Focal Identity Statement Task Group

<typohead type="2">Report

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<typohead type="3">1. Membership </typohead>

1.1 Members: Richard Dawson (Convenor), Alan Kerr, Bruce Hamill

Corresponding Members: Graham Redding, Liz Sharman, Ivor Davidson, Ed Schroeder, Susan Werstein, Helen Martin, Brian Williscroft.

<typohead type="3">2. Introduction </typohead>

2.1 The work of the Focal Identity Statement Task Group is the result of the passing of the following motion at the 2002 General Assembly:

2.2 [02.084] That the Council of Assembly appoint a Task Group to develop a focal identity statement such as that suggested in Appendix 3 for use in worship as a confession of faith, including by those joining the church and those taking up leadership roles; the Task Group to include those who have a feeling for the use of language appropriate in worship; and that the results of their deliberations be reported through the Doctrine Reference Group to the next Assembly for adoption.

2.3 Many versions of the confession were constructed and shared with a wide variety of people throughout the Presbyterian Church and further afield. Our initial draft was much longer but we shortened it to correspond more closely with the spirit of the motion.

2.4 We were also aware that this document might become the basis for something that would eventually replace the Westminster Confession and so we added an appendix to deal with issues we felt were at the heart of the Presbyterian Church's life and belief with clear understanding that these should to be taken to Assembly together.

2.5 It was the hope of this group that whatever we came to would be widely disseminated throughout the Church in a manner that would provoke healthy discussion of and interaction with the draft statement. In this way something that had wide exposure and approval might come to the next Assembly. For whatever reason this has not been the case.

2.6 The document was submitted not to the Doctrine Reference Group but directly to Council who approved its passage to the next General Assembly.

2.7 The confession part of the document has been published in the proposed new Book of Order without the Appendix. We believe this to be a mistake and will be asking Assembly to consider the full document which is printed here.

<typohead type="3">3. We believe, We belong </typohead>

3.1 We believe in and belong to God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

3.2 We believe in Jesus Christ, God from God, flesh of our flesh. He died of our violence and was raised to life that we might be restored to God and one another.

3.3 We believe in God the Father of Jesus Christ, sender of the Holy Spirit; Creator of all, Love above all loves and Judge of all the earth.

3.4 We believe in the Holy Spirit of the Father and the Son; Inspirer of the scriptures, Author of the Church, Transformer of hearts and minds.

3.5 We belong to this threefold God and so we confess our faith in Jesus Christ and share His love with the world until the final gathering of the people of God and the renewal of all things.

<typohead type="3">4. Appendix to the Focal Identity Statement </typohead>

4.1 At the request of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church 2003 a small committee was asked to produce a statement for the Presbyterian Church which would be 'trinitarian, reflect the emphases of the Reformed tradition, be as comprehensive yet as succinct as possible, and be able to be used for confessing faith in worship´ . "We believe, we belong" is their response.

4.2 Like the trinitarian faith it confesses, this statement centres on Jesus Christ and the salvation we find in him. It is not a 'doctrinal statement' in the broad sense of dealing with all the theological issues on which we may or may not find consensus. It is first of all a vehicle for an act of confession. Of course confessing our faith involves doctrine, however this confession is modelled on the great ecumenical creeds rather than the broad scope of the reformation confessions. It has a narrower focus on the core of our faith and identity in relation to God. We know God as triune in and through the salvation we find in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

4.3 The narrow focus means that our confession is highly condensed and therefore will need to be read in the light of these notes in order to clarify the fuller meaning and implications.

4.4 A word should also be said about the nature of acts of confession. Confession is a congregational act of those gathered by the Spirit (we the ecclesia) in anticipation of the eschatological gathering of the whole people of God. As the title suggests it is a three-fold act. (1) It identifies the God we have faith in (by name and narrative), (2) it is an act of commitment to that God ('we belong') and (3) it identifies we who find our ultimate identity in this God (in a public declaration). Thus the act of confession in its three-fold aspects serves both worship and mission.

4.5 In these speech-acts we necessarily make cognitive claims. These are essential to the act of identifying the God to whom we belong and thus the people we are and are becoming. The essential cognitive claims of Trinitarian confession are reflected in the structure of the statement. Clause 1 introduces the God we confess as a unity of three persons. Clauses 2-4 confess in turn the three persons who together in their inter-related being draw forth our confession. Clause 5 refers to our response in worship and mission.

4.6 The second clause acknowledges the starting-point of Trinitarian faith with Jesus. He is the centre of our relationship with God. The classical concerns to spell out the full participation of Jesus in both human and divine life (homoousion) are not only spelled out in the first line they are presupposed in what he achieves in his life, death and resurrection.

4.7 As the risen crucified one he is both the one who rescues us (salvation) from our anti-God ways (sin) as well as the one who shows us the truth about God (revelation). This clause focuses on his death and resurrection since the death, as the culmination of his self-giving life, is the revelation of human sin and God´s difference. Our anti-God ways are seen to also be anti-human ways at the great turning point of history when the Christ, who is truly divine and truly human, dies 'of our violence'. However his life is seen for what it is in the light of his resurrection, which reveals both his identity (God-with-us) as well as the divine forgiveness he brings which transforms us and gives us hope. Reformed confession begins at and arises out of our place of need and God's act of grace.

4.8 Since the understanding of God as triune emerged from an understanding of Jesus as God incarnate, it is appropriate to name the persons of God in the following two clauses with their familiar names and in their relationship to Jesus (his Father, his Spirit)

4.9 Clause three confesses that salvation is surrounded at every point by the one whom Jesus called Abba. His Father is the one who called him to his servant ministry of self-giving and who gave him back to us in his eternal embodiment. His Father as 'sender' both of the Son and the Holy Spirit and origin of our salvation is the one before whom our lives (along with the rest of creation) gain their meaning and are judged. The very identification of salvation as both God's initiative (sending the Son) and God's ultimate responsibility provides the ground and grammar for talk about grace. We do not confess a salvation which in any way flows naturally from either our function or form as a church or our nature and behaviour as individuals who claim belonging in that church. Our hope rests solely in God's activity for salvation is from God alone.

4.10 In confessing the triune God as our creator we locate ourselves, within the created world carrying a particular responsibility for both the personal and impersonal aspects of our life. This is our privilege and responsibility given the uniqueness of our place in creation 'in the image of God'. As such we are relational beings and this divinely purposed relationality is sustained and expressed in the biological bipolarity of male and female. Thus the institution of marriage bears witness to God's creative purposes for a relational human community through time.

4.11 We also highlight two primary metaphors of grace, which are (i) love and (ii) judge. That these stand at either end of what might be understand as a spectrum of human attitude in no way should be allowed to interfere with the biblical understanding of grace which includes both judgment (of sin) and love (for the sinner).

4.12 Clause four begins by relating the Spirit to the Father and the Son. In an age when neo-paganism in various forms is widespread, we confess not any 'spirit', but that other 'hand´ of the Father who makes the saving work of Jesus present and effective in our life.

4.13 We then affirm the Spirit´s role in inspiring the scriptures. The scriptures are necessary for our knowledge of God's self-revelation and are the principal locus of the Spirit´s work in the church. This is so because the Holy Spirit connects us to the world-changing events of the life death and resurrection of Jesus by means of the apostolic witness. This apostolic witness reaches us through the New Testament and includes within it the Old Testament. These writings are thus the primary text of God self-revelation.

4.14 In all of this the work of the Holy Spirit is the liberation of the people of God from within (metanoia, 'transformation of hearts and minds'). This is because the Spirit is the one who (in the absence of the physicality of those first resurrection experiences which compelled the apostolic witness), continues to confront and comfort us with the grace of the risen-crucified one. In thus reforming our hearts and minds the Spirit in each person continues to join us to the unbounded people of God centred on the risen and forgiving victim. The transformation of heart and mind also means a transformed social order in the community we call church which is called to demonstrate its difference from the social order which is not oriented by the life, death and resurrection of Christ. This transformed order is exterior sign of the internal and unseen character of Christ. It is marked by the gifts and the fruit of the Spirit. It is a non-violent life in which the social barriers which characterise our distorted world are broken down and all people are embraced in the love of Christ – especially the poor and dishonoured of the world. It is the stuttering foretaste of God's final reign for which we wait.

4.15 In summary, the clause on the Holy Spirit presupposes the activity of the Holy Spirit in relation to the 3-fold Word of God (in the Son, in the witness of scripture, and in the proclamation and witness of the people of God). It is in the context of this confession of the Holy Spirit that we rightly affirm the authority of scripture in our reformed tradition with its strong affirmation of the active and communicational nature of God. It is also in this context that we rightly affirm the theological nature of church as a new form of social existence.

4.16 The final clause puts our confessional believing in its broader context of belonging. Believing is an intellectual aspect of belonging. It is also a response to our belonging and to God´s prior act which includes us as recipients of grace.

4.17 The work of the Spirit that creates community (church) around Jesus Christ also impels us, as a missionary church, to bear witness, in both word and deed, to the gospel and to care for the integrity of God's good creation and this we include in the second part of clause 5 as our call to 'share His love with the world'. The uniqueness of humanity in God's purposes does not undermine the significance of the non-human creation (denoted by the universal 'the world'), since the hope of the biblical witness and the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ (as a foretaste of the final resurrection) both assure us of the goodness of creation, God´s promise to restore it, and our responsibility to care for it.

Richard Dawson
Convenor

Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand

Focal Identity Statement Task Group