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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
In a series of studies for the E.A.C.C. writers from the Asian Churches applied themselves to the question ‘Confessing the Faith in Asia Today’. One feature common to their concern was the need to distinguish sharply between a confessing church and a confessional church. In their missionary situation the second term was treated with suspicion and mistrust as an expression which characterised a church that was inflexible in its attitudes and was therefore unable to enter into a living dialogue of faith with its indigenous situation so that the Gospel could be meaningfully expressed. This sharp contrast is understandable since the Asian churches have not been notable for the ways in which the Gospel has become indigenous to their cultural situation. It has, in the past, tended to be an imposition on a new situation, of a relevant Gospel couched in alien terms with more than a suggestion that the terms in which the Gospel was expressed was to be identified with the reality of the Good News. As a result a cultural hiatus has ensued which has vitiated a great deal of the cutting edge of the Gospel.
page 271 note 1 Fleming, J., ‘Confessions, Confessionalism and the Confessing Church in Asia Today’, S.E. Asia Journal of Theology, vol. 8, no. 172, p. 7.Google Scholar
page 271 note 2 ‘Confessional Families and the Churches in Asia’, pp. 20–21, quoted Fleming, op. cit., p. 15.
page 272 note 1 cf. Fleming, p. 16. In the Asian scene, confessional theology having its origin in a foreign situation must give place to a confessing theology arising out of the bedience and commitment of confessing Asian churches in their own situation.
page 272 note 2 Hwang, C. H.. ‘Confessing the Faith in Asia Today’, op. cit., p. 78.Google Scholar
page 273 note 1 cf. Allmen, von, Vocabulary of the Bible, p. 63, and H. D. Beeby, ‘Confessing the Faith in the OT’, op. cit., pp. 21–35.Google Scholar
page 274 note 1 H. D. Beeby, op. cit., p. 31.
page 274 note 2 So Fleming, ‘The Christian Confession and the Confessing Church in the NT’, op. cit., p. 37.
page 275 note 1 Barth, CD. III/IV, pp. 78–79.
page 276 note 1 CD. III/IV, p. 81.
page 276 note 2 CD. III/IV, p. 86.
page 276 note 3 CD. I/II, p. 588.
page 276 note 4 op. cit., p. 592.
page 276 note 5 ibid.
page 277 note 1 op. cit., p. 628.
page 277 note 2 cf. op. cit., p. 629.
page 277 note 3 op. cit., pp. 630–1.
page 278 note 1 cf. CD. II/11, pp. 599–600 and 613–16.
page 278 note 2 cf. op. cit., p. 616.
page 278 note 3 This section is a radically revised and expanded version of the paper ‘Confessional Authority’, Forum, XXI, 2, Apr. 1968, pp. 7–10.
page 279 note 1 cf. for example the opening questions of the Geneva, Heidelberg and Shorter Catechisms.
page 279 note 2 Note for example, Calvin's reliance on the Chalcedonian definitions for the person of Christ which he assumes and does not himself expound.
page 279 note 3 Trinterud, L. J., ‘Confessions of the Church: Times and Places’, in U.P. USA Proposals, p. 15.Google Scholar
page 279 note 4 Institutes, ‘Subject Matter of the Present Work’, French edition, 1560.
page 280 note 1 E. A. Dowey, Jnr., ‘Confessions of the Church: Types and Functions’, op. cit., p. 19.
page 280 note 2 ibid.
page 280 note 3 cf. Bucanus, Instit. Theol. The analogy of faith is ‘the constant and perpetual sense of Scripture expounded in the manifest places of Scripture and agreeable to the Apostles’ Creed, the 10 Commandments and the general sentences and axioms of every main point of divinity'.
page 281 note 1 Trinterud, op. cit., p. 15.
page 282 note 1 Vischer, L., ‘The Significance of the Confessions for the Church Today—a European Contribution’, S.E. Asia Journal of Theology, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 89–99.Google Scholar
page 282 note 2 op. cit., p. 94.
page 282 note 3 ibid.
page 282 note 4 contra Book of Order Section 381 (Presbyterian Church of New Zealand).
page 283 note 1 op. cit., p. 94.
page 283 note 2 op. cit., p. 95.
page 283 note 3 ibid.
page 284 note 1 ibid.
page 285 note 1 op. cit., p. 96.
page 285 note 2 op. cit., p. 97.
page 286 note 1 This section has some overtones from a letter of Professor T. F. Torrance to the author.
page 287 note 1 op. cit., p. 97.
page 287 note 2 op. cit., p. 98.
page 287 note 3 ibid.
page 288 note 1 cf. Barth, CD. II/11, pp. 648–9.
page 288 note 2 op. cit., p. 651.
page 288 note 3 ibid.
page 288 note 4 op. cit., p. 652.
page 288 note 5 cf. Vischer, op. cit., pp. 98–99.