Last Tuesday, I was talking about two Christian statements that I'd come across. I really liked them, but also wondered about them. Aside from one reference to the Old Testament, were they a little too Marcionite?
[Historical aside: Marcion was that guy in the second century who wanted to get rid of the Old Testament, and didn't like most of the books that we now call the New Testament, mainly because they seemed so Old Testament.
When you realize how close Marcion's movement came to overwhelming orthodoxy, you're a little more sympathetic to episcopal-type church government. At least some of those people were thinking, "Let's put one orthodox guy in charge of a church or churches, and then we can rest easier. " I know, I know, Jesus said that the gates of hades would not prevail against his ecclesia. But when has that promise ever kept well-intentioned believers from doing what they thought was necessary to "save the church"?
Sorry if this kept you from getting to what you really wanted. But like most preachers I have this expository demon, and it had to be fed].
I decided, No, these weren't bad (I should note that the former actually goes out of it's way to speak of both Old and New Testaments).
I think that it's very normal for Christians to want to summarize the cognitive faith. I also think that that's a hard thing to do, especially when it's by and for a group.
Anyway, you can see the Highland (Abilene, TX) Church of Christ's "Foundations of Faith" statement here
You can see the emergent-church "Jesus Creed" written by Brian McLaren, here
Thanks for your great comments on the earlier post. Now, if you want, go take a look at these two statements and come back to tell me what you think.
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3 comments:
This maybe showing my heritage but I like Highlands better if I had to choose. My previous comments mentioned how much Jesus talked about his connection to the Father and the role of the Father in his life. I think the "Jesus Creed" misses much of that.
Dee,
Your teacher was right in saying that Churches of Christ have historically been an anti-creedal group. Hasn't been that long ago that the masthead on the "Gospel Advocate" (which once had a circulation of 100,000 or more) included: "No creed but Christ, No book but the Bible."
It's only been within the last few years that congregations of our group have had anything like a formal statement of faith, vision statement, mission statement, etc. To the previous generation, this would have looked way too much like a creed, and would have been rejected.
The early Stone-Campbell Movement (as it's being called now) intended to be a unity movement that would bring together all believers in Christ. The platform would be nothing less, but nothing more, that the essentials. Creeds and the like were vehemently opposed because they functioned moreless as extra-biblical authorities. Thus, believers were divided on the basis of something other than gospel facts.
The old rhetoric against such is absolutely blistering. That stuff's in my blood too, I must say.
The irony of all this is that every group has its doctrinal traditions, whether they're posted on the wall or not. One theory regarding the doctrinal combativeness of anti-creedal churches (like us) says that, unlike the overtly-creedal churches, we must keep reinforcing the unwritten rules, which takes a lot more time and effort than merely pointing to the creed of the church. I think there's a lot of truth in that.
Yeah, what he said :)
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