Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - July/90

Contributor - Dr. I. John Hesselink

Title - The Future of Reformed Theology In Canada - Part One

Topic - Reformed Church In Canada

An address as given by Dr. Hesselink at the Leadership Conference

I count it a special privilege and honour to be able to share with you in this significant conference, for this may well be one of the formative events in the coming of age of the Canadian Reformed Churches.

I have enjoyed contacts with our Canadian Churches because of the impression that overall they take theology more seriously than their sister churches south of the border. That may be due first of all to your Dutch theological heritage, in which I have a special interest, but also due to my image of Canadians as being more reflective, thoughtful, and sober than their American counterparts. I gather, however, from a column in the New York Times about the prominent Canadian journalist, Peter C. Newman, that Canadians think of themselves as "uninteresting"; but such modesty may be salutary from a theological standpoint, given the tendency toward faddishness in theology. I may be naively optimistic in this regard - and the situation may be changing as a new generation of leadership takes over - but my hope and prayer is that you will continue - or if it isn't there already - to develop a distinctive Canadian Reformed theology to go along with your distinctive piety and ethos which will enlarge and enhance the Reformed vision which dominates the American scene.

However, before proceeding further I must register a disclaimer. Not being a Canadian, I cannot speak with special insight or authority to your situation. Relevant theology is always contextual theology, and hence whatever direction you take must be worked out by yourselves in your own specific context - and that may vary significantly between, for example, British Columbia and Ontario, just as in the United States we live in a very different ethos in western Michigan as over against New Jersey or southern California.

Nevertheless, as a Reformed theologian it may still be helpful to remind you of some historic guidelines which may have relevance for your respective situations.

THE TRADITION, THE REFORMED TRADITION, AND OUR SPECIFIC TRADITIONS

A distinction is sometimes made between tradition with a capital 'T' and tradition with a small 't'. The former refers to the apostolic, catholic tradition of which all churches - Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox - are a part, if they hold to the basic tenets of the faith. Tradition with a small 't' refers to the various traditions within the one church of Jesus Christ such as the Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed, Wesleyan, and Holiness traditions. Within those traditional groupings, however, there are specific denominations. So within the larger Reformed tradition there are Dutch, Swiss, and Hungarian Reformed Churches, and in North America various Presbyterian and Reformed denominations. Here we have then a third category, traditions with a minister.' One could make even a further distinction, for within any given denomination there are inevitably a variety of sub-cultures and understanding of the tradition. In the RCA, for example, I once suggested there were approximately ten such discernible groupings. So one can distinguish between four types of tradition: (1) the catholic tradition (2) theological traditions (3) denominations (4) sub-grouping within each denomination.

Thus you, Canadian Reformed Churches, represent one of those groupings in the fourth category.

I shall deal briefly with the first three categories and will combine the second and the third, leaving it up to you to develop your own agenda in regard to the Canadian version of the Reformed faith.

A. The Tradition

The tradition, i.e. historic Christianity, is in danger of being undermined, quietly but thoroughly, from within. This should be a matter of great concern to us, first of all because the future of the church is at stake, and second because there is a ripple effect in any such trend. That is, eventually such doctrinal deviations come to be entertained, and in some cases accepted, by our leaders and ministers. They may seem remote to you in Canada or in the Reformed Church in Canada at this time, but I submit you will eventually be affected by them, if you have not already. Three illustrations:

1. A Low Christology

It must be acknowledged that we who have prided ourselves on our orthodoxy have been guilty of an imbalance in our portrayal of Jesus Christ. We have emphasized so strongly the deity of Christ that we have not taken his humanity seriously. We have affirmed the classical Chalcedonian formula that Jesus Christ is vere deus, vere homo (true God and true man), but have not taken the latter seriously. Now the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. The approach in most Christologies being written today is from below, i.e. they begin with the so-called historical Jesus, the human Jesus of Nazareth, and then affirm some kind of divinity for him. In most of these cases the pre-existence of Jesus as the eternal son of God is denied along with the virgin birth (except in a symbolic sense).

This is true of several leading theologians of our time, none of whom would want to be considered a liberal: the Dutch Reformed theologian, Hendrikus Berkhof; the popular - except in Rome - Roman Catholic German theologian, Hans Kung; a leading German Lutheran theologian, Wolfhart Pannenberg; and one of the leading liberation theologians from Latin America, Jon Sobrino. This is only sampling which represents more moderate approaches as over against the frontal attack by a group of English Anglican theologians in the 1970's entitled The Myth of God Incarnate, edited by John Hick. The results vary among the above authors; in most cases the full deity of Christ is never affirmed, whereas in the case of Pannenberg, Jesus is retroactively "constituted" the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, by virtue of Jesus' resurrection (see Romans 1:4). Thus he ends with a high Christology, albeit by means of a unique approach.

Such studies are challenging and useful in helping us to appreciate the genuine humanity of Jesus, but any Christology which stops short of asserting Jesus' divine origin and destiny leaves us with a figure who cannot be the saviour of the world.

2. A Truncated Trinity

Prompted by Christian feminists, and not all of them radical by any means, it has now become fashionable to drop the word "father" when referring to God. This is done in the name of inclusive language since, it is maintained, this suggests that God is male.

To redress this alleged sexual imbalance, various alternatives are employed: to address God as "our father and mother," or as "our parent," and especially to substitute the word "creator" for father. So the standard salutation is changed to, "Grace to you and peace from God our creator and the Lord Jesus Christ." (The words "Lord" and "king" are also anathema in certain circles since these terms again suggest a masculine figure and allegedly hark back to a patriarchal outlook.)

At the seminary, where this type of thing is not uncommon, I have pointed out in class from time to time that to substitute the word "creator" for "father" emasculates the personal nature of God. This is tantamount to calling God "the ground of being," as Paul Tillich does. However, when Jesus addressed God as "Abba, Father" (Mk. 14:36), the familiar Aramaic for a child addressing a parent, this is not an arbitrary usage of incidental significance. This says something not only very important about Jesus' unique relation to God but also about the rare privilege we have through Jesus to address God in the same familiar, homely fashion. For ne taught us, when we pray, to say, "Our Father who art in heaven."

The Apostle Paul elaborates on the significance of this terminology in Romans 8:15-16 where he writes, "When we cry, 'Abba, Father!' it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God."

What is at stake here is not only the personal nature of God, Jesus' peculiar filial relationship to him, and by extension our enjoying the status of adopted children of God, but the Trinity itself. The first person, as far as I know, to point out the consequences of this shift from "father" to "creator" (or other substitutes) when we address God, is Donald Bloesch, the well-known evangelical theological from Dubuque Theological Seminary. In a book entitled The Battle for the Trinity, The Debate Over Inclusive God Language, Bloesch writes:

In an age when the first person of the Trinity is neuterized, the second person is spiritualized, and the third person is sentimentalized (Michael Novak), the church is challenged to retrieve the biblical and historical meaning of the triune God, the living God of the Bible.

It is extremely interesting that Wolfhart Pannenberg, the distinguished German theologian, is equally concerned about this matter. In his recent Osterhaven lectures at Western Seminary, he was very emphatic about the danger of substituting any other term for "father" in reference to God. In a recent book, Christianity in a Secularized World, he makes the same point:

The biblical notion of God as Father does not assign him any sexually determined role, but has its point of comparison in the father's function of providing care and the associated authority which fell to the father as head of the family group. Jesus' use of the term "Father" in addressing God in prayer does not indicate an interchangeable conception of God. It is Jesus' name for God and thus is part of the historical identity of Christianity. It is no more interchangeable than the historical person of the Jew Jesus himself. The idea that the image of God in the tradition has been shaped by human social conditions and therefore that changes in social conditions - as here the changed position of women - must necessarily result in changes in the image of God seems naively to presuppose that changes in religious conceptions are a function of social changes. This seemingly innocent linguistic change thus turns out to be another example of "excessive assimilation" (Pannenberg) to the current Zeitgeist (spirit of the age).

Look for the conclusion of Dr. Hesselink's ddress in the September issue of Pioneer Christian Monthly.

Please click the "Back" button of your browser to return to previous page.