When Any religious group publishes a statement of faith, that is something worth reading. When one of the major churches does so, in response to a difference of opinion between members, that is likely to be especially interesting. In earlier times such matters were often settled by church councils, and their reports became creeds —documents that had to be accepted if one wished to remain a member of that community. But, as one historian commented about a particular creed: “Agreement on a formula can often mask fundamental disagreement and the Creed of Nicea was no exception”.
Virgin birth and resurrection
April saw the publication of a Statement and Exposition by the Church of England called The Nature of Christian Belief It resulted from a debate in the General Synod of the church where questions were asked about the loyalty of all the bishops to accepted teaching, especially about the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
As British readers will know, these two subjects have been hotly debated since the ordination of a controversial new bishop at Durham, Dr. David Jenkins. The bishop’s views on the matter of the Lord’s resurrection contrast sharply with clear Bible teaching. But first there are important points to be noted from this recent statement of the church.
Affirming belief in the resurrection and the empty tomb, the bishops declare their faith in the Lord Jesus as the Second Person of the Trinity, as declared in the creeds. But they are then careful to distinguish between those creeds and the teaching of Scripture. It is accepted that the Christian faith is “uniquely revealed in the holy Scriptures”, and that it must be found “explicitly or implicitly in Scripture” if it is to be regarded as true.
Scripture or creed?
But we notice two important admissions in a document that deliberately seeks to leave some reason for difference of opinion between churchmen. First, the creeds are alleged to be the result of the Holy Spirit continuing to guide the church in the period after the Bible had been completed. Second, in answer to the question “Does the Bible teach the doctrine of the Trinity?”, the following extracts are worth considering: “It should be noted, however, that the relation to Scripture of what the Church has said in the creeds is more than one of purely passive record. In the early centuries all the conflicting doctrines of God, Christ and the Holy Spirit were claimed to be justified by Scripture and to be the correct exposition of it, including those which were judged utterly heretical and inauthentic. In the creeds that we now acknowledge the Church was led to conclusions on the true implications of Scripture which are not self-evidently the only possible ones”. Then, in reviewing what the New Testament says about the nature of the child who was born to Mary, the report says of the Gospel accounts: “It should be noted, however, that none of these affirmations implies a doctrine of Incarnation as the Church was later guided by the Spirit, on the basis of scriptural testimony, to understand and define this”.
In other words, the report acknowledges what many other theologians have recently admitted, that the Bible does not justify the doctrine of the Trinity. It requires some other evidence to support it. The argument advanced is that the church was led to a fuller understanding ( in the fourth and fifth centuries after Christ) by the influence of the Holy Spirit on the decisions of church councils such as those at Nicea and Chalcedon.
Holy Spirit guidance
There are thus several important matters to consider from the Scriptures of Truth. The first relates to the suggestion that the Holy Spirit continues to guide believers in every age into a fuller understanding of God and His purpose. It is now commonplace for people in many different churches to claim such Divine guidance, although their understanding of important issues is quite different.
Bible teaching on this is clear. The Holy Spirit is the power of God. By that power God revealed His truth in the Bible: “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21). Both the Old and New Testaments insist that the only way of establishing what is true is to compare belief with Bible teaching. The prophet Isaiah said: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not acording to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (8:20). The Apostle Paul assured Timothy that “from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15). The Lord urged his contemporaries to “Search the scriptures” (Jno. 5:39), and declared that God’s “word is truth” (17:17). It follows that Bible teaching is true teaching, and that arguments based on extra-Biblical authority are not soundly based.
Immortal soul unScriptural
An earlier Church of England report, this time concerned with evangelism, contained the following surprising admission: “The idea of the inherent indestructibility of the human soul (or consciousness) owes its origin to Greek, not to Bible, sources. The central theme of the New Testament is eternal life, not for anybody and everybody, but for believers in Christ as risen from the dead” (Towards the Conversion of England, 1945, para. 53).
It has often been recognised, by writers from many religious groups, that the doctrine of the immortal soul is not found in the Bible, which teaches that God only has immortality (1 Tim. 6:16). But this recognition by the Anglican Church has important consequences for the present issue. If the Holy Spirit was leading the church, how could they have gone astray to follow pagan, not Christian, teaching?
The sad fact is that, once Bible truth is abandoned in favour of creeds or other formulae, reliance is being placed upon the thinking of men, not the revelation of God. That has happened with the doctrine of the Trinity. Even Trinitarian writers now admit that the doctrine formed no part of the original message of the New Testament, and that there is no formal statement of the doctrine to be found in the Bible.
Christadelphians have long held the view that the original gospel taught by the Lord and his disciples has been seriously altered by the addition of non-Christian teaching. The doctrines of an immortal soul and a supposed Trinity are two such errors. For the Bible teaches that death is an unconscious state that continues until the bodily resurrection of those whom God will raise from the dead. And God is not revealed as a Trinity, but as a Unity.
One true God
As the Jews insist to this day, the God of the Old Testament is one God (Deut. 6:4). The prophet declares: “I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside Me” (Isa. 45:5). And the New Testament says equally emphatically that there is only one true God (Jno. 17:3), Who is the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:3). Jesus is Son of God, not God the Son. He was born of the virgin Mary, by the power of God, when the Holy Spirit caused her to conceive in her womb and bring forth a son (Lk. 1:31). Jesus thus came into existence as one who was wholly identified with humanity, because he was born of a woman; he was also uniquely related to God, being His “only begotten Son” (Jno. 3:16).
All this matters very much to our understanding of such vital matters as the nature of God the Creator, the person and work of His Son, the meaning of his saving death, and our appreciation of the victory he achieved over sin and death. The recent report on The Nature of Christian Belief recognises rightly that teaching about the relationship of God and the Lord Jesus is at the heart of the Christian revelation. To get that wrong is to endanger all that is then believed.
The bishops’ contradiction
Writing about the statement under review in The Times newspaper, Keith Ward, who is Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at King’s College, London, claimed that the bishops had issued a 39-page logical contradiction. His argument was that it is contradictory to declare firmly that the church upholds the Bible teaching of the Virgin Birth and Empty Tomb while at the same time allowing room for some of the bishops to hold “divergent views”. If the church held certain views to be true, he argued, there was no room for private variations.
Our concern runs much wider than the logical inconsistencies within the report. It extends to the whole basis of belief as taught in many churches, not just in England. Compared with Bible teaching, their views are seen to be in error on fundamental matters. Our own continuing appeal is to the Bible as the only authoritative source of true teaching about the things of God. We do not seek to destroy the faith of others, but rather to establish a saving faith in all who will be saved.
The Sabbath and Israel and Jesus’ work on the Sabbath