Remembering the Faith: What Christians Believe

Remembering the Faith: What Christians Believe

by Douglas J. Brouwer
Remembering the Faith: What Christians Believe

Remembering the Faith: What Christians Believe

by Douglas J. Brouwer

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Overview

Many Christians today neither know the full content of their faith nor could articulate the historical doctrines of the church. Remembering the Faith offers help by providing a brief and highly readable introduction to the basic teachings of the Christian faith.

Douglas Brouwer canvasses the full range of Christian belief-from the nature of revelation to the doctrines of God, the Trinity, creation, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, sanctification, and the meaning of the sacraments-discussing each as it developed historically and showing why such fundamental statements of faith continue to be important today.

Throughout each chapter are excerpts from the historical confessions, creeds, and catechisms, as well as selected quotes from theologians and poets.


"Brouwer, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Wheaton, Illinois, organizes the book thematically, with chapters on "Where We Find God," "Who Jesus Is," "Three Persons, One God," and "Last Things," among other topics. His careful and gentle reasoning and pastoral tone (he understands those who doubt and wonder) makes the book a pleasurable and informative read--and another useful book for group study."- Christianity Today

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780802846211
Publisher: Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date: 06/18/1999
Pages: 189
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

Douglas J. Brouwer is pastor of the International Protestant Church in Zrich, Switzerland. His previous books include Remembering the Faith: What Christians Believe and What Am I Supposed to Do with My Life? Asking the Right Questions.

Read an Excerpt

God Hunger: An Introduction (from pages 1-13)

WHAT IS IT that you believe? Do you know?

Could you give an answer if you had to, if someone challenged you to say—in detail—exactly what you believed?

What is it that Christian people believe?

Over the last few years of my ministry, I have become increasingly concerned and even troubled at times about the content of the faith of the people I serve. Not if we believe so much as what we believe.

* * *

For the better part of a year, a member of the church I serve was in the hospital, and I would visit her there. Jane wasn't in the hospital continuously, but every time she was admitted, I would drive over and spend time with her.

Our conversations were unlike anything I have ever experienced before in the course of my ministry. I've made quite a few hospital calls over the years, but none like these. I wouldn't say that I looked forward to these visits, but I certainly didn't avoid them, either. What I felt, I suppose, was an intensity about them. By the time I left I always knew that I had been engaged, fully engaged. No visit with this person was ever routine.

Jane asked a lot of questions. Normally, when I go to the hospital, I'm prepared to talk about Chicago weather, or how well the Bulls are doing, or something—before gently moving into the real reason for my having "just dropped in." But this particular person had no interest in the weather or the Bulls or anything else, as far as I could determine, other than making sense of her situation, which was very serious. She knew she was going to die.

One of my seminary professors once described theology as "faith asking questions." What he meant, I think, is not that theology is a search for truth—in other words, starting out with no belief at all. Theology, as he described it, grows out of a faith that wants to know more, a faith that dares to ask questions. Faith in God is always the starting point for our questions.

If that's what theology is, then my friend Jane was a first-rate theologian. That's how I came to think of her. She was a person of faith who asked questions about faith, and she asked them with a depth and a persistence and an intensity that I had simply not known before my encounter with her. She wasn't content with easy or simplistic answers. Her desperate situation pushed her to explore the content of Christian faith—hers and mine.

I would walk into her room, and after the briefest of greetings she would say, "I've been reading the Bible, and I'm not sure what this statement means. What do you think?" And then she'd read it for me. Or else she'd say, "Someone said this to me last week." She would tell me what she'd heard, and then she'd say, "What do you think about that?" And our conversation would go on like that, letting up only when she was too tired to keep going. It was then that I prayed with her and said good-bye.

Facing death, I would say, has a way of focusing our minds and pushing us to ask questions we might not otherwise think to ask. Facing death—or any desperate situation—has a way of putting us in touch with issues that matter. Which is one of the reasons, I believe, that some of the best theology of the last century was written around the time of World War II. When we're desperate, when we're pushed to the edge—it's at that point that we want to know the answers to ultimate questions. It's as though we say, "What is it that my faith means in light of what is happening to me or around me?"

Jane's hospital room is only one place, the most recent place, where I have felt the need to examine all of my old answers to faith's questions. Jane's final gift to me was to ask questions. Those questions helped to polish a few of the rough edges around my faith. For the last year of her life, Jane pushed me to describe my faith in some wonderfully new terms. Sometimes I did it awkwardly or haltingly, but I did it. And for that I will always be grateful to her.

My concern for the rest of us, though, is this: When we find ourselves up against life's toughest challenges, will the content of our faith be adequate to answer our questions? Do we know enough of the basics even to start asking these questions?

* * *

I have been a Presbyterian pastor for nearly twenty years, but I didn't grow up Presbyterian. I grew up in a strong but sometimes rigid faith tradition. I don't want to sound ungrateful about this tradition, though, because the truth is that I appreciate it more and more as I grow older. But the faith of my childhood often felt narrow and inflexible to me when I was younger. When I graduated from college and went to seminary, I heard answers there that sometimes sounded quite different from the answers I had been taught as a child.

There were times when I would go back to my dormitory room after a class, and there, all alone, I would break out in a cold sweat. I was aware that my belief system—the belief system of my childhood—had been challenged. I felt pushed and stretched in those seminary classes as I had never felt pushed and stretched before. And in those moments—it's hard to appreciate this fully because very few other degree programs (law, let's say) push people at this level (though maybe they should)—I would reach back to the content I had been taught as a child, and I would wrestle with it, trying my best to make sense of it. I would say to myself, "Okay, Doug, what is it that you believe?"

My belief in God was never the issue; the content of my faith was.

The point I want to make here is simply this: I am thankful there was something to reach back to. I am thankful there was something to lean on. I am thankful there was a content to my faith that served me well in those tough moments. The content of my faith has definitely been tempered and refined over the years—by my seminary training, for example—but the good news is that because of my early training, I have always had some wonderful raw material to work with. Sunday school, catechism classes, Christian schools, and more—I was prepared for a life of faith in a way that few people are today.

What concerns me about the people I work with today is that I often sense there is so little content to their faith, so little raw material to work with, so little to lean on when the going gets tough. I sense that people would like to ask questions about their faith but too often don't know where to begin.

Several times over the last few years I have found myself sitting at the bedside of longtime church members who are obviously dying. And though this may sound odd to you, these moments are actually some of the best parts of pastoral ministry—I mean, to be able to be with people, at those moments, at the final transitions of their lives. So often I feel blessed.

But, in the situations I have in mind now, the conversation eventually worked its way around to "What happens to us?" And what I've heard people say is, "You know, I've always thought that when we died, we just ceased to exist. When we're gone, we're gone."

The last time that happened—I don't think I'll ever forget my response—I almost shot out of my chair. I just blurted out, "But what about Easter? What did you hear on all of those Easter mornings when you were sitting in church?"

And this person said—I don't think I'll ever forget his response—"I don't know, but it wasn't that. I don't remember anybody saying anything about what happens to us when we die."

We went on to have a wonderful conversation, one I will always treasure, but I left his house that day thinking, "I wonder how many Easter mornings over the last twenty years I've forgotten to say what needs to be said. What exactly is the hope of the Christian life? Did I say it just now in a way that provided comfort and offered hope? Did I say it in a way that is consistent with my faith tradition?"

My sense is that there are Christian people who've been a part of a church for a long, long time who somehow have never heard the content of the Christian faith.

But it's not just the longtime members who concern me. I'm thinking of newer members too. What has happened over the last generation or so, according to studies I've read—and it's certainly true in my pastoral experience—is that children and young people have begun attending the church, and then, somewhere between the sixth and the eighth grade, they've dropped out. And stopped being a part of the church. So many other activities competed for their time and attention. Years later, after marriage, perhaps, or after having children, they've come back to church.

Which is wonderful. And it's awfully good to see them when they come back. But they often come back with what amounts to a sixth-grade understanding of the Christian faith—a passing acquaintance, maybe, with some of the Bible stories. They've never gone much beyond that. And as you know, you can't get very far these days with a sixth-grade education, and that's certainly true in terms of faith as well. A faith that stopped adding content in about the sixth grade is a weak and insubstantial faith. It's not going to remain standing for very long in the face of life's storms. What is there to lean on in the difficult moments of life?

What I hope to do in the chapters that follow is to describe faith in a way that adds content to it. My plan is not to argue for the truth of these beliefs. Defending the reasonableness of Christian faith is an important task, but it's not my plan here. My plan is also not to say all that can be said about these beliefs. I simply want to outline here—in a very introductory sort of way—what Christians have always believed, the faith tradition that we've inherited. I want to whet the appetite for more reading, more reflecting. I want to do what I often do in my preaching—and that is to help people of faith get started.

In order to be people of faith who dare to ask questions—in order to be theologians—we need to know something of what other people of faith have believed and taught along the way. The Christian church has a two-thousand-year-old history of faith asking questions. If we're going to ask questions today, we should know at least something about the questions people have asked over the years—and of course the answers at which they arrived.

We'll call these answers to age-old questions "doctrines," or teachings. They often represent a kind of consensus that people of faith have achieved with regard to some very basic questions. Many of the church's doctrines are found in documents called catechisms, confessions, and creeds. In the chapters that follow I have included excerpts from a variety of these documents to illustrate some of the doctrines I am describing. Catechisms, confessions, and creeds all have different uses—in worship, for example, or in Christian education—but ordinarily they are an attempt to summarize what people of faith have read in the Bible or seen in the person of Jesus Christ. As we'll see, the Bible and Jesus himself are two important sources of faith content for believers.

My own faith tradition—the Reformed theological tradition—will become obvious. I make no apologies for that. It's the tradition I know best. I was steeped in it. I am biased toward it. The Reformation, made possible by people like Martin Luther and John Calvin, was an important time in the church's history. A great deal of theology has been written because of questions that people of faith dared to ask during that period of history. I am a grateful heir to this tradition. In general, though, I propose to describe the content of our faith in broad terms. People from most faith traditions should be able to recognize their questions here. My hope is to examine ideas and truths that you may have heard before, to bring them up-to-date, and to show how those ideas and truths are important today, how they may well be critical for our very survival—our spiritual survival.

Maybe this reference to "our very survival" sounds a little too dramatic to you. Maybe not. But this is my sense about us, based on my pastoral experience: There is an urgent need among Christian people to remember who we are and what our faith amounts to.

William Willimon teaches at Duke University, where he is also dean of the chapel. Not long ago, along with his friend Stanley Hauerwas, he wrote a little book called Resident Aliens, which has had quite an impact on me and many other Christian people I know. In the book he says that for hundreds of years the burden of proof, so to speak, had been on people who didn't believe in God. Faith was so widespread and pervasive that people who didn't believe had the task of defending themselves and explaining why they didn't.

Today, Willimon says, all of that has changed, and furthermore, the change has occurred within our lifetimes. The burden of proof has shifted. Today the dominant voice in our culture is one of unbelief, skepticism, and indifference. And so, for example, if you were to say in our culture today that you believe in a trinitarian God (as opposed to a "higher power" or an "intelligent designer"), you would have to explain what you mean. Most people today either don't believe in a trinitarian God or don't know exactly what it means to say they do. Most people today don't see the connection between their lives and doctrines as basic as the doctrine of the Trinity.

I would say that's even true of some church people. Mention "the Trinity" to some longtime church members and notice the response you get. Many of them, I'm guessing, would be hard-pressed to say why it's important for them to affirm faith in a trinitarian God.

* * *

So, where do we begin?

I propose that we begin where people of faith have always begun. I propose that we learn from those who have preceded us and who have thought deeply about the Christian faith.

John Calvin, in the year 1536 (when he was twenty-one years old), wrote that every human being is born with an awareness or knowledge of God. He called it an "awareness of divinity," a sensus divinitatus. This is different from the New Age belief that there is a little bit of God in each one of us. I hear people say that every now and then, and I'm never quite sure what that means or what it would look like. What Calvin was saying is quite different. He was saying that we are born to be in relationship with God, to give our allegiance to God. More than that, he was saying that God placed this awareness within us. Calvin always insisted that God acts first. People in my faith tradition have always maintained that God takes the initiative with us.

Some Christians like to say that "there's a God-shaped vacuum inside each one of us." Maybe you've heard that expression before. What it means, I think, is that we have been created with a yearning or hunger that will not go away until we fill it with God. Eugene Peterson, in his book Leap Over a Wall, writes that "God-hunger...is the most powerful drive in us. It's far stronger than all the drives of sex, power, security, and fame put together."

Like Peterson, Donald McCullough is a Presbyterian pastor. He puts an interesting twist on Peterson's idea in his book The Trivialization of God, where he writes, "To be human is to worship. We really can't help ourselves. But what we can do is to choose the objects of our worship. We may worship God," he writes, "or we may worship any number of false gods."

All of that certainly fits with my own experience. In response to the yearning and hunger inside us, we will do all sorts of things to satisfy ourselves. I think this explains our culture's abuse of alcohol and food and sex and even the accumulation of things. The abuse is often, I would say, a response to this hunger within — which, a person of faith would be quick to say, is actually a spiritual hunger.

The insidious part of it is that alcohol and food and sex and the accumulation of things seem to do the trick — for a while. They do satisfy us — in the short term. But always, I notice, the restlessness returns.

George Will once wrote a column in which he described our culture's "cult of personality." He was responding to the death of Princess Diana, but he was really describing a larger phenomenon — the need we have for objects of adulation and worship in our lives. Whether or not these people have accomplished anything truly great with their lives, Will says, now seems to be beside the point. We have the need to worship — and we will find someone or something to worship, worthy or not.

I often hear that men feel uncomfortable in Sunday morning worship. Singing the hymns, speaking the prayers — some men say that it all just feels so awkward to them. And yet, at places like the United Center during a Chicago Bulls game or at Soldier Field during a Bears game, I see and hear men hollering until they're hoarse. I holler with them. We participate in the "liturgy of game," so to speak, standing when we're asked to stand and repeating the words that are displayed on the screen. Grown men! Fully engaged in an act of worship, offering allegiance to their heroes!

It seems clear to me that Peterson and McCullough are right — to be human is to hunger for God; to be human is to want to worship. It's the choice we make that's critical. And too often, as you may have noticed, we human beings tend to opt for the lesser gods in our lives.

Over the years, people of faith have wondered about this human predisposition for the lesser gods, and the reason many give for it is sin. We weren't created to be the way we are, but our sinful nature, they say, makes it impossible for us to choose as we should. This is the human predicament.

The good news is that God doesn't leave us there.

* * *

One of my favorite Bible stories over the years has been the story in the book of Acts about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. This story became a favorite because I saw something of myself in the Ethiopian man. His conversion to the Christian faith was one I could relate to. The Apostle Paul's conversion, on the other hand, always seemed to be held up as the model or the paradigm for the way our experiences should be.

Paul, you may remember, saw a blinding light and heard a voice from heaven. In an instant, his life was changed. He had an encounter with the resurrected Christ, and he knew it. I suppose that's awfully nice when it happens, but — really — that's just not the way it is for most of us, is it? It certainly wasn't that way in my own life. Which was troubling, I have to admit, until I realized later in my life that coming to faith doesn't happen that way, Paul's way, for most people.

There is another way.

The Ethiopian man was a seeker — and, I would say, a theologian. Faith asking questions.

At some point in his life he had already found the God of Israel. Or, as I'd prefer to think of it, the God of Israel had already found him. When we meet him in this story, he is on his way back from Jerusalem, where he had worshipped in the temple. He had come a very long way to satisfy this spiritual hunger that he felt inside.

As the story begins, he is in his carriage or chariot, reading the book of Isaiah. And he is lost, as we might well be. Not geographically, but spiritually. He is uncomprehending. He isn't catching on. Just then, however, in a miracle of God's timing, Philip appears and asks him, "Do you know what you're reading?"

Relieved, the man answers, "No, as a matter of fact, I don't. Hop up here and explain it to me." Which Philip (as you know) is only too happy to do. Apparently the explanation is a good one, too, because the Ethiopian man hears the story and exclaims, "Is there anything that would prevent me from being baptized right now? I'm ready, and I've been ready all my life."

What's remarkable about that story and the reason it's been preserved all these years is that no one expected a faith response from a person like this — a non-Jewish person. But there he was, giving expression to what all human beings feel inside: a hunger for God. And not the lesser gods of our lives, either, but the Creator of the universe, the God who first breathed life into us.

We were created on the sixth day — the same day as the animals. But what separates us from the animals is not our intelligence or our moral sense. What separates us is that we were created to be in relationship with God. We received God's image, God's likeness. We were created to reflect God's glory.

We were born for this, and until we see it, until we recognize what our lives were made for, until we wake up to God's never-ending pursuit of us, we are going to be hungry, restless, dissatisfied people, giving our allegiance to one or more of the lesser gods around us.

Let me ask you this: What are you using to fill the empty space inside you?

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY AND REFLECTION

  1. One of the people Jesus encountered during his ministry said, "I believe; help my unbelief." How does that describe your own faith?
  2. Where are the places in your life right now where you have questions? How does your faith help you address them?
  3. Make a mental list of the interests and activities that fill your life. Do you sense in one or more of them a deeper longing, a spiritual hunger?
"

Table of Contents

  1. God Hunger AN INTRODUCTION
  2. Where We Find God GENERAL REVELATION
  3. What the Bible Is SPECIAL REVELATION
  4. Who God Is THE FIRST PERSON OF THE TRINITY
  5. What God Does PART ONE: CREATION
  6. What God Does PART TWO: PROVIDENCE
  7. Who Jesus Is THE SECOND PERSON OF THE TRINITY
  8. What Jesus Does ATONEMENT
  9. Who the Holy Spirit Is THE THIRD PERSON OF THE TRINITY
  10. What the Holy Spirit Does THE CHURCH
  11. Becoming Like Christ SANCTIFICATION
  12. Object Lessons in Grace THE SACRAMENTS
  13. Three Persons, One God THE TRINITY
  14. Last Things ESCHATOLOGY
  15. The Word Made Flesh THE INCARNATION

Bibliography

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