Presbyterians: A New Direction, a New Birth

Christian renewal, the United Presbyterians believe, includes "the right and duty of a living church to restate its faith from time to time." Last week, in Columbus, Ohio, commissioners (delegates) to the church's 177th General Assembly voted 643 to 110 to accept in principle their first new creed since the Westminster Confession of 1647.

The "Confession of 1967" — so called because it must be approved by the next two general assemblies and by two-thirds of the nation's 193 presbyteries before acceptance — runs to 4,200 words. The creed, along with seven historic Christian statements of faith,* will constitute a Book of Confessions that together define what Presbyterians believe.

"The church confesses its faith when it bears a present witness to God's grace in Jesus Christ," says the preface to the new creed. Present witness demands strong affirmation that, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, and that God is in the church to complete this work of reconciliation. The confession does not attempt to redefine such traditional doctrines as the Trinity, but it does give a contemporary statement of what the church believes about Jesus of Nazareth (in him, "true humanity was realized once for all"), Christ as savior and judge of all men, and God's sovereign love for all men.

The church is defined as the community of those entrusted with God's reconciling message, and the creed calls upon Christians to work toward the elimination of all racial or ethnic discrimination, world conflict and poverty in the midst of abundance. The church is to prepare for its mission through use of Christ's gifts: preaching and teaching, praise and prayer, baptism and the Lord's Supper—the permanent "equipment" of Christianity that can be changed and modified according to need.

A "Normative" Bible. Church Historian Edward Dowey, Chairman of the 15-man committee that composed the creed, cheered the assembly's approval as "a new direction, a new birth."

Church conservatives, on the other hand, protested that the 1967 Confession is a betrayal rather than a necessary updating of traditional Presbyterian belief. Among their specific charges: the new Confession's teaching on Christ makes no mention of either the virgin birth or the traditional doctrine of the Incarnation; the Bible is described as the "normative witness" of revelation rather than the inspired word of God, and its words are said to be "words of men," and thus historically conditioned.

In defense of such changes, Dowey explained that the Westminster Confession by itself was neither "ancient enough nor modern enough," to serve as the church's sole confession of faith, and that what the committee did was to add to the totality of what the church believes. Scriptural criticism has made it clear that the Bible is not inerrant in all factual details. Dowey argued that to call the Bible "the normative witness," rather than infallible, is to assert its power as "the norm or authority over all other witness," but he, also conceded, after hearing strong conservative criticism, that some better word might have to be found.