art1_p2000

Article 1 -- God

October 24-97 will be remembered for a long time in the annals of the United Church of Canada. That was the day an article appeared in the Ottawa Citizen in which the moderator Bill Phipps was quoted as saying that he didn't believe that Jesus was God. Ever since that statement was published, the debate has been rather spirited to say the least.

Apart from the debate that followed about the question of whether Moderator Phipps ought or ought not to have said what he did or whether he ought to have taken part in the interview, the main debate has revolved around the issue of whether Jesus was or was not God.

Equally important subsequent questions pertained to the 20 Articles of Faith the United Church of Canada subscribes to. Those questions boiled down to:
a) Do those Articles of Faith still express the same fundamental beliefs the members of the amalgamating denominations subscribed to in 1925?
b) Has the time come to rethink those Articles of Faith, and restate them in terms of current thought processes, while using contemporary language?
c) Is it sufficient to ask from our new ordinands no other commitment then to say that they "are in general agreement with the 20 Articles of Faith"?

My own perception is that if Christianity is to retain its rank among the world's religions, while retaining its credibility in word and deed, we have to start wrestling with what it is we *do* believe in order to define what the "Good News" is and how we can best share it with the rest of the world.

Before we start into the process of re-thinking and re-stating our Articles of Faith in contemporary idiom, I submit that the 20 Articles of Faith paint an inadequate picture of God and its characteristics. We need to add at least one other category that shows another aspect of God.

Even a superficial reading of the 20 headings of the articles exposes a grave shortcoming. Nowhere do we express our belief in the "Goodness of God and its Creation". It would be helpful if the participants in this exercise would contemplate this shortcoming and would meditate on what an article should say that expresses this "Goodness of God and its Creation".

To return to the articles, Article 1 reads as follows:

"We believe in the one only living and true God, a Spirit, infinite, eternal and
unchangeable, in His being and perfections; the Lord Almighty, who is love, most
just in all His ways, most glorious in holiness, unsearchable in wisdom, plenteous
in mercy, full of compassion, and abundant in goodness and truth. We worship
Him in the unity of the Godhead and the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the Father,
the Son and the Holy Spirit, three persons of the same substance, equal in power
and glory."

A suggested way to rephrase it:
Start the article by repeating the Shemah:
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: (Deut 6:4 ; Mark 12:29)

After that opening, rather than repeating (with the old):

Declare:

"We believe in the one true and living God who is Spirit, who is infinite, eternal and unchangeable. God, in its perfection, is LOVE, is just in its way, glorious in its holiness and beyond our understanding in its characteristics and attributes. God is merciful, full of compassion and abundant in goodness and truth. We worship it in its singularity as well as in the mystery of its plurality of revelations, equal in majesty, power and glory".

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For those who are interested, I had quite a struggle with the word "changeable" in the first sentence. To leave it or delete it. I initially deleted it based on the fact that the God of our Bible changes His mind quite often. Example:

As reason for the flood, we read in Gen 6:6

5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

After the flood however, when Noah brings a burnt offering, we read in Gen 8:21 that:
21 And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

While we read in Gen 9:11:
11 And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.

It is easy to see our dilemma here. On the one hand we insist that God is unchangeable, while on the other hand we are confronted with several Bible texts which tell us that God was sorry about something he had or had not done, that he changed his mind and that he seems incapable of doing something right the first time.

However, having thought about this I reinstated the word "unchangeable" since God will continue to be God and therefore will continue to act as It has always acted, whether we like that or not, and whether we understand that or not.