John "Rabbi" Duncan was a 19th-century Scottish pastor and theologian well-known for his aphorisms, many of which remain popular today. A few days ago, Guy Davies, a pastor in the south of England, posted this one on his blog:

I'm first a Christian, next a catholic, then a Calvinist, fourth a paedobaptist, and fifth a Presbyterian. I cannot reverse this order.

While Guy would substitute "Baptist" and "Independent" in the last two slots, his intention in posting the quote was to reflect the importance of recognizing ourselves as belonging to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. Duncan considers the catholicity of the Church second only in importance to being a Christian, assigning that identification a much more prominent place than many evangelicals today do.

What interested me most about this was the ordering in which Duncan labeled himself. It is always tricky to affix labels to yourself, and I do not usually go beyond calling myself a Christian first, and then Reformed (although I do label myself more specifically as a Niceno-Constantinopolitan Neocalvinist on my Facebook profile). What Duncan is implying is that there is right way to order the labels you use to identify yourself.

In some ways, this reflects something Richard Pratt used to teach here at Reformed Theological Seminary. To help people think through the ordering of their beliefs he used a three-dimensional model of a cone, which he called the Cone of Certainty (click image at left to enlarge). If you looked at the cone from the top, the narrow point in the center would be where the central tenants of Christianity are located, those beliefs which are non-negotiable and clearly revealed in Scripture. The second layer contains what Pratt calls middle beliefs, those which we find to be important and which often serve as the distinguishing marks between our different denominations or camps. The peripheral beliefs represent those which, for the most part, do not affect our orthodoxy and which believers in the same camps can hold differing views on.

Looking at the side profile of the cone teaches us something else. The top is a very narrow point indicating that there is essentially no room for negotiation. Failure to confess these beliefs results in heterodoxy. These beliefs require a great deal of harmony. The middle part of the cone is wider indicating that there is some room for different interpretation such that orthodoxy is not necessarily compromised, although believers may wish to affiliate themselves on this level with like-minded groups. Finally, the widest part of the cone is at the base and at the beliefs we hold at this level do not require complete harmony. These may be the so-called "gray" areas.

Obviously, given the shape of the cone, it cannot stand on its point. It will fall over. When we take peripheral beliefs and elevate them to the status of central, non-negotiable beliefs, we create instability. Additionally, this serves to foster disunity in the Church. And of course, those who diminish central beliefs and make them peripheral cease to be the Church altogether.

I think Duncan gets this. He recognizes that our bonds as brothers and sisters in the Lord come from sharing those beliefs at the top of the cone (if he were to use the diagram). If we make the bond of Christian fellowship contingent upon the affirmation of beliefs that occupy a place much farther down the list, we fail to uphold the unity to which Jesus called us. Duncan recognized that the catholicity of the Church, while requiring belief in such essentials as stated in the Nicene Creed, was above more specific theological distinctions like Calvinism. Further, while he found it important to identify himself as a paedobaptist, he recognized that there were Calvinists who were not but were nonetheless brothers and sisters in Christ. Similarly, there were Calvinist paedobaptists who were not Presbyterians with whom he could unite in fellowship.

So there is a progression of widening distinction in Duncan's labeling that reflects Pratt's cone diagram. Each label, while important to Duncan, is of less importance as it pertains to the unity of the Church. His first two labels could be equated with the top of Pratt's cone, the next two (or maybe three) the middle beliefs. He emphasizes this point by stating that his order cannot be reversed.

As it is right now, I would label myself very similar to Duncan. The only thing I would change is substituting "Reformed" for Calvinist, since I know Calvin didn't want his followers being known as Calvinists. And while I'm a Presbyterian at this point, if I found myself in a place where there were no Presbyterian churches I could be comfortable in churches which use different structures so long as they are still theologically Reformed.

How would you label yourself?

Those of you who frequent this blog know that I unashamedly and unapologetically believe and confess the truths about the person of Jesus Christ as found in the Nicene Creed:

[I believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

This Christological confession has been the bedrock of orthodox Christianity since the time of the apostles, and it too is the ultimate foundation of my faith. This is the Jesus that all of Scripture bears witness to, and the Jesus that we come to know through the Gospel accounts. However, in the last several hundred years, this Jesus has come into question in the scholarship of such figures as Reimarus, Schweitzer, and now the scholars of the Jesus Seminar. Was Jesus a real, historical figure? How much of what He is quoted as saying in the Gospels can we take to be His true words? Are the Gospels not just fictional accounts birthed out of the messianic expectations of the Jews of that time? How do we break away from the Jesus of scholarly fabrication and traditional Christianity and find out who (or if) He really was?

These are some of the questions that have been posed in the ongoing "Quest for the Historical Jesus." I will not get into the entire discussion that has arisen from the quest; if you want a very brief overview of it, check out the Wikipedia article I have linked to here. If you want a more comprehensive overview, check out Jon Swales’ article on the subject, and if you want an even further in-depth appraisal and critique of it I encourage you to read Robert Strimple’s book, The Modern Search for the Real Jesus. I can see the merits of the quest to some degree, such as the heightened awareness it has produced in regard to historical and cultural background study to the text of the New Testament, as well as seeing the text itself as an object of study. These have proven themselves to be valuable in the study of the New Testament. However, when taken too far or done in the wrong context they pose a problem.

A number of things trouble me about this quest aside from the most notable problem--its sometimes subtle, sometimes explicit rejection of the Jesus of Scripture. First, because it is rooted in the Enlightenment it discredits knowledge based on faith. One of the foundational premises of Enlightenment thought was that to properly know something we had think and discover for ourselves in the realm of autonomous rationality what the objective reality of something was. In this case that meant breaking Jesus out of the traditional molds cast by faith and by the Church in order to discover who He really was. There was Jesus as he appeared in the constructs of traditional Christianity, but we needed to get behind those subjective appearances because they offered a distorted portrayal of Jesus. The use of reason or rationalism was the only method of discovery. Any source of revelation (particularly the Bible) had little, if any, weight authoritatively.

Secondly, in the quest to discover who Jesus really was, to free Him from the constructs and encasement of the traditional, orthodox understanding, the scholarship of this movement ends up also casting Him in a mold, and we see Jesus emerging often as a sort of liberal, bourgeois figure. Granted, orthodox Christianity has cast Jesus in molds too--think of the Renaissance era “Swedish” Jesus--the soft, gentle, blue-eyed, blond man holding a little lamb and smiling, for example. I spoke about the tendency to make Jesus into something we want Him to be in an earlier post. But this, I am confident, is a tendency we can break free of. Through the eyes of faith and by the illumination of the Spirit, we can see Jesus as He really is. I think it is a fallacy to suppose that our cultural context always influences how we understand the revelation of Jesus in the Scriptures. It is an important thing to recognize, I agree, but I am confident that the Spirit gives us the ability to see things holistically.

My intention is not to offer a polemical treatise against the quest, but just to point out a few things. There certainly are many different critiques of this movement--some good and some not--and among those, the one major objection to the authority of the quest that I resonate with has to be its lack of answers. It has been over three-hundred years, and that field of scholarship has yet to provide an answer as to who the real Jesus is. Contrast this with the Christology that finds its orthodox expression in the ecumenical creeds formulated nearly two-thousand years ago. Some wish to continue to give scholars involved in the quest the benefit of the doubt; however, the authority of historical tradition cannot be easily dismissed here, especially since it is grounded firmly in Scripture.

Anne Rice, at the end of her book, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, talks about her time spent in these reconstructionist circles. "In sum," she says,

the whole case for the non-divine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified by nobody and had nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and would be horrified by it if he knew about it--that whole picture which had floated in the liberal circles I frequented as an atheist for 30 years--that case was not made. Not only was it not made, I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I'd ever read.

I saw almost no skeptical scholarship that was convincing, and the Gospels, shredded by the critics, lost all intensity when reconstructed by various theorists. They were in no way compelling when treated as composites and records of later ‘communities’ (313-314).

Rice here makes the implication that individual parts of Scripture cannot be taken out, dissected, and understood apart from the whole. This is because all of Scripture is an organic whole, and is self-attesting (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Not only do the writers of the Bible themselves testify to its coherence, but the text does as well, coming together in a unified whole. This is of great importance, and in the very first paragraph of his chapter on Scripture in his book, Studies in Theology, Loraine Boettner makes the point that our conception of Christianity varies significantly depending on our view of the Bible. He later states that "since all of the other Christian doctrines are derived from the Bible and rest upon it for their authority, this doctrine is, as it were, the mother and guardian of all others" (49). It is the Spirit who testifies in our hearts to the authority, wholeness, and truth of the Word of God.

Further, all of Scripture points to and speaks of Jesus Christ. He is the center of the whole of the biblical revelation. It certainly is easy to take a story or a narrative on its own and turn it into a moralistic lesson or an ethical teaching, but the fact is that every part of Scripture bears witness to Jesus Christ and the work of redemption and salvation brought through Him. As Graeme Goldsworthy says in the first volume of The Goldsworthy Trilogy (entitled Gospel and Kingdom), the entire story of redemption begins and ends with Christ, and the whole Bible needs to be understood in the light of the the Gospel. Indeed, "Jesus Christ is the key to the interpretation of the whole Bible" (105).

As a biblical theologian, this is a point that Goldsworthy draws out frequently and you can find wonderfully expressed in many of his books, such as According to Plan and Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture. The Reformer John Calvin says also, "The Scriptures should be read with the aim of finding Christ in them. Whoever turns aside from this object, even though he wears himself out all his life in learning, he will never reach the knowledge of the truth."

On the question of Christology I am firmly and unwaveringly orthodox. There is absolutely nothing that can make me question the historical reality of Jesus and the faithful testimony of who He is as found in the biblical revelation. You simply cannot fabricate an idea of Jesus to meet your needs, be it political, socioeconomic, or scholarly. He is the Word made flesh (John 1:1-14). He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). He is indwelled with the fullness of God, and the One in whom all things hold together (Col. 1:15-23). Any Jesus other than the Jesus of Scripture simply is not Jesus.

You cannot underestimate how crucial it is that the doctrine of Jesus Christ be understood correctly. A proper understanding of Christ is necessary to properly understand the biblical story because He is the center of it. Further, orthodox Christology is essential for ortho-doxology. We cannot truly worship Christ unless we truly understand who He is. So you can see that the title of this post is a bit of a play on words. There is no need for us to ask, "Will the real Jesus please stand up?" Why? Because that Jesus, the real Jesus, is the Jesus of Scripture. He has already made Himself known. And so along with Peter we must confess, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16).

As I've taken church history courses in the past, and discussed the various church councils and creed formations of the first few centuries of the church, one of the things I've wondered about is if the filioque clause was a necessary addition to the Nicene Creed. This issue is one that divides Catholics and Orthodox. Some thoughts on this, first from Everett Ferguson's church history textbook:

In an effort to establish orthodoxy, the [Council of Toledo of 589] may have overdone it by adding the filioque clause ('and from the Son') to the creed. Whereas the current form of the 'Nicene Creed' (approved [at the Council of Constantinople] in 381) said that the Spirit 'proceeds from the Father,' the Latin of the creed adopted in 589 said the Spirit 'proceeds from the Father and the Son,' an expansion based on Augustine's theology of the Trinity and designed to emphasize the full deity of the Son.

The clause was later to alienate Eastern Christians, who argued that the Nicene Creed was inviolable and not subject to change and that the addition introduced two sources of deity into the Godhead (292).

I do not think that the addition of the clause is of drastic importance. I think it is a stretch to say that it introduces two sources of deity. However, while it certainly emphasizes further the nature of the Trinity, I do not think that the omission of it denies the Trinity, or its nature. My professor of church history this semester said in a lecture,

[Adding the filioque to the Creed] has the theological impact of putting the emphasis on the threeness of God. The Eastern Church had some reservations about this, however, typically stressing the oneness of God. It boils down to a matter of emphasis.

It is a shame, then, that an issue that is little more than a matter of emphasis should have played such a major role in the most decisive split in the history of the church.

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

(Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, 381 A.D., more commonly referred to as the Nicene Creed)

...can make one huge difference. As a student of Biblical Greek, more and more I find little exegetical things interesting. Looking at the original Greek text of the New Testament, it's very easy to see how little things can change the meaning of something significantly, such as putting a comma in a different place, or how the case of a word can change the meaning of what it modifies, and how this can lead to a major theological difference.

In Church History, we are discussing the Nicene Creed, which is the most widely confessed creed around the world. It was written because of several controversies in the early church regarding the understanding of Christ as fully divine and fully human. There is one line in the creed that states that Jesus Christ is "begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father." The Greek word that is used for "being of one substance" is homoousion, which literally means “same stuff”. During the debates that arose during these early church councils, some suggested that, to be more accommodating to the fact that we cannot understand how Christ can be fully God and fully man at the same time, we ought to use the word homoiousion. Notice the added letter. It is a iota. Adding this little letter changes the meaning of the word to “like/similar stuff”. This was proposed to make a compromise to the situation.

But we must be thankful that Athansius was at this council, for he stood strong and firm to the necessity of the word being homoousion. If the word added the iota, then the church would fall into the heresy that Arius proclaimed—they were denying that Christ was fully God. There are serious implications here, for to do that is to render Christ unable to bring salvation to us. For salvation to be effective, Jesus Christ had to be both fully God and fully man. There is simply no argument about it. See how adding one little letter can cause such a big problem?