Reformed Church theological tract is resource for debate in PCUSA
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, December 12, 2000
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Office of Theology and Worship, which usually steers clear of controversy in the Presbyterian Church (USA), has imported a theological tract from the Reformed Church in America to help the PCUSA resolve the debate about whether Jesus Christ is the only path to God.
The debate has continued since June 2000 when a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Dirk Ficca, questioned whether Christ alone is savior of the world. Speaking during a denomination-sponsored Peace Conference, Ficca asked rhetorically, “What’s the big deal about Jesus?”
That set off a backlash across the denomination. Because the planners of the Peacekeeping Conference failed to rein in Ficca and the General Assembly Council ducked the issue at its September meeting, several sessions have registered complaints that could become legal cases in church courts.
Meanwhile, the Office of Theology and Worship remained publicly silent on the debate until recently when Joseph Small, coordinator of the office, posted on the denomination’s web site a declaration by the Reformed Church titled “The Crucified One is Lord.” Small called the document “a superb theological paper.”
The RCA declaration, commissioned by that denomination’s governing body in 1996, is a classical expression of the Lordship of Christ that is designed to address theological and cultural pluralism. The RCA’s Commission on Theology produced the statement, using language that is fully accessible to lay readers.
In his preface to the statement, Small said, “Recent events within the Presbyterian Church (USA) have highlighted one of the most important theological questions facing North American Christians: How shall we confess Jesus Christ in a religiously plural society?”
Some of the highlights of the statement include:
- “… God’s unique, unrepeatable, and decisive activity in Jesus Christ is the only sure hope for this world.”
- ” … to say that Jesus is Lord is to attribute to Jesus the same sovereign power and authority that we attribute to God.”
- ” … there is an increasing tendency to view religious issues merely as matters of personal preference. Such an attitude renders the church’s confession more difficult for many to understand and to embrace.”
- “… to say that Jesus is Lord is not merely to affirm his deity; it is also to make the claim that every human authority is finally subject to Jesus. Even though the world may not acknowledge it yet, every governing official, every religious leader, indeed every human claim to authority must finally acknowledge the authority of Christ.”
- ” … the churches of the Reformation have consistently emphasized that Christ is both necessary and entirely sufficient for salvation. The Reformed emphasis on solus Christus (‘Christ alone’) reminds us that there is no other mediator between God and humankind.”
- “To confess that Jesus is Lord is not to give sanction to human authority, but to subject it to a penetrating critique that challenges any claim to authority apart from or different from the authority of the Christ who gave himself for the life of the world.”
- “Throughout human history, authority and power have usually been won by shedding the blood of others. But Jesus is acclaimed as Lord precisely because he has shed his own blood on behalf of the world. To say that Jesus is Lord without recognizing this distinctive understanding of gracious divine lordship is gravely to misunderstand the Christian confession.”
- “In one sense, the resistance of the dominant culture to the confession ‘Jesus is Lord’ is as old as Christian faith itself. The early Christian martyrs were not put to death simply for believing in Jesus; they were put to death because they would not take part in the imperial cult of Rome. That is, they were not willing to regard their own religious beliefs and practices as part of an eclectic smorgasbord in the way most religions did.”
- “We may be in a situation today that is closer to that of the New Testament church than ever before. As we are freed from the false security of being an established religion and forced to compete in a wide-open marketplace of ideas and perspectives, the Holy Spirit may be opening an opportunity for renewal and transformation in the church, leading us into a fresh and deeper witness to the world …”
- “In our time it is becoming increasingly popular to adopt a general approval of all religions, a view that assumes that all religions are expressions of the same basic human quest for God. Yet such a perspective, as gracious and magnanimous as it may appear, is both highly questionable on its own grounds and incompatible with the central affirmations of Christian faith.”
- “When Jesus declared that the Reign of God was at hand, he was not claiming to open a new path to God; he was claiming that God was blazing a new path to us in Jesus. Christian faith is, in the final analysis, not about our going to God, but about God’s coming to us in Christ. Christian faith is not about discovering God; it is the experience of having been found, despite our resistance and rebellion, by a God in search of us … ”
- “Sometimes other religions challenge us to embrace more deeply the implications of our own faith. The regularity of the prayer life of our Muslim neighbors may confront us with the infrequency of prayer in our own lives. The interest in the spiritual world among Native Americans may confront us with our own materialism and indifference to the Spirit of God. The celebrative affirmation of the law in Judaism may challenge our own cheap grace that fails to see God’s law as a gracious gift.”
- “The Bible does not say that God comes to us in many ways to save; it affirms that God’s salvation has come to us ‘in the fullness of time’ in Christ … Christian faith is absolutely clear: Jesus is God’s definitive word — the only savior.”