers to the questions I have raised. I shall do that by looking in the first place at an initial approach to the essence of the gospel that the church has historically announced. The confessional content of that, it will become clear, comes into contact with some principal thought forms of our time. The discussion of the latter will in turn suggest its spillage to the belief and conduct of the church. It will throw its light on some of the determinants of the church’s theologizing and why that is, or is not, relevant to current opinion. Those discussions, together with some further aspects and conclusions of the Christian confession, will enable a consideration of what makes, or what, under biblical mandates, should make, the church and its testimony to be what it is.

We are concerned, in short, with the condition of man and his status, and more precisely with the explanation of his being and prospects as that is reflected by his place in the world. What is to be said of the nobility and grandeur on the one hand, and the coarseness and degradation on the other, of man as he now finds himself in conscious self-awareness? If he came from the hands of a beneficent Creator, as the biblical anthropology maintains, what explains the condition in which he now finds himself? We face the question whether his history is one of progressive and conceivably very long advance from a not-too-readily-identifiable inanimate substance. Or is it one of a remarkably perfect initial standing in the world that God called into being, followed by an equally remarkable and catastrophic fall? The Christian confession will maintain the latter. The nineteenth-century philosopher Hegel, with his notion of the cyclical recurrence of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, implied that the stage at which we stand at any time is the best that has been, and that progress from it will inevitably continue. If such notions were taken to explain the human condition, we might conclude that man, though he may have come from the mud, is destined for the stars.

But the argument provided by the Christian confession finds the cause and the explanation of the human condition on a very different level. It understands our first parents to have been the unique creation of God. They did not develop from earlier animal forms, however advanced those forms might be thought to have been. Their unique identity means that they were not simply representatives from among a tribe or group of beings. We reject the somewhat fashionable but errant doctrine of theistic evolution which argues to that effect. The explanation of the state of man rests in the sinful estrangement from God into which he has fallen. It will follow that a recovery of his pristine relation with his Maker turns on the initiative that God has taken to that effect, in that he has provided a redemption and recovery set forth in his Son. The covenantal structure of God’s intentions and his dealing with us will therefore come into view.

That covenantal structure projects its significance to a question of principal importance and interest. That has to do with the identity and mission of the church that God has established as part of his covenantal objectives. For the church, which the apostle has referred to as God’s holy nation (1 Pet 2:9; compare Ex 19:6), is to be seen as crystallizing the form in this age of God’s administration of his covenant of grace. The claim can be sustained that God is eventuating all of history in the interests of the church. Why that is the case recognizes the claim of Christ that he will build his church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matt 16:18). But the question follows: How can that be so? What divine energies, what ineffable means and concurrences, could possibly have brought that result about? If, as the Christian confession claims, the human condition has followed from a catastrophic fall, if it is possible to define on any grounds of divine revelation the cause of that fall, what, then, could have made its reversal and the recovery of man possible? The answers to the question will acknowledge that all that has been accomplished, and all that is being accomplished within the purpose of God with relation to the church and its place in history, is responsive to the works of the Persons of the Godhead in their joint and several redemptive offices. And in that connection, the identity and glory of the church will be explainable only because of the operations of the Holy Spirit, the blessed Third Person of the Godhead. A clear understanding of the Holy Spirit and his office will disclose that he is to be seen consistently as the executive member of the Godhead.¹

A plain man’s view of the gospel

But first, let us look at a recent address to the plain man by a church whose testimony stands clearly in the Reformed theological tradition. It was a recent Christmas season and the church distributed the following tract addressed to the subject of The Incarnation of Christ. The tract raises questions to which we shall return in what follows. We may reflect on the plain man’s possible response.

Princes of intellect and the common man have wrestled for two thousand years with the questions: Who is Jesus Christ? and How are we to explain the presence of Jesus Christ in this world? Perhaps, dear reader, those questions have engaged your thought. Perhaps they have occurred to you in your search for meaning, in your search to calm the ache of an unexplained life and the blur of what might be its purpose and prospects.

Listen for a moment to the answers that were spoken by a solitary man, on a day that has stood as a watershed of history, when he was baptizing in the river Jordan. John the Baptizer, seeing Jesus approaching said: Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29). First, then, who was Jesus Christ? He was the Son of God, the Second Person of the eternal Godhead, who voluntarily came into the world to take a sinless human nature into union with his divine nature. Second, why did the Son of God come into the world? It was, as John stated it, to take away the sin of the world. The apostle Paul explained the case in similar terms: This is a faithful saying . . . that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Tim 1:15).

The Scriptures declare clearly that it was necessary that the Son of God should come into the world to become Jesus Christ for our redemption from sin. Sin against God, of which we are all guilty, is the refusal to obey the law of God and is the rejection of our obligation to God as his creatures. It is an offence to the holiness of God. Because our first parent, Adam, was established by his Creator as the federal (or representative) head of all who would descend from him, the simple reality is that the guilt of Adam’s first sin was placed to our account. The Scripture states that when Adam sinned, we sinned (Rom 5:12). In Adam all die (1 Cor 15:22). Why, then, did Christ come into the world? It was in order that he might keep the law of God completely on behalf of sinners whom God chose to reconcile to himself; and that, moreover, he might pay in his substitutionary death the penalty that was due to sinners for their rebellion against God. In magnificent and simple terms Christ holds out to all who have sinned the gracious invitation Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matt 11:28). Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul said to the anxious jailer at Philippi, and thou shalt be saved (Acts 16:31).

But what is to be said of the incarnation of Christ that made his redemptive assignment and objective possible? He was born of a virgin, as the prophet Isaiah had foretold: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (Isa 7:14; see Matt 1:18–23). At the virginal conception the course of sin was broken, and at that point the eternal Son of God had entered into the time that he had made and assumed a human nature into union with his divine nature. Jesus Christ who was born of the virgin was, then, God and man. In his incarnation he assumed a full humanity, a true body and a reasonable soul, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism states (Question 22). The Son of God took into union with his divine nature a created, finite, and temporal human nature, with all the faculties of soul that characterize man, apart from sin.

The most accurate and clear way of stating what the Bible teaches is that the divine and the human natures were joined in union in him without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. The union, that is, was a real union, but there was no intermingling of the properties of the one nature with those of the other. In Jesus Christ, the divine nature remained divine in all its attributes and eternal properties, remaining in possession of the full essence of the Godhead, and the human nature remained, in all its capacities, fully human. That is, his human nature was not absorbed into his divine nature, nor did his human nature take on divine properties. Clearly, Christ was, and he remained when he was in this world, a divine Person. He did not become a human person. In the presence of the mystery of the incarnation we bow in adoration and worship.

The truth that at the incarnation of our Lord there was no intermingling of the eternal (the divine) and the temporal (the human) has important implications for the redemption that Christ accomplished for us. Christ did for us, we have seen, two things. He kept the law of God perfectly when we had failed to do so; and he died for our sin. As our substitute, he paid the penalty for our sin. But in doing so, Christ kept the law and died for us in his human nature. In dying for us he suffered the pains of hell and rose again from the dead, and in glorified human nature he ascended again to the Father. Now in his divine and human natures, in glorified Personhood, he intercedes for the people he redeemed. The truth of his incarnation points to what is now an eternal reality. Christ’s possession of human nature means that we have in heaven a high priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities . . . in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin (Heb 4:15), so that he himself, having suffered being tempted, is able to succour them that are tempted (Heb 2:18).

Return to the beginning, dear reader. Have you considered our two questions? The Scriptures, given to us as the inerrant word of God, have made the identity of Jesus Christ clear in his divine and human natures. His incarnation as fully man was the only way in which sinners could be reconciled to God. Do you not see that our sin made the incarnation of none other than the eternal Son of God necessary? Do you not see that in Jesus Christ, therefore, and only in him, is fullness of life? Do you not see that wisdom exists in submission to him in repentance and faith? He has said that Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out (John 6:37).

A twentieth-century writer spoke pessimistically at the end of his life of Mind at the end of its tether (H. G. Wells).² But