The Confession of the Church 7

These times in the Presbyterian Church (USA) require special attention to the word of God and the Confessions of the Church. In the introduction to his book, The Church’s Confession Under Hitler, Arthur C. Cochrane writes:

“First, a Confession of Faith involves a conflict not merely between theological schools within the Church but a conflict between the true and false Church, a conflict that divides the Churches. While love for the erring brethren may still prevail, the division is extremely painful and deep wounds are inflicted. … Secondly, a Confession of Faith is a decision in which ‘the first shall be last, and the last shall be first,’ and none may glory save in the Lord!”

At the end of March I wrote my last posting on the Confession of the Church with, The Confession of the Church 6. I am now returning to that topic with four more postings. This is the first and covers the seventh point from the chapter “The nature of a confession of faith.”1

The seventh character of a Confession of Faith is:

“It occurs when the Church is convinced that its faith and unity are ‘grievously imperiled’ by a heresy that has ripened and come to a head. This is the dogmatic character of a Confession.”

Cochrane names the heresy. It belonged to the German Christians “who taught that in addition to God’s revelation in Christ attested by Scripture there is a natural revelation in nature and history …” For the German Christians that additional revelation in history and nature was found in “German blood, race, and soil, and in the event of the National Socialist revolution and rebirth of the German soul.”

Notice here the basic heresy was adding another revelation to the revelation that God had already given in Christ. This is a heresy whatever the additional revelation might be. And it has found a home in our own faith institutions. Our own heresy has its roots in the same errors that plagued the German Church during its modern history.

Cochrane points out that this was a heretical view that was “the culmination of the errors of the theology of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” And then he goes on to quote Pastor Hans Asmussen who gave the address to those gathered at the Synod of Barmen:

“We are raising a protest against the same phenomenon that has been slowly preparing the way for the devastation of the Church for more than two hundred years. For it is only a relative difference whether, beside Holy Scripture, in the Church historical events, or reason, culture, aesthetic feelings, progress, or other powers and figures are said to be binding claims upon the Church.”

When some in the Church, in any age including our own, lift up additional revelation not based in Scripture it is they who break the unity of the Church, because in appealing to other foundations they divide the Church’s loyalty between two masters. Neither reason nor historical events; neither culture nor progress; there is no other foundation but Jesus Christ.

“Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son.” (2 John 9)

1 Those who formulated the Declaration of Barmen also laid out some practical steps for being the Church in a time of division and crisis. This can be found under Barmen as “III. Resolution of the Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church,” found in The Church's Confession Under Hitler. I will write on some of their practicalities when I am finished with this series.