THE DOCTRINAL TASK OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES

Editor’s Note: The following are the fourth and fifth parts in our series of statements by some of our most distinguished living Reformed theologians on the doctrinal task of the Reformed churches today. We invite responses to these essays by clicking here.

• Part IV. Reformed Ecumenics
• Part V. The Doctrinal Task of the Reformed Church

REFORMED THEOLOGY NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

• CALVIN STUDIES SOCIETY—ANNUAL COLLOQUIUM ON "CALVIN AND THE CHURCH"
• CENTER FOR BARTH STUDIES
• THE H. HENRY MEETER CENTER FOR CALVIN STUDIES
• THE INTERNATIONAL REFORMED THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

BOOK REVIEWS

• Reformed Confessions: Theology from Zurich to Barmen
• John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers
• Saving and Secular Faith: An Invitation to Systematic Theology

THE DOCTRINAL TASK OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES

PART IV: Reformed Ecumenics
by Gabriel Fackre

Reformed theology has gifts to bring to the church catholic. It has gifts to receive from it as well. A prime doctrinal task in the twenty-first century is to make this exchange in the ecumenical arena. Two current conversations illustrate these possibilities of mutual enrichment: the Lutheran-Reformed and Roman Catholic-Reformation dialogues. Both are more than academic exercises, eventuating as they have in important church accords, the 1997 North American Formula of Agreement and the 1999 international Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ). Three Reformed Churches were brought into full communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in the first case. Only Lutherans and Roman Catholics were involved in the second, although the Reformed voice was heard in both the preparatory dialogue of the JDDJ and in later responses to it.

What struck this participant in both of these exchanges is the manifest need for the Reformed charism in developing a fuller body of ecumenical teaching, and, at the same time, our own need for correction and complementarity. The Corinthian catholicity sought by Paul is as timely as ever. The wisdom, doctrinally, that "the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’" was nicely captured in the formula of the North American Lutheran-Reformed team of theologians: "mutual affirmation and mutual admonition."

In these dialogues the contributions of the Reformed tradition became apparent in the deployment of its accents on divine sovereignty and sanctification. Our learnings from others emerged as their counterparts: the solidarity of God "in, with and under" the means of grace, and the stress on the simultaneity of sin and righteousness.

In the Lutheran-Reformed conversation, the gift and admonition of Reformed sovereignty quickly appeared in the discussion of creeds and confessions. As the divine majesty is never captive to the givens, new statements of faith or the revision of old ones are always in order. Semper reformanda! Why the Lutheran fixation on sixteenth century sedimentations? Similar questions were posed in the areas of Christology, Eucharistic teaching and ecclesiology. Doesn’t the tight bonding of the divine and human imperil the freedom of God? On all counts Lutherans began to hear the point of our finitum non capax infiniti as a "salutary warning" about reductionism.

The same counsel has its place in commentary on the Joint Declaration. Lutherans and Roman Catholics so concentrate there on subjective soteriology, justification wrought for individuals by graced faith, that the justification won for all by the electing sovereignty of God in the work of Christ gets muted. Better Calvin’s encompassing view that finds a place for its fullness spoken of in the language of the day as the "efficient cause... in the love of God the Father; the material cause in the obedience of the Son; the instrumental cause...in faith."

Yet mutuality means willingness to be corrected for our own reductive temptations. What else for those who hold themselves as well as others accountable to the divine sovereignty? A Lutheran glance at Reformed history is quick to point out tendencies to accommodate ever and again to changing circumstances, disdaining hard-won doctrinal deposits, semper reformanda an excuse for over-running semper fidelis. Also our mesmerism with the divine sovereignty can so discount God’s solidarity with us that it ends in a church construed as a body of people the chief business of which is social service/social action/personal therapy, meeting on occasion for a memorial service of bread cubes and grape juice cups, to honor a Jesus at best an example and teacher. Gone is God from the givens—no Body of Christ, no Lord met in the eating and drinking, no divine-human Person, no atoning Work, no mission of Word as well as deed. Caricatures? Of course, but enough evidence of tendencies to be put on notice by Lutherans with their finitum capax infiniti.

On the give-and-take over justification, some Lutheran and Roman Catholic reminders: "How about one of your best, Karl Barth? For him justification is projected so far beyond the decision of faith that the whole human race is taken care of over its head by an imperial elective decision. Our personal response of faith is not denied but it has none of the soteric consequences we struggled with in the Joint Declaration, residing as they do in the divine sovereignty alone. Of course, all this is traceable to your own Calvin whose ‘horrible decree’ Barth tried to remove with his own version of election." Point taken.

Back to the Reformed gifts, this time sanctification. A charism shared here means witness to a "double grace" (Calvin) in the journey of the believer. We are saved by faith alone, but faith is not alone. Justification is not dependent on sanctification but it is inextricable from it as a root bears its fruit. Such is also acknowledged by its partner in the magisterial Reformation, as in Luther’s "faith busy in love." But wariness of any potential roads to works-righteousness, secured by its simul iustus et peccator, prompts a too exclusive Lutheran focus on the persistence of sin in the life of the redeemed, and thus the impossibilities rather than the possibilities of growth. Yet saving grace is both pardon and power. The believer not only will but must manifest the signs of becoming holy as evidence of being forensically declared holy, a thankful obedience with its "third use of the law."

The reminder of the possibilities of, and accountabilities to, grace plays out in the Reformed concern for the public arena. Christ rules over the counting house and voting booth as well as the soul and the church. Hence, its "world-formative" piety with its associated admonitions for traditions with "avertive" and apolitical tendencies. A Lutheran history of the latter based on its tendencies toward interiority, and also its skepticism about what can be accomplished or should be sought in the public arena related to its two kingdom theory, makes it a natural target of such criticism. The Joint Declaration itself leaves something to be desired on both the mandates of justice that grow out of justification and the hopes for history. What happened to Roman Catholicism’s own tradition of sanctification, personal and public?

Again, admonitions go both ways. Reformed history is replete with inordinate expectations, personal and public, and with them the self-righteous fury that accompanies illusions. So the churches of visible saints that fence their tables to sinners, and the Manichaean campaigns, spiritual and political, that have no principle of self-criticism for saints and little understanding of the sin that persists in the champions of justice as well as in its foes. So too its history of utopian hopes for history regularly shattered by the realities. How can we not hear these admonitions?

The doctrinal task ahead for Reformed theology is to do its work deep in ecumenical fora, especially those with serious eccleisal outcomes. In those arenas it will gain a clearer understanding of its own identity and be able to share in consequential ways in the theological healing of the Body of Christ. In such venues also it can demonstrate its own commitment to semper reformanda, learning to receive as well as give.

^1. On the former see Karl Lehmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg, eds., The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide? Margaret Kohl, trans. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990). Reformed and Anglican responses were invited at the Yale Consultation on the Joint Declaration in February, 2000. The English language edition of the Joint Declaration on Justification was published by Eerdmans in 2000.

^2. See Keith F. Nickle and Timothy F. Lull, eds., A Common Calling: The Witness of Our Reformation Churches in North America Today (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993).

^3. Developed by the writer in Gabriel Fackre and Michael Root, Affirmations and Admonitions (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1998), 1-43.

^4. The phrase is from The Condemnations of the Reformation Era, also appearing in the Joint Declaration on Justification.

^5. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III/14/21.

^6. Nicholas Wolterstorff, When Justice and Peace Embrace (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1983), 3-22.

Gabriel Fackre is Abbot Professor of Christian Theology Emeritus, Andover Newton Theological School.

THE DOCTRINAL TASK OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES

PART V. The Doctrinal Task of the Reformed Church
by Shirley C. Guthrie

There is of course no such thing as "the" Reformed Church. There are many Reformed and Presbyterian churches around the world which are different from each other in many ways. But they all share a common commitment to a long multifaceted confessional tradition that has its roots in the Swiss Reformation of the sixteenth century (a tradition in which doctrine and ethics, faith and life, are never separated). I believe that examination of the unique character of this particular confessional tradition provides us with the surest guideline for defining the task of authentic Reformed theology in our time.

Like other confessional churches such as the Roman Catholic and Lutheran (and in contrast to so-called "free" churches), Reformed churches understand the task of interpreting scripture and defining the meaning of Christian faith and life to be that of a community of Christians. Like others who belong to confessional churches, faithful Reformed Christians are not free to interpret the Bible and Christian faith and life according to their own personal theological preferences and religious experience. They subject themselves to the guidance, judgment, and correction of their church’s interpretation. They are "bound" to their church’s confessional tradition.

But Reformed churches are different from other confessional churches in that their tradition not only binds its members but sets them free. Perhaps the most revealing manifestation of this freedom is the great number of its confessional documents.

Other confessional traditions have been content with a few confessional statements formulated by a few people within narrow geographical and historical limits, and considered to have permanent authority for all the faithful, everywhere, always. Authoritative and unchangeable Roman Catholic teaching comes from the ancient church councils, from the Council of Trent, and from Rome, where the contribution of Catholic churches around the world may be given consideration but may also be overruled. All the great Lutheran confessions were written by Luther himself or one of his immediate followers in Germany in the sixteenth century. They are gathered together in the Book of Concord (1577), the preface of which says that they contain the correct Lutheran interpretation of scripture "for all posterity."

But from the very beginning, wherever the Reformed movement has spread, Reformed Christians have made new confessions of their faith, first city by city, then country by country. Confessions of Bern, Basel, Zürich, and Geneva were followed by one or more confessions of regional Reformed churches in Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Hungary and Scotland. Interrupted for two centuries for reasons we need not consider here, this surge of confession writing has continued in the twentieth century, when more than thirty new confessions have been adopted by Reformed churches not only in Europe and Great Britain but also in North America, Africa, Asia and, Latin America. No one of these confessionals or collection of them claims to be a final, infallible statement of faith for all Reformed Christians.

When one reads these documents, written by many different people over a great span of time, one is struck by the remarkable consistency in fundamental content. They all explicitly or implicitly agree with the great ecumenical councils of the ancient church, seeking to express the faith of one, holy, catholic and apostolic church in the triune God and in the Word of God made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. They all affirm with other branches of the Reformation the unique authority of scripture and salvation by grace alone through faith alone. They are also recognizably and distinctively Reformed in their stated or presupposed emphasis on the sovereignty of God and God’s covenant faithfulness, the doctrines of predestination or election, God’s claim both on our personal lives and our corporate lives in church and society, and the inseparable connection between God’s justifying grace that saves and sanctifying grace that enables and requires thankful Christian discipleship.

But there are also some substantial differences in what Reformed confessions say about Christian faith and life. They differ in their understanding even of doctrines so important to them as that of the sovereignty of God, predestination, and the authority of scripture. Contemporary confessions differ from classical ones in what they say about the relation between church and state, marriage and divorce, and the role of women in church and society. Talk about the church’s mission in and for the world, almost totally ignored in earlier confessions, is a major theme in later ones. The history of the Reformed confessional tradition, in other words, shows that while Reformed Christians honor and respect their "fathers" in the faith and brothers and sisters in other Reformed churches, they have felt free to criticize, revise and change even at central points what Reformed Christians before them and around them have taught—including Calvin himself and other original Reformers.

This willingness and ability to change confirms what Barth said in a lecture he gave in 1925: Reformed confessions are "fragmentary and changeable" insights into God’s revelation in Christ which are "given to the church for the moment," "formulated by a Christian community within a geographically limited area," and are "authoritative only until further action" ("The Desirability and Possibility of a Universal Reformed Creed" published in Theology and the Church, 1962, pp. 112-114). Confessions, in other words, have authority for Reformed Christians—but only provisional, temporary and relative authority.

Reformed confessions themselves give us three inter-related reasons for this "bound yet free" attitude of Reformed Christians: They acknowledge that all confessions have a temporary, provisional and relative authority because (1) confessional statements are the work of limited, fallible, sinful human beings, (2) their authority is subordinate to the higher authority of scripture, (3) Reformed Christians are open in every new time, place and situation to a fresh word from the living God who is present and at work in the risen Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Reformed Christians at the beginning of the twenty-first century live in a different world from that of those who wrote their classical confessions—a world that was only beginning to emerge even in the first half of the twentieth century when most contemporary Reformed confessions were adopted. The "world" can no longer mean the Western world. Reformed churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America are no longer willing to express their faith with the philosophical and cultural presuppositions of Western culture. Even in the West, Christians now live in "post-Christian," multi-cultural, pluralistic societies in which the Christian religion has lost its privileged status. Christians have to learn to bear witness to their faith in the company of people of different cultures and religious traditions with different ethical values and norms, and in the company of an increasing number of people who claim no religious faith at all and believe that ethical values and norms are only a matter of personal preference.

In this new world, Reformed Christians have to find new ways to think and talk about their faith. But I believe that in order to do so, they do not have to abandon their confessional heritage; they have only to appropriate it with the same modesty about their own wisdom and virtue, the same commitment to the superior authority of scripture, and the same burning desire to discern the will and work of the living God of scripture in every new situation that have always informed authentic Reformed faith.

MODESTY
Some Reformed Christians in our time as well as in the past have assumed that Calvin or some earlier or later Calvinist, or some particular confessional statement or collection of confessional statements, define the "correct" interpretation of Christian faith and life, and that any other interpretation is heretical. But Reformed tradition has always acknowledged with the Westminster Confession of 1647 that "All synods or councils [and theologians] since the apostles’ times…may err and many have erred; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith and life, but to be used as a help in both" (XXXIII.3). "The purest churches [and theologians] under heaven are subject to both mixture and error" (XXVII.5).

The large number of Reformed confessions is evidence that Reformed churches have always sought to bring the gospel to bear on the specific theological, moral and political issues that have arisen in new social and historical contexts. But the here-and-now character of Reformed confessions also means that their understanding of the gospel has sometimes been distorted by the context in which they have borne witness to it. So, for instance, the great Reformed theologies and confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were written before the discoveries of modern science and reflect an outdated understanding of the structure of the world, its natural and historical processes, and the relation of God to them (just as our "modern" or "post-modern" theologies and confessions will one day seem outdated and "primitive" to future generations). The confessions and theologians of every age have often assumed that the prevailing patterns of sexual, familial and political life in their society were God-willed for people everywhere, always, and have been unable and unwilling to grasp parts of the biblical witness that might call these patterns into question. Especially in our time we have learned that all truth claims, including those of both earlier and contemporary Christians, are more influenced than they are aware of by the gender, race, social status, culture, and self-interest of the individual thinkers or groups who make them.

Christians who are faithful to the Reformed tradition that keep producing new confessions know that the theological and ethical insights of all Christians (conservative and liberal; of both genders, of every race, class and culture; past and present) are the historically and socially conditioned insights of limited, fallible, sinful human beings, and are therefore subject to criticism, revision and correction. They will modestly confess that also their own understanding of the gospel is "subject to mixture and error," and that they too may be wrong or only half right, and need to change their minds even about some things they have been most sure of in the past.

If such modesty is to be not just a theoretical claim but a genuine characteristic of Reformed thinking in our multi-cultural, multi-religious pluralistic world, Reformed churches and theologians will gladly enter into conversation with people who are different from themselves. They will seek not only to instruct and enlighten but also to be instructed and enlightened in conversations with "liberals" and "conservatives" and "evangelicals" in their own church and in other Reformed communions around the world; with fellow believers in other Christian traditions; with followers of non-Christian religious traditions; and with secular people who claim no religious tradition at all. They will especially be willing to listen to and learn from fellow Christians and non-Christians who differ from them in political ideology, cultural heritage, gender, race and class. At the very least such conversations can expose how socially and culturally conditioned are our own theological and ethical convictions. And they may teach Reformed Christians some things about Christian faith and life they could and should have learned from their own tradition and the scripture they confess to be the authoritative guide for what they believe and how they live.

THE SCRIPTURE PRINCIPLE
The large number of Reformed confessional statements is evidence of Reformed conviction that the church’s understanding of Christian faith and life in any particular time and place is subject to criticism and correction in light of the Word of God that is the enduring norm of the church’s faith and life in every time and place. Reformed confessions and theologians differ in their understanding of the authority of scripture (whether, for instance, it is itself the revelation of God or a human witness to it). But there is a remarkable consistency in Reformed tradition concerning the use and interpretation of scripture. In a time when some Christians tend to argue about the Bible instead of reading and trying to understand it, and when others use it only to confirm and defend their culturally and historically conditioned biases and preferences, I believe that Reformed Christians and churches need to reclaim the rules for the interpretation of scripture that comes from their own confessional heritage. I can only briefly summarize and comment on them here. (In the representative selection of Reformed statements in the Book of Confessions of the Presbyterian Church USA, these rules are found in the Scots Confession, Chs. XVIII and XIX; Second Helvetic Confession, Chs. I and II; Westminster Confession, Ch. I; Declaration of Barmen, 8.10-12; Confession of 1967, 9.27-30.)

Scripture interprets itself. When we encounter difficult passages of scripture or passages the interpretation of which is controversial, we must compare them with other passages (II Helvetic: "like and unlike" passages) that throw a different or more light on the question at hand; and we must seek to understand them in light of the total message of scripture, including parts that may not deal with the specific issue at hand. This is a safeguard against the tendency of all Christians (conservative and liberal alike) to see and quote only passages that confirm what they already think and want the Bible to say, and to ignore other passages. It is also a warning that if it really is the word of God we seek to hear and not just the echo of our own opinions and wishes, we must listen to the interpretation of Christians who are different from us in all the ways we have mentioned, and who may be able to see things in the Word of God we have been reluctant or unwilling to hear because of the limitations and self-interest of our particular perspective.

The Christological principle. Scripture is to be interpreted in light of the central revelation of God in Jesus Christ, what he said and did, and God’s liberating and reconciling work in his life, death and resurrection. This rule has proved helpful as Reformed churches have struggled with contemporary issues such as that of women’s place in church and society, justice for the poor and oppressed, and treatment of others who have been forgotten or excluded.

The law of love. I take this as a warning that no interpretation of scripture that shows hostility, contempt or indifference toward any person or group can be a right interpretation of the Word of God whose will for human life is summarized in the often repeated Biblical command to love God and our neighbors as ourselves.

The rule of faith. Scripture is to be interpreted with respect for the church’s interpretation of it. Whether old or new, the church’s interpretation is always subject to criticism and correction in light of further study of scripture itself. But we are more likely to interpret it rightly and avoid confusing the guidance of the Spirit with our own personal and social biases, when we first listen carefully and respectfully to the past and present consensus of the church concerning what scripture leads us to believe and do, and do not too quickly assume that a few of us know better than all the rest.

Respect for literary and historical context. Scripture is to be interpreted in light of the various literary and the social-historical contexts in which it was written. This principle of interpretation encourages us to seek to discern the word and work of God in our time in a book written by and for ancient near Eastern people who had a predominantly patriarchal, hierarchical understanding of God and human society, who bore witness to the word and action of God with a pre-scientific worldview, and who did not even dream of many of the problems we have to face in a modern technological society. The rule also invites Reformed Christians to distinguish in the Bible between what the will of God is for the life of all people in all times, and what, although it may have once been the will of God for people in another time, no longer applies to us.

THE LIVING GOD
Some Reformed Christians and some Reformed confessional statements have been prone to believe that once a long time ago "in Bible times" God spoke and acted to reveal God’s self and God’s will, but then retired (except perhaps for a brief period during the Protestant Reformation), leaving God’s people to figure out for themselves or "deduce" from scripture (Westminster Confession) what they should believe and say and do. But the God of the Bible Reformed Christians confess to be the norm of their understanding of Christian faith and life is the living God of Israel who not only spoke and acted in the distant past history of God’s people but continued and promised to go with them on their way, saying and doing new things to help and guide them in new situations. That is the same God who was present and at work in Jesus Christ, who promised that he would not abandon his followers but promised through the Holy Spirit to be with them and instruct them in the future "to the end of the age."

Faithful interpretation of scripture, then, is to ask not just what God did say and do, once upon a time. It is to ask what the living God through the risen Jesus and the Spirit is saying and doing here and now, in our time and place; and what we have to say and do in order to be faithful Christians, even though it means saying and doing some things that may seem strange and shocking when compared with what Christians in other times and places felt called to say and do.

When we speak of the living God of the Old and New Testaments, I believe we have at the very heart of the faith of Reformed Christians and the reason behind all other reasons for their unwillingness stubbornly to defend past confessions of faith and continuing to make new ones. We also come to what I believe is the most important question Reformed theology should be asking today: Who is this living God, and how can we discern God’s work and will in our time?

With other contemporary theologians in the Roman Catholic, Lutheran and other Christian traditions as well as in the Reformed tradition, and especially with some who write from feminist, black and Latin American perspectives, I believe that the answer lies first of all in reclaiming and reinterpreting the ancient ecumenical doctrine of the Trinity.

Some Christians as well as non-Christians have thought that this doctrine is outdated, irrelevant, and arrogantly exclusive and divisive in our post-Constantinian, post-Christian pluralistic world. But we have only to ask (more consistently than was the case in classical Christian theology) who the Trinitarian God is to see that it is precisely this doctrine that prepares the church to find its way in such a world. (Here I will very briefly sketch an often neglected line of Trinitarian thought that emphasizes the inseparable "works" of the Trinity. I leave aside the important contribution that Jürgen Moltmann, C. M. LaCugna, Leonardo Boff and others have made in reclaiming the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of a "social Trinity" and its implications for imagining non-hierarchical human relationships and society based on cooperation rather than competition, mutuality rather than domination and control.)

The living God whom Christians confess is the Creator who wills, gives, preserves and defends the life, health, and welfare not only of Christians and the Christian community but of all human beings and their natural environment.

Christians, therefore, look for and recognize the presence and work of their living God wherever (also outside the Christian community and its sphere of influence) there is responsible stewardship for the land, plants, water and air that are God’s good creation; and wherever there is respect for the value and dignity of every human life—people of every race, class and culture; friends and enemies alike; those we consider to be worthy, deserving and productive, and those we consider worthless, undeserving and useless.

The living God of Israel is the God who was uniquely present and at work in Jesus Christ, the expression of God’s love not only for Christians but also for the whole world. He healed the sick. He was on the side of the poor, oppressed and rejected. He was the friend not just of law-abiding, God-fearing insiders but also of sinful, unbelieving and different-believing outsiders. He came not to condemn, defeat and lord it over his and his peoples’ enemies but to give himself with God’s own self-giving, suffering love to restore to them their own true humanity. And God raised him from the dead and made him the Lord over all "principalities and powers"—not just Lord over the church and in the hearts of Christians but risen Lord who continues the work he began everywhere in the world.

Wherever, then, Christians see evidence of the healing, liberating, reconciling and saving work of God in Christ going on (also among people of other religions or no religion), there they gratefully recognize the presence and work of their living God and risen Christ.

The Spirit of God is the Spirit of the Creator who from the beginning has been the origin of all truth, beauty, justice and compassion in the world. This is the Spirit who dwelt in Jesus and whom Jesus promised to his followers. It also is the Spirit Jesus said "blows where it will," and who according to the New Testament witness is at work everywhere to create a whole new humanity in a whole new heaven and earth.

Christians, then, expect and welcome the work and "fruits" of this Spirit not only in the Christian community but also in other religious communities and in the secular communities of the world.

Far from leading to arrogant, exclusive claim to the superiority of Christians and their religion, faith in the living triune God leads first of all to painful self-criticism: To what extent is the presence and work of God visible in the lives of Christians and their church? Far from closing off, it makes possible and requires conversation and cooperation between Christians and non-Christians: Not only for modesty’s sake but for their own God’s sake Christians will expect to meet their God in "outsiders" who may sometimes demonstrate more clearly than Christians themselves the presence and work of the God they confess. Even when Christians’ faith leads them (as it inevitably will) to criticize and disagree with others, their criticism and disagreement will be for the sake of a God who is for and not against them, and wills only their good.

Some Reformed Christians and churches have indeed misused their confessional tradition to defend outdated, irrelevant, exclusive theological and ethical positions. But once again the remedy is not to discard that tradition in order to be relevant in our modern and post-modern world. It is to take seriously implications of Reformed Tradition that have been neglected in the past—above all the implications of its old doctrine of the Trinity and especially the classical rule for interpreting it that has long been formally acknowledged but often substantively forgotten: "The works of the Trinity are indivisible."

Karl Barth once said that the task of Reformed theology today is to "begin at the beginning." I agree. And I agree with him that this means to begin with the "God question" (though I believe we must be more consistently Trinitarian than he was especially in dealing with the work of the third member of the Trinity). We cannot begin with an unquestioned acceptance of what has passed for orthodox theology in the past. Or with a plea for a return to "moral absolutes." Or with this or that program of spiritual renewal and development. Or with what Christians and their church could and should do to achieve the ideals of justice, freedom, compassion, peace and "inclusiveness" in the world. The task of Reformed theology is to seek to discern—with the help of sheep who do not belong to our fold—what the living triune God we come to know in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments has done, is doing, and promises to do. Then we will learn what we have to say and do to bear faithful and relevant witness to this God in our time.

Shirley C. Guthrie is professor emeritus of theology, Columbia Theological Seminary.

CALVIN STUDIES SOCIETY—ANNUAL COLLOQUIUM ON "CALVIN AND THE CHURCH"
On May 24–26, 2001, the Calvin Studies Society will hold its 13th annual colloquium on the theme "Calvin and the Church" at Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Speakers for this colloquium are Gene Haas, Redeemer College; Ray Mentzer, University of Montana; Bill Naphy, University of Aberdeen; Barbara Pitkin, Stanford University; Marylynne Robinson, University of Iowa; Herman Selderhuis, Theological University of Apeldoorn; and Karen Spierling, University of Wisconsin at Madison. Registration information is available on their Website: www.CalvinStudiesSociety.org.

CENTER FOR BARTH STUDIES
The Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary will be sponsoring several regional conferences in 2001 on the theme "Karl Barth: Theology for Preaching and Prayer." The conference schedule is below. For more information call 609/252-1715, or e-mail their office at barth.studies@ptsem.edu.

• Northeast/Boston Area—March 2-3, 2001
  Site: Campion Renewal Center, Weston, MA 02493
  Keynote Speakers: Horace Allen, Boston University; Katherine Sonderegger, Middlebury College; and George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary.
  Preacher: Mark Heim, Andover Newton Theological School

• Midwest/Chicago Area—March 16-17, 2001
  Site: Haworth Conference Center, Holland, MI 49423
  Keynote Speakers: I. John Hesselink, Western Theological Seminary; Fleming Rutledge, nationally re- nowned preacher of the Episcopal Church; and George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary.
  Preacher: Leanne Van Dyk, Western Theological Seminary

• Southeast/Atlanta Area—April 20-21, 2001
  Site: Harrington Center, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA 30031
  Keynote Speakers: Margit Ernst, Columbia Theological Seminary; Donald Saliers, Emory University; and George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary.
  Preacher: Laura Mendenhall, Columbia Theological Seminary

THE H. HENRY MEETER CENTER FOR CALVIN STUDIES
On November 28, as part of Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary’s 125th Anniversary Lecture Series, Dr. Karin Maag will speak on "A Genevan Reformer in Grand Rapids: John Calvin and Calvinism at the Meeter Center." Other upcoming lectures and events are listed below.

• March 30, 2001, Dr. Otto Selles, professor of French, Calvin College

• May 24, 2001, Dr. Herman Selderhuis, professor of church history, Theological University, Apeldoorn, the Netherlands

• May 24-26, 2001, The 13th Colloquium of The Calvin Studies Society (see p. 9 for additional information).

• June 4-16, 2001, Dr. Tom Lambert will offer a course on paleography.

For more information call Susan Schmurr at 616/957-7081 or check out their Website at http://www.calvin.edu/meeter/events.htm.

THE INTERNATIONAL REFORMED THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

"Faith and Ethnicity" will be the theme of the next IRTI conference, which will be held on the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary on July 11-15, 2001. The core of the theme is the question of to what extent Christian faith can be shaped by an ethnic identity. This implies also questioning the limits of contextualization, and the quest for an identity of unity and generality, and discussing the relation of faith and politics. Graduate students are invited to attend. All attendees are invited to prepare a paper for one of the workshops.

Plenary lectures and workshops are scheduled. Lecturers include Kwame Bediako (Accra, Ghana), Eberhard Busch (Göttingen, Germany), Sang Lee (Princeton, USA), Christian Mostert (Melbourne, Australia), Pieter Potgieter (Bloemfontein, S. Africa), Gerrit Singghi (Yogyakarta, Indonesia), and Ferenc Szücs(Budapest, Hungary).

For information please contact Prof. Dr. A. van de Beek, Director, IRTI, Faculty of Theology, Postbus 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands; 00-31-318-565088 (Phone); 00-31-318-565280 (Fax); AVD.BEEK@WXS.NL (E-mail).

Reformed Confessions: Theology from Zurich to Barmen, by Jan Rohls, trans. John Hoffmeyer. Columbia Series in Reformed Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998. 311 pgs. $35.95. ISBN 0-664-22078-9

THIS IS A MUCH-NEED AND VERY USEFUL VOLUME giving us a detailed picture of what significant Reformed confessions teach about the various theological doctrines. One hopes it finds an important spot on the bookshelves of pastors, seminary students, and church libraries. Scholars too can welcome it as an accessible entrée to Reformed thought.

An additional bonus with this book is the Introduction by Jack L. Stotts who chaired the committee that prepared the Brief Statement of Faith adopted by the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1991. Stotts’ "Confessing after Barmen" is a most helpful guide to the main theological themes that have emerged in a number of Reformed confessions from throughout the world in the seventy years since the Theological Declaration of Barmen was produced in 1934.

Rohls’ three major divisions are the Development of the Old Reformed Confessional Writings; the Theological Contents of the Old Reformed Confessional Writings; and Conciliatory Theology, Toleration, and the Development of Neo-Reformed Confessional Writings. The second segment forms the main core of the volume.

In the first section, Rohls, who teaches systematic theology at the University of Munich, helps us see how the Reformed impulse to confess Christian faith originated with Zwingli and German-speaking Switzerland and then with Calvin, Bullinger, and the Agreement between Zurich and Geneva. As Calvinism spread in western and eastern Europe, so did confessional writing. The Dordrecht Synod in the Netherlands, English Puritanism, and the School of Saumur and the Helvetic Consensus Formula (1675) are all shown in various ways as examples of confessional development.

Part II is organized according to the theological loci moving from Revelation and the Trinity to Ministry and Church and State. Each of the sixteen chapters here is developed in several parts that contribute significantly to the theme. Rohls’ approach is to weave a narrative in each section that synthesizes the important emphases of a variety of Reformed confessions on that segment. Rohls is good with providing comparisons in the Reformed documents—both among themselves and also as they differ with other theological viewpoints—Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Anabaptism. Thus, for example, the chapter on Justification has three parts: "Forgiveness of Sins and the Righteousness of Christ," "The Critical Response to the Tridentine Decree on Justification," and "Faith as Justifying" (Fides Iustificans). This chapter thus expounds the nature of the Reformed teachings, compares Reformed views to those developed in the Council of Trent, and then explores the nature of justifying faith, noting the contrast between the early confessions that identify faith with "heartfelt trust in such inconceivable grace of God" and the statements found in Reformed Orthodoxy of the later period in which "the cognitive and intellectual aspect of faith increasingly comes to the fore." The full effect of Part II is to provide a Reformed compendium of Christian doctrines that gives an exposition of each key element of the doctrine in the words of various Reformed confessions. This is the heart of the volume and the detailed work that puts us most in Rohls’ debt.

Part III of the book consists of chapters on topics such as "The Question of the Fundamental Article," Confessionalism and the Idea of Toleration," and "Changes in the Old Reformed and the Development of Neo-Reformed Confessional Writings" in England and North America, France, Germany, and in the German church struggle that led to the Declaration of Barmen. These usefully introduce us both to historical issues as well as to the nub of what makes Reformed Christians confess their faith in the first place. Rohls notes Karl Barth’s view that all confessional formulations possess only a "relative authority"—since Scripture and the Holy Spirit are the two sole doctrinal authorities. But Christians say what they believe: "We, here, now, confess faith in this!" exclaimed Barth. "Certainly we are conscious of speaking in the name of the one Holy Church (Una Sancta)," he continued, "conscious of speaking the truth—but we, here, now speak." This means, according to Rohls, that the lone authority over the church as it speaks its faith in many situations is "only Christ, ruling as king." Until new developments arise, "the confession thus points the way not only for the teaching of the community, but also for its life."

The ways in which this theological conviction about the nature of church confessions have taken shape globally in the Reformed family is what Stotts’ introductory essay so beneficially surveys. Contemporary Reformed confessions are marked by five prominent theological themes: 1) Ecclesiology that stresses the unity of the Church; 2) Jesus Christ as divine and human—with an emphasis on the human; 3) a high view of Scripture that emphasizes the need for using all available critical tools for biblical interpretation; 4) Social Ethics in which the church identifies broad issues that must be addressed for the sake of the church’s own integrity and for the health of the world; and 5) Mission in which earlier missiological presuppositions have shifted away from focusing on the church’s work within the particular boundaries of its own geographical location to a broader view. Reformed confessions now often treat mission itself as a topic so that "the church as mission and the church as an instrument of mission are brought to the forefront." In all these ways, the essential Lordship of Jesus Christ in the church is being expressed.

Reformed Christians of all varieties will benefit from this guide to the rich confessional heritage of the Reformed family. Rohls could have given more attention to the Congregational wing of the Reformed tradition with its confessional writings from England and America. But what he has provided is a uniquely helpful book that will assist all readers—especially pastors and congregations—in gaining a deeper insight into what Reformed Christians believe and how these beliefs have been expressed through the centuries and in today’s world in their variety of forms.