12/03/2011

Confessional Identity

Holding to a confessional identity has two parts: first, the conclusions of a tradition codified in a confessional document, and second, the dispositions, values, and commitments that produced the document. The first of these is fixed, formally, in a concrete document. When the document is first created, it is worded to accommodate the members of the confessional community who are thought to be insiders. The insiders approve the language in the context of all the complex of intramural disagreements that were in play at the time of drafting the document. But almost instantly, the document has two parts as well - the letter of the law, and the way the law is received, applied, and used. For some time, the use of the law can bend and stress the language of the law, but eventually something has to give. The tradition that produced the law is made up of real people. Traditions set trajectories. The trajectory continues and eventually outgrows the snapshot documents that best captured its values and beliefs at one time. When the document can no longer accommodate intramural debates and the community can no longer easily tell who the insiders are, there is a backlash. One side of the backlash then emphasizes the first part of confessional identity - the objective document. Let's call them the objectivists. The other side of the backlash emphasizes the second part of confessional identity - the ethos that produced the document. Let's call them the existentialists.

Who is right? Well, remember that confessional identity consists of both parts - the confession and the ethos that produced the confession. If we agree with the objectivists, then we discount the ability of a tradition to continue to move and shape a community toward a better realization of the implications of its ethos. In addition, confessional fidelity becomes archaeology, and not just archaeology but a kind of time travel - trying to inhabit the thought world that produced a text without being privy to the worldview that shaped the text's construction. When it comes to the Bible, the Holy Spirit bridges that chasm. When it comes to human confessional documents, however, we have no such guarantee. If we agree with the existentialists, we risk being unmoored from our tradition. We risk losing the ability for historical expressions to have authority for us and shape us.

But on the whole, the existentialists are right. Here's why. The word of God is a living and active sword and is empowered by the Holy Spirit to cut us up and re-make us like one of those radish flowers. God's word changes us inherently because of God's power. But confessional documents are attempts at building mirrors of swords. We write confessions to record our best attempt at understanding the scriptures at any given time, but our confessions are snapshots of a community's Holy Spirit powered formation. A confession shines bright for a while because it has the glow left over from the Holy Spirit's work, through the scriptures, on the believing community. But the confession itself has no light source. It is a mirror that fades and gets dingier as time goes by. The scriptures continue to work on the community and people make right and wrong inferences. Sometimes the confessions help to nudge us back to a proper understanding. Parts of the mirror are shinier than others - the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, etc. Those parts are shiny. Other parts grow dingy, however, and it becomes a disco ball, casting uneven light spots in the church. Some people love looking at the disco ball, but it can be a distraction from the larger dance that the Holy Spirit is doing with the church. I know that liberals talk this way too, and so it is hard to hear a conservative warn about traditionalism without suspecting them of giving away the farm. But holding on to a confession for too long before drafting another one is a real easy recipe for the disintegration of a community. It is saying that we once trusted the Spirit-formed community to build a mirror, but that now we are incapable of doing it. An ethos builds a confession, and a confession enforces and produces a certain ethos for a while, but it does this with borrowed power. Eventually, it must have power only by pointing the community towards its real source of power - towards the thing that is changing it. And this might mean that the confession is eventually rendered inadequate - a hindrance to promoting an ethos rather than a preserver of the ethos. Objectivism - confessionalism - then becomes existentialism with a confessional cat's paw.

Of course, there is the possibility that a confessional community can foster the growth of competing world views. Seedlings for these eventual splits might look quite compatible when they are small. But eventually, one side will see the other as an invasive species and a battle erupts to try and identify which plant belongs in the native soil.

My own confessional tradition has some very clearly self-defined objectivists. I agree with them on a lot of things, but I really think our tradition is wrong in a couple of very specific places. I think our confessional snapshots from 1646 are simply wrong about whether children should be welcome at the Lord's Supper. But I think this based upon a lot of other parts of those same confessional documents. I believe that my position on this matter is thus a peculiarly reformed position. The overall ethos that produced the original confession is also producing my desire to see covenant children at the covenant meal.

Objectivists usually sound like they are most committed to a confessional tradition because they seem the most committed to the first part of that tradition, the actual documents drafted by the tradition. But existentialists are committed to following the ethos of the confessional tradition that created those snapshot documents in the first place. You can't have a tradition without an ethos, but you can have a tradition without a snapshot of that ethos. Confessions are useful, intensely so, in helping to catch up a community with itself; to reexamine who the insiders are, to consider whether two rival traditions have emerged, etc. Its usefulness has an expiration date, however, and it needs to pass the baton to a revision of the confession fairly regularly or it risks losing a resemblance to the community it is supposed to be supporting. Far from arguing against the writing of confessions, I think a good existentialist should be for the writing of them early and often. Otherwise, we let things get out of hand.

And that is the way things are in my tradition - the Reformed tradition - and in my denomination - the Presbyterian Church in America - right now. Things are out of hand. Teachers at our own denominational seminary could not be approved for ordination in some of our presbyteries. This is insanity, and someone needs to push back against the objectivists. Someone needs to pull the fire alarm. The wound is now wider than the good-faith subscription band-aid can handle.