Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening, Part Two

In the comments below, I am quoting from Clifford Ansgar Nelson’s translation of Bishop Bo Giertz’s herdabrev, “Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening,” published by Augustana Book Concern in 1950.

Bishop Giertz begins his discussion of these matters by positing that “The Word of God creates the church” (p. 10). That Word appeared in two different forms—those “which seem to be more or less improvised and spontaneous and those which appear fixed and unchangeable”—or “awakening” and “liturgy,” as they are commonly called (p. 10).

Liturgy has deep roots in the apostolic age: “The altar is today the only place in our modern life where, with unbroken tradition, the vestments are still used which were worn by people in that olden day. Within the walls of the church one can still hear musical settings that preserve something of the very tones of that hymn of praise which our Lord and His disciples sang when they ate the paschal meal” (p. 12). And yet it is not the antiquity of the service that most commends itself, but “the fact that it is a form which the Spirit Himself has created to preserve and deepen the life which He has awakened in the church” (p. 13).

Awakening also has apostolic roots. But its language is different. “The instrument of awakening is the spoken Word, a word with prophetic authority, powerful to crush the hard rock of a soul and also appealing with all the inward warmth of the gospel. The language of awakening is often akin to everyday speech….Therefore, the words of awakening do not employ such phrases as, for the example, the Root of Jesse, or the Key of David. Rather do they speak to the children of the age in the language of the age about those things which have been forgotten but need to be heard again,” while liturgy “uses all the richness of the Scriptures, all the meaningful symbols and prefigurements of Christ in the Old Testament” (p. 14).

Both are necessary. “Awakening is always needed…because there is always the need for awakening even among the most faithful members of the church….The old Adam in each one of us is prone to fall asleep, to make the Christian life a dead routine, to use liturgical form to cloak his self-complacency and impenitence” (p. 16). “Liturgy is just as needful. There can be no normal church life without liturgy. Sacraments need form; the order of worship must have some definite pattern. It is possible to live for a short time on improvisations” but “in circles where people seek to live without any forms, new forms are nevertheless constantly taking shape….But it would not be wrong to say that the new forms that grow up in this way are usually less attractive and more profane than the ancient liturgy….The new liturgy that grows in this manner is poorer, less Biblical, and less nourishing to the soul than the discarded ancient order” (pp. 17-18).

Giertz notes that liturgy has many enemies, including “sluggish, dead passivity” (p. 19). But liturgy’s most formidable enemy is awakening, because few worldly sluggards count themselves as more spiritual than liturgy, but the awakened are tempted to count liturgy as an improper form of worship (p. 19). But as Giertz perceptively notes, “there is often a goodly portion of self-righteousness and egocentricity in [awakening’s] judgment. The old Adam is an unequalled opportunist” (p. 21). Awakening dismisses the liturgy because a person was not awakened in the liturgy but in some other manner and therefore, this manner “must be the proper way” or even “the only right way” (p. 21).

Giertz adds that there is another reason many oppose the liturgy, “humanly understandable but no more valid: There are people who find it difficult to feel at home in the liturgical forms” (p. 22). In other words, some people find liturgical forms “very natural, so that they immediately feel at home in them, while other people find it hard to become accustomed to them” (p. 23). A solution might be to abandon the liturgy in part or in total, but Giertz will have none of that: “All liturgy demands the submerging of self” (p. 22). A Christian “who will not subordinate himself in such fellowship is no Christian, because one cannot be a Christian by one’s self” (p. 23). “When revival piety in the church is unwilling to live in the framework of the liturgy in the common service of worship, it has placed itself outside the fellowship of the church and can no longer be counted as a living movement of the church of Christ” (p. 25).

Lest this seem too big of a burden for the non-liturgically oriented to bear, Giertz adds, “Outside the common worship service there must be freedom….There must be full freedom also for all those forms of worship which truly serve for edification; they may be services of prayer, inner circles of fellowship, liturgical orders of devotion, and many another type of worship” (p. 25). The only stipulation is that these worship forms “shall never displace or be a substitute for the great fellowship of the Sunday common service.”

Having spoken against awakening’s interference with the liturgy, Giertz warns about a false liturgy, which can “become an almost impregnable armor for the old Adam” (p. 26). He asks (p. 26), “What can the Holy Spirit do with a person who goes to Communion more faithfully than anyone else in the congregation, who for an hour a day prays beautiful prayers from the Psalter or from the classic prayer books of Christendom…but who through all these exercises only becomes more and more convinced that he is a better kind of person, a person…who loves no one except himself and his holy ceremonies?” Thus, “liturgy without awakening is probably the most dangerous of all church programs. It is possible to enrich and beautify the worship service, to add vestments and choirs, to plan lovely vespers, and even to arrange for more frequent communions, without a single person in earnestness asking himself, ‘How shall I, a sinner, be saved?’” (p. 28).

Giertz adds that “awakening needs liturgy” (p. 30), if it is going to be sound enough to pass on its heritage from one generation to the next. But “awakening, or revival, can also serve liturgy. When men are wakened, there is new life in the old forms of devotion….Ancient, beautiful custom becomes more than custom. It becomes an expression for the life which is born again” (p. 31).

Giertz concludes by positing that “the need for awakening will one day cease. It belongs to this world, where men still sleep the sleep of death….But liturgy will remain….a never ending thanksgiving to the Creator and Father of all things” (pp. 31-32).

Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening, Part One

I recently came across a booklet written a full two decades before the outbreak of the current “worship wars,” but a booklet which is full of wisdom for today. It is the herdabrev, the bishop’s inaugural letter, of the late Rev. Bishop Bo Giertz, Bishop of Gothenburg, Sweden. The title of the herdabrev is “Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening” and is an appeal for the church to take both liturgy and spiritual awakening seriously.

The context is different, but there is still much we can learn. Bishop Giertz became bishop of Gothenburg in 1949 in a country where “high church Pietist” or “sacramental Pietist” was not a contradiction in terms, where those fervent to save people’s souls did not disdain the church, the sacraments, and the liturgy. This was the legacy of such theologians as Henric Schartau and even to some extent Carl Rosenius, who did not separate from the Church of Sweden even as they called for a renewal of it. In the United States, however, we have followed a different path, where spiritual awakening has always seen itself as the mortal enemy of previously established churches and their liturgies and sacraments. Indeed, spiritual awakening is seen as a quasi-sacramental experience and liturgy as a hindrance to it. Add to it the American love of consumerism and individualism as well as the American disdain for history, and you can see why the awakening movements in the United States have tended to create schismatic and wildly heterodox churches that foster a Platonic (if not crypto-Gnostic) disdain for the fully sacramental and liturgical life of the church. Given this environment, it is difficult for anyone who cares about creeds, liturgy, and rich theology to give a fair hearing to anything that comes out of the American revivalist scene.

And yet now might be a moment for those in America to reconcile awakening and liturgy. The past three decades have seen a growing number of Evangelicals dissatisfied with Evangelicalism’s shallow Christology, fluffy theology, disembodied ecclesiology, and contempt for the visible created world. Evangelicalism has not responded to the current crisis by all going in one direction, but one avenue for Evangelicals to express their dissent has been to join the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox or Anglican Church. They have recovered creedal orthodoxy and liturgical sensibilities, but usually at the cost of a Reformation understanding of justification. Lutherans—especially confessional Lutherans—are such a tiny percentage of American Christianity that few Evangelicals recognize it as an option, especially since Evangelicals think that Lutherans are Zwinglian in their theology and liturgical style.

But what if a person could be both an heir to the broad catholic tradition (including the liturgy) and to the Reformation recovery of the gospel (with its emphasis on justification by grace through faith)? What if one could see that the liturgy is not the enemy of genuine spiritual awakening and vice versa, but that the one leads to the other? In other words, what if we could be good Lutherans and recognize that both liturgy and awakening are part of our apostolic inheritance and shall be ours until our Lord returns? That is the question Bishop Giertz in effect addressed in his brief monograph, “Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening.”

In the next post I’ll look at some specific things that Bishop Giertz had to say about awakening and liturgy.

Why Chiasms and Inversions?

Biblical scholars are increasingly aware of rhetorical patterns to be found in the Scriptures. Although the patterns were often discussed by grammarians and rhetoricians in antiquity, biblical commentators often ignored them until the past several decades. If one were to consult most commentaries written after the time of the Reformation, one would see that they tend to outline the argument of a book of the Bible using headings with Roman numerals (I, II, III, etc.), interspersed with letters (A, B, C, etc.), which in turn are interspersed with Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.). In short, the books of the Bible are made to look like college freshman essays in their organization. However, in the past half century or so, there has been a quiet revolution that recognizes various structures that would make literary works easier for the listener to understand. While books for the past few centuries have been written primarily with the eyes of the reader in mind, older books were written primarily with the ears of the listener in mind, since it was common for books to be read aloud by a literate person to several illiterate ones. Books written in such a milieu would be unlikely to employ a complicated outline that required eyes to see the pattern. Instead, they used such patterns as parallelisms and inversions.

The latter is often erroneously called a chiasm, which properly refers to words that are organized in an ABBA pattern, where the first and last words are similar and those in the middle are similar to each other. Inversion is a chiastic pattern spread over several phrases or sentences rather than merely words, and inversion can become quite complicated, having any number of component parts, such as ABCDCBA. Ken Bailey, among others, has outlined the inversion structure found in many of the parables and indeed in the arrangement of larger passages such as Luke’s Journey Narrative (Luke 9:51-19:48).

But why should ancient authors have used inversions? Isn’t one structure as good as another? Consider the following example Ken Bailey gives of a modern conversation between two teenagers or young adults (Poet and Peasant, page 50):

            A: Are you coming to the party?

            B: Can I bring a friend?

            A: Boy or girl?

            B: What difference does it make?

            A: It is a matter of balance.

            B: Girl.

            A: OK.

            B: I’ll be there.

At first glance it appears as an ordinary, free flowing conversation between two people. But Bailey argues that there is a chiastic structure to this dialogue, as he demonstrates (loc. cit.):

            A   Are you coming to the party?

                        B   Can I bring a friend?

                                    C   Boy or girl?

                                                D   What difference does it make?

                                                D’   It is a matter of balance.

                                    C’   Girl.

                        B’   OK.

            A’   I’ll be there.

Bailey comments: “A fascinating number of such illustrations have come to my attention and demonstrate that the use of the inversion principle is relatively universal and subconscious….Usually there is a ‘point of turning’ past the center of the structure. The second half is not redundant. Rather it introduces some crucial new element that resolves or completes the first half.” Thus, if an author uses this kind of a structure (and builds rather elaborate inversion structures—more so than would be ordinarily used in common speech), it is because this is the way that people often talk and think. As the medieval thinkers said, ars est artem celare, very loosely translated as “great art always looks as if no art were involved.”

Bailey, however, gives no explanation as to why people should talk or think in this way. But it makes sense if you think about it. In the example that he cites, each question spurs on another question until finally four questions have been asked. In each instance the individual cannot answer the previous question until a question of his own has been answered. The first boy wants to know if the second boy is coming to a party, but the second boy has to know if he can bring a friend. But the first boy doesn’t want to give a carte blanche invitation, and the second boy doesn’t understand why his friend is being so nosey. Once the second boy understands the first boy’s concern for balance, he can explain whom he is considering inviting. That allows the first boy to give his permission for the additional guest to come, which in turn prompts the second boy to come, since he won’t be there by himself.

It is all rather like taking some mechanical gadget (such as a carburetor) apart to fix something that is the inside. First, you remove the housing, then some of the more exterior parts, and finally get to the heart of the problem. Then you put it back together in reverse order, but with a twist: now the device is working as it should. In the same way, the first part of an inversion breaks away the outer layers of the problem one by one until we get at the heart of that matter. Once the issue has been resolved, we can add the layers again, but now we see them no longer as the obstacles to our getting the problem fixed, but rather manifestations of the correction that has been made. Thus, as long as there are problems to be solved, inversions will be a natural way to present material.

Jesus, the Metaphorical Theologian

I’ve been reading a lot of Kenneth Bailey the past year or so. I find him a particularly valuable exegete because (1.) he knows the culture of the Middle East and is therefore attuned to cultural aspects that get overlooked by Western eyes, (2.) he is attentive to the literary structures of the parables and even the seemingly “disorganized” material of 1 Corinthians, and (3.) he understands Jesus as a metaphorical theologian. It is the last point that I want to explore a little further. As Bailey outlines in his introduction to Finding the Lost: Cultural Keys to Luke 15 and chapter 21 of Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes, there are two ways to do theology: conceptually or metaphorically. We in the West tend to choose the former. We think in ideas—often abstract ideas—and then (if necessary) occasionally use a story or simile as an illustration. This is how the Apostle Paul seems to operate, and thus most Westerners find him a more sophisticated theologian than the story-telling Jesus. (I know, I know. Jesus is the Son of God who has all the intelligence of the Divine, but He seems to be too simplistic a thinker. He can’t even write a sentence that stretches out to half a chapter as Paul does!) But a metaphorical theologian finds the metaphor or parable as the primary thought and any conceptual interpretation around it as secondary. The hearer is to step inside the world of the metaphor and view the metaphor as the firmest reality; if need be, the concepts can be explained.

Bailey refers to Jesus’ parable as houses where one can look around and see a wide variety of truths. Eschewing the allegorical method and the quick “make one point of comparison and exit” method, he argues that the parables present a worldview that bears detailed examination—but not the kind that ignores the cultural roots from which they stem. Bailey also is quick to point out the intertextuality of our Lord’s parables. Our Lord’s Good Shepherd motif of Luke 15 and John 10 build on Old Testament passages such as Psalm 23, Jeremiah 23, and Ezekiel 34 (Finding the Lost, p. 68). The metaphor of the relationship between God and His people is the same throughout these passages, but there are subtle differences. The Jeremiah, Ezekiel, John, and (as Bailey argues) Luke passages speak of bad shepherds, while that is not the concern of Psalm 23. Ezekiel and our Lord (in John) distinguish between bad and good sheep, but none of the others do. All the passages speak of sheep being returned to the fold, but in Psalm 23 and Luke 15, it is a return to God, in Jeremiah it is a return to the land, and in Ezekiel it is both. Thus, a metaphorical theologian such as our Lord (and for that matter, most if not all of the Old Testament prophets) are not content to tell a story, but to craft and re-craft old stories, adding here and trimming there and altering elsewhere to cast a new emphasis on a familiar story. And thus Isaiah’s story of Israel as the bad vineyard becomes our Lord’s story of the Sanhedrin as the bad vineyard workers—a similar overall conceptual frame, but a different emphasis.

If you read the Scriptures carefully, you will find that a phrase or word in the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament) often provokes an image or metaphor in the mind of one of the prophets, which in turn prompts our Lord to construe a parable in a particular way. Far from being haphazard or merely cute, these parables of our Lord have a theological depth that we wrongly underestimate.

I am too much of a Westerner to be a metaphorical theologian. But reading Bailey on this topic has not only allowed me to understand the parables of our Lord better, but also to explain why I have disliked most of the sermon illustrations I have heard over the years. I have always discerned that such stories were trying to be as profound as our Lord’s parables, but failed somehow or another. Most sermon illustrations have little to do with the text or even the point being made by the preacher, but are simply ear candy to keep the listeners engaged. Bailey’s division between conceptual and metaphorical theology explains why those sermon illustrations fall flat: they are mere illustrations of the “more important” abstract concepts that the preacher is trying to communicate. They are huts or ragged tents compared to the solid houses our Lord built.

Just a Couple Dozen Topics—That’s All

In my last post, I argued that you could reduce the content of the Book of Concord to a couple dozen topics. You can consider this blog entry to be “the footnotes” for that post. I have arranged the content in outline format since some of the topics are clearly subcategories of other topics. You’ll need to know the following abbreviations: AC = Augsburg Confession; Ap. = Apology; SA = Smalcald Articles; Treatise = Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope; SC = Small Catechism; LC = Large Catechism; and FC = Formula of Concord. The numbering system of the Apology is somewhat convoluted and varies by edition, but I have followed the Kolb/Wengert numbering system since it lines up with that of the Augsburg Confession.

 

Often these articles may touch on some other topics tangentially, such as when Luther’s comments on the mass in SA 2:2 also deal with purgatory, the invocation of saints, and other topics. I have not tried to note every such subtopic because (as I argued in my last post) there is a particular coherence in the worldview that would guarantee that a Lutheran view of the mass would be in line with the Lutheran view of purgatory and vice versa.

By the way, the picture I have chosen to illustrate this blog entry illustrates that I am not the first to think that the various topics of the confessions cohere with one another. This is a sixteenth century woodcut that portrays the various topics of the Augsburg Confession as essentially seven branches of a lampstand illuminated by the Holy Spirit and grounded on the Scriptures and Christ. If you can read German, try to enlarge the picture and give it a closer look. It packs a lot of theology into a brief amount of space. (I downloaded the picture from Wiki Commons, where I get a lot of my free, out-of-copyright-protection pictures that I post here.)

I.                   God/Trinity: AC 1; Ap. 1; SA 1; SC 2; LC 2.

II.                Sin/Anthropology of the Fallen State: AC 19; Ap. 19; SA 3:1.

A.                Original Sin: AC 2; Ap. 2; FC 1.

B.                 Free will: AC 18; Ap. 18; SA 3:1; FC 2.

III.             The Law: SA 3:2; SC 1; LC 1; FC 5, 6.

IV.             Christ/His two natures/Unity of His person: AC 3; Ap. 3; SA 1; SC 2; LC 2; FC 3, 8, 9, 12.

V.                Justification: AC 4; Ap. 4; SA 2:1; 3:13; FC 3.

VI.             Repentance: AC 12; Ap. 12; SA 3:3.

VII.          Predestination/Election: FC 11.

VIII.       Ministry/Preaching office: AC 5, AC 14; Ap. 14; SA 3:4, 10.

A.                Clerical marriage: AC 23; Ap. 23; SA 3:11.

B.                 Power of bishops and of the pope: AC 28; Ap. 28; SA 2:4; Treatise.

IX.             Sanctification/good works: AC 6, AC 20; Ap. 4, Ap. 20; SA 3:13; FC 4.

X.                The church: AC 7, AC 8; Ap. 7-8; SA 3:12.

A.                Church regulations and ceremonies: AC 15, AC 24, AC 26; Ap. 15, Ap. 24; SA 2:2; 3:15; FC 10.

B.                 Invocation of the saints: AC 21; Ap. 21; SA 2:2.

C.                 Monasticism: AC 27; Ap. 27; SA 2:3; 3:14.

XI.             The sacraments: AC 13; Ap. 13.

A.                Baptism: AC 9; Ap. 9; SC 4; LC 4; SA 3:5.

B.                 The Lord’s Supper: AC 10; Ap. 10; SA 3:6; SC 6; LC 6; FC 7.

C.                 Two kinds in the sacrament: AC 22; Ap. 22.

D.                (Private) confession and absolution: AC 11, AC 25; Ap. 11; SA 3:7-9; SC 5; LC 5.

XII.          Government and secular life: AC 16; Ap. 16; FC 12.

XIII.       The return of Christ: AC 17; Ap. 17.

Why We Need the Longer Creeds

The reader of my last two posts is probably aware that I am dwelling on a particular theme: what value is there in the oft derided “institutional church”? So far we have seen that the church will invariably develop an institutional side to it. I have also argued that creeds and confessions are an integral part of the Christian church, for believers in Christ and their teachers alike. Those who believe in a “creedless Christianity” often end up with a formula that often reads like a creed. People may try to escape creeds and confessions, but cannot.

Perhaps, though, the problem isn’t with having creeds and confessions, but rather insisting on particular creeds. Why cannot we all just accept something like the Apostles’ Creed and be done with it? Why do we Lutherans insist on our pastors confessing all the confessions that make up the Book of Concord rather than a much shorter creed? After all, if creeds are meant to be brief summaries of the Christian faith, the Book of Concord does not have economy of words. And even if one acknowledges the right of Lutherans to confess something like the confessions in the Book of Concord, cannot we acknowledge various other confessions used by other churches—such as the Second Helvetic Confession or the Westminster Confession or the Thirty-Nine Articles or the New Hampshire Baptist Confession—as equally orthodox, thereby meriting their adherents a right to the pulpits and altars of Lutheran churches?

First of all, we should not be intimidated by the size of the Book of Concord. At first glance, it looks as if it must have hundreds of doctrines for people to believe in. But there are only 21 doctrinal topics (and 7 matters of practice) that are addressed in the Augsburg Confession. These same topics are repeated in the Apology. Much of what the Smalcald Articles has to say can be found in the Augsburg Confession, and the Formula of Concord (the most detailed of the confessions) addressed a dozen topics that had been handled at least in a cursory fashion in earlier confessions. Thus, the number of topics to be found in the Lutheran confessions is not that large. Furthermore, if you were to print only the doctrinal statements and not the arguments for them (whether exegesis of biblical passages or appeals to history and the church fathers or refutations of opponents’ arguments), you would end up with something the size of a smallish monograph. (Of course, even though Lutherans pledge themselves only to the doctrinal content of the Book of Concord, we find it helpful to read the exegesis and argumentation for particular points of doctrine. Serious Lutherans may disagree with the exegesis of a particular passage or two, but no one who thinks that all of the exegesis in the confessions is rot and nonsense is likely to be a serious Lutheran.)

Moreover, you would find that the answers given on one topic cohere with the answers given on another. It is difficult to believe in the pervasive power of original sin, for example, and still insist that a believer can merit their salvation by their own works. It is not surprising, then, to see that Lutherans believe both that original sin retains its power in believers’ lives and that we are justified solely by grace through faith, while Rome believes that original sin is abolished by baptism and that believers can through grace attain perfection—and indeed must do so before entering heaven. Not surprisingly, Rome sees purgatory as a necessary means to get the less than perfect into heaven, while Lutherans see it as a needless idea and one that obscures salvation through faith in Christ. The answers given by each confession on original sin, justification, and purgatory line up. Thus, it would be difficult to adopt a Roman view of purgatory and original sin, but a Lutheran view of justification (or vice versa).

That also explains why we Lutherans do not accept other confessions of faith (such as those I named in the second paragraph) as equally legitimate as our own. To be sure, there are many commonalities, insofar as they all acknowledge the Trinity and the deity of Christ. Some acknowledge a similar position on justification. But one finds a serious disagreement between the Lutheran Confessions on the one hand and those of the Reformed, Arminians, and Baptists on the other hand over several key topics: the nature and use of the sacraments; baptism; the Lord’s Supper; the perfection that can be attained in the Christian life; the scope of free will; eternal predestination and the use of the doctrine of election; and the relationship of the two natures in Christ, to name a few. It isn’t merely that we disagree on a few topics, but that each confessional stance has its own overall point of view that gives rise to the disagreements on individual topics, much as Lutherans and Roman Catholics have different presuppositions that lead to their divergent views on original sin, justification, and purgatory.

We rejoice to the extent that the various major confessions—Roman, Eastern, Lutheran, Reformed, Arminian, Baptist, and Pentecostal—confess the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and other core Christian doctrines. But there are still major differences in these confessions over important topics—topics that Lutherans see as part of essential Christian doctrine. For example, we Lutherans wouldn’t like to see anyone discourage Christians by teaching them that they can achieve perfection while still here on earth. But Arminians wouldn’t like to see anyone discourage Christians by teaching them that they cannot achieve perfection while still here on earth. Lutherans find perfectionism to be a most destructive and damnable teaching, while Arminians find it to be a most comforting and encouraging teaching. To hear both messages preached from the same pulpit would confuse the ordinary Christian in the pew, especially since both Lutherans and Arminians insist that this is an important teaching, one that cannot be ignored or swept under the rug.

Our confessions remind us then that we Christians still have unfinished business. We are not yet in agreement even on important and fundamental questions, but must still work to bring about unity in teaching. The Reformation raised several questions on crucial topics, but no one answer was given by all Christians. Thus, our different confessions remind us that we can neither ignore these matters nor find agreement on them as of yet. Our divergent confessions underscore the doctrinal divisions that underlie the ecclesiastical divisions. If we want to heal the latter, we will have to deal seriously with the former. That is why ignoring later confessions and opting for only the Apostles’ Creed won’t work today.

Creeds or Deeds?

As we saw in my last post, institutions (including in some sense the church) are simply formalized sets of relationships. All the phenomena we see happening in institutions, including the church, are to be found in any relationship between human beings. Thus, it is foolish to think that one can avoid problems by eschewing the “institutional church” and creating some freeform church instead. The problems of institutions are simply the problems of interpersonal relationships.

One of the alleged problems of the “institutional church” is that it has put up boundaries called confessions of faith, which determine who is in and who is out. Wouldn’t it be better to be not so exclusive but allow anybody to hold whatever creed they want to? And if we want to draw lines in the sand, wouldn’t it be better to demand a certain set of common behavior rather than a certain set of beliefs?

We ought to begin by acknowledging that all healthy human relationships establish boundaries. Sane people do not stay friends with someone who is continually trying to murder them or burn down their house—or even just trying to make their lives miserable. Of course, we may wish that such people would change their attitudes and be reconciled with us. We need not repay them with the same hatred that they show us, but we still place some distance between them and us in order to keep ourselves safe. Even in good, healthy relationships we try to respect some boundaries. I have great neighbors on either side of me, but there are still fences between their properties and mine. This allows their dogs to have freedom to run around without digging up my garden or yard. The boundaries actually make the experience better for everyone.

It should not be surprising, then, that the Christian church will have to draw certain boundaries. But what should be the basis of those boundaries? Should we ask people to confess a certain set of teachings or should we ask them to behave in a certain way? The second option has become increasingly popular, as people argue that followers of Jesus should imitate His behavior rather than get bogged down in doctrinal disputes. “Deeds, not creeds” has become their motto. But there is a hidden tyranny in drawing the boundaries based on actions. Since no Christian is perfect and each individual struggles with a different set of sins, there is a tendency to draw the lines in such a way that one’s own sinful tendencies are excused while those of others are emphasized. Of course, our Lord established perfection as the only acceptable criterion; we are to be perfectly holy as God is (Matthew 5:48). Drawing the line to favor one set of sins over against another distorts our Lord’s teachings. For this reason, the Christian church has wisely emphasized the habit of repentance rather than the achievement of a certain level of perfection. When it comes to conduct, it is unrepentance (or the concomitant refusal to recognize the difference between right and wrong) that puts one outside the Christian church rather than the committing of any particular sin.

But if repentance is what separates a true Christian from a false one, then a true Christian must possess the sort of knowledge that could lead to repentance. Moreover, those who would teach others what it means to be a Christian must know enough about the truths of God that would lead their flock to repentance. And since Christian repentance also includes faith in Christ as the Savior, Christians (including their pastors) must know who Christ is and what He has done that we might trust in Him. In short, both Christian lay people and their pastors must have some accurate knowledge about Christ’s teachings.

But there is so much to know! The Scriptures are not a small book and it is impossible to plumb their full depths. Moreover, there are often disagreements between Christians as to how the Scriptures are to be interpreted. Who is the hero of the story—the prodigal son or his father? What are we to make of the parable of the dishonest steward (Luke 16:1-9)? Is Galatians the first epistle of Paul to be written or is it 1 Thessalonians? How are we to understand Paul’s argument in Galatians when compared to the Council in Jerusalem recorded in Acts 15? Who are the “superapostles” who opposed Paul in Corinth and what did they teach? What were Luke’s sources that he consulted in writing the gospel? Christians have not come to an agreement on all these questions and many scholars have even changed their minds over the years on these questions. But Christians have understood that disagreement on these and similar questions do not impair fellowship.

That is because creeds and confessions sort out the major questions from the more trivial ones and emphasize the truths that must be held by all Christians and taught by all pastors. The Apostles’ Creed sums up the most important tenets of the Christian faith in a few words. The Nicene Creed adds a more detailed explanation of Christ’s divinity. These creeds, along with the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, have been the basis of instruction for the laity for centuries. The commandments give a sound ethical basis for Christians; the creed outlines the faith; and the Lord’s Prayer sets a pattern for all prayer. Of course, a lay person may well know more than these things and indeed ought to grow in knowledge, but these things are a minimum. Those who refuse to learn them or accept them cannot be numbered among our Lord’s disciples, for they do not keep His word (John 14:23-24).

Pastors, on the other hand, must be held to a higher standard, just as teachers in general are expected to know more than their students. Teachers, after all, have to know not only the subject being taught, but also the common confusions students are likely to have and the means to overcome them. They are not only to know the very basic items, but be able to explain the subject in depth to any perceptive student who asks the harder questions. Therefore, pastors have been asked to pledge to a deeper confession of the faith than lay people have. In the West it began with the Athanasian Creed, but more recently it has included confessions such as the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord. Those who familiarize themselves with them soon realize that they have as their intention how to teach people to know God rightly, to repent and trust in Christ for their salvation, and to grow in godly living. They answer important questions and help pastors to read the Scriptures with an understanding of what matters. But they do not answer every last ethical or exegetical question.

These confessions, then, serve as an appropriate boundary. Those who refuse to repent of their sins and to trust in Christ as the creeds proclaim separate themselves from Christ and His church. Those who refuse to preach Christ as proclaimed in our confessions cannot be permitted to preach in our pulpits or else there could be some real damage done to our souls. To be sure, a person can live and die as a good Christian without having heard of the Apostles’ Creed, just as a pastor may be a genuine Christian without having embraced the Augsburg Confession. But to make sure that future generations know the truth and can preach the truth, creeds and confessions are a real blessing.