I want to do a series on the The Cape Town Commitment: A Confession of Faith and a Call to Action. This is a breath-taking sweep through the mission of God, guided by one of the world’s finest mission theologians (Chris Wright), and it can provide a basis for evangelical unity. It is not so much a confession or a creed but a theological statement of the mission of God. My comments will be brief as I will be posting one segment of the CTC post by post.
I’m hoping churches will buy bundles of these and begin discussions of how to become a missional presence.
Have you read the Cape Town Commitment? How do you think the CTC can be used?
The entire CTC is framed by God’s love for us, our love for God and our love for others. Framing mission this way does at least these things:
First, the theology is right. God created us, God knows us, God knows our purpose to govern this world, and God loves us. This reveals that God’s mission emerges from his essential love, is guided by who God is from first to last, and engages us as those who are loved and who are called to love God back.
Second, framing God’s mission through God’s love and our love leads us to see that our supreme task is to love God. Obedience flows from love, not love from obedience.
Third, framing the CTC prompts us to see our noble task of participating in the mission of God as loving others and not governing others, not dominating others, not exploiting others, and not triumphing over others. We are called, as Jesus tells us in the Jesus Creed, to love God and to love others and all mission is framed through those two basics.
1. We love because God first loved us.
The mission of God flows from the love of God. The mission of God’s people flows from our love for God and for all that God loves. World evangelization is the outflow of God’s love to us and through us. We affirm the primacy of God’s grace and we then respond to that grace by faith, demonstrated through the obedience of love. We love because God first loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
A) Love for God and love for neighbour constitute the first and greatest commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets. Love is the fulfilling of the law, and the first named fruit of the Spirit. Love is the evidence that we are born again; the assurance that we know God; and the proof that God dwells within us. Love is the new commandment of Christ, who told his disciples that only as they obeyed this commandment would their mission be visible and believable. Christian love for one another is how the unseen God, who made himself visible through his incarnate Son, goes on making himself visible to the world. Love was among the first things that Paul observed and commended among new believers, along with faith and hope. But love is the greatest, for love never ends.
B) Such love is not weak or sentimental. The love of God is covenantally faithful, committed, self-giving, sacrificial, strong, and holy. Since God is love, love permeates God’s whole being and all his actions, his justice as well as his compassion. God’s love extends over all his creation. We are commanded to love in ways that reflect the love of God in all those same dimensions. That is what it means to walk in the way of the Lord.
C) So in framing our convictions and our commitments in terms of love, we are taking up the most basic and demanding biblical challenge of all:
1. to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength;
2. to love our neighbour (including the foreigner and the enemy) as ourselves;
3. to love one another as God in Christ has loved us, and
4. to love the world with the love of the One who gave his only Son that the world through him might be saved.
D) Such love is the gift of God poured out in our hearts, but it is also the command of God requiring the obedience of our wills. Such love means to be like Christ himself: robust in endurance, yet gentle in humility; tough in resisting evil, yet tender in compassion for the suffering; courageous in suffering and faithful even unto death. Such love was modelled by Christ on earth and is measured by the risen Christ in glory.
We affirm that such comprehensive biblical love should be the defining identity and hallmark of disciples of Jesus. In response to the prayer and command of Jesus, we long that it should be so for us. Sadly we confess that too often it is not. So we re-commit ourselves afresh to make every effort to live, think, speak and behave in ways that express what it means to walk in love – love for God, love for one another and love for the world.
Scot, I’ve got to say I’m more than a little disappointed that these unifying, activating pan-evangelical efforts (and their resulting documents) no longer seem to get the level of attention than they previously used to. My concern is that in defining oneself primarily as Reformed or Emergent (or whatever else), these solidly evangelical but non-partisan documents are overlooked because they don’t serve an intra-evangalical belligerency. Such a shame.
My heart was stirred as I read the CTC. But from what I can tell, the rumor that seems to be circulating among some (many?) American evangelicals is that Lausanne has “gone social justice.” I think these evangelicals fear that Lausanne is replacing evangelism with social justic issues and therefor has gone liberal. Does this relate to what CJW (#1) commented? Has American evangelicalism gone Glenn Beck to such an extent that when we combine justice and evangelism we’re written off?
CJW, I agree. The original Lausanne was huge news; this one wasn’t. And should have been given more attention — this is the one “mission” shaped organization of world-wide evangelicalism. And it mostly absent of party thinking.
Jason, I’ve not seen that and am wondering where you are seeing it. I’ve read the comment and think it is balanced.
Oh that the Church would live up to this…that we would not only be known as “the people of the book” by Muslims (and all others)…but as “the people that love.”
My only question…why has it taken the church so long to frame a doctrinal statement by love?
This is a good direction for statements of faith and/or creeds to go in, imo. I think something like this can be used as a church’s statement of faith, and even the outline for a new believer’s class / catechism .
In my view, while there is much value in the historic creeds, this kind of statement of faith is (dare I say it?) superior in many ways by prioritizing what Jesus prioritized and by unifying in a clear and logical way what we believe God is and has done with what we are called to do in response.
“Such love is the gift of God poured out in our hearts, but it is also the command of God requiring the obedience of our wills. Such love means to be like Christ himself: robust in endurance, yet gentle in humility; tough in resisting evil, yet tender in compassion for the suffering; courageous in suffering and faithful even unto death. Such love was modelled by Christ on earth and is measured by the risen Christ in glory.”
Scot, so beautifully said!
T,
Since the original creeds arose in response to something historical in the early church (heresies, false beliefs, etc) would it be fair to say that this recent statement of faith is also a response to our current environment.
If that’s the case, I don’t know if superior is the right word. Maybe it is more easily connected to the issues of today…?
This is a wonderful statement, I think. I might nuance something differently here or there. One place perhaps more thought is required is in relation to the relation between Christians and Jews (is this statement still too suprcessionist?). But overall, IMHO this is what it’s all about.
dopderbeck, welcome back after your fast!
In the wake of the controversy surrounding folk like Rob Bell, I wonder if North America is out of touch with the rest of the world.
My contacts around the world lead me to believe that the Church in the rest of the world hold together what we have sundered – Gospel of proclamation and Gospel of acts of mercy and justice.
I liked the document. I found it far superior to the recent missional manifesto that is circulating.
I’m looking forward to sharing the CTC with the Global Impact team at my church for our discussion and can’t wait for new documents to be added to the Lausanne website.
Paul,
Yes; I’m more critical of the creeds in that they are shaped by the controversies of the day as much as truly central aspects of the Christian faith, but are often viewed as shaped only by the latter. Viewing them as hitting all the “central” elements of the faith is flawed, IMO. My main concern (and I was pleased to hear N.T. Wright recently voice this as well) stem from the hole in the historic creeds concerning Jesus’ work b/n his birth and death. If nothing Jesus did or said in life is central to the faith, then the historic creeds are fantastic.
Also, yes, this latest effort is surely also a product of our time and its controversies. That said, I think that it is objectively right, for any time period, to have love as a central element of a Christian statement of faith, both for explaining God and the Church, both in essense and mission. I think the whole Church and world stands to benefit from this articulation, and I hope the effort of articulation of the faith along these lines continues.
T-
“Viewing them as hitting all the “central” elements of the faith is flawed, IMO. My main concern (and I was pleased to hear N.T. Wright recently voice this as well) stem from the hole in the historic creeds concerning Jesus’ work b/n his birth and death. If nothing Jesus did or said in life is central to the faith, then the historic creeds are fantastic.”
The the central element is who God, Jesus, the Trinity are/is. The things “Jesus did or said” are important because of who He is.
But Rick the creeds are built on 1 Cor 15′s language. Plain and simple: the Christ died, was buried, was raised, was exalted. That’s the creedal foundation, right there in Paul’s own summary.
But Scot, I Cor. 15 was in response to a church being told there was no resurrection of the dead! Yes, the stuff in I Cor. 15 is central (resurrection is central!), but so is the Jesus Creed, for instance, which the NT loudly professes in lots of ways, but which one would never get from the creeds.
Well T,
I think all that you wish would be more specifically articulated in the Nicene Creed is there in “Whose Kingdom shall have no end”.
(I was a tiny bit piqued with NTW, who has spent so much ink showing us what the Kingdom of God meant, and who has drawn a very nice simile about the creed/s being like a trunk which needs to be unpacked, seemingly not being able to figure this one out…)
If you unpack the “Kingdom clause”, all of what Jesus did in his earthy life in terms of announcing and inaugurating the Kingdom (yes, because of who he was) can be connected to the clause’s placement after the Judgment in terms of sequence. He announced and inaugurated the Kingdom by all his acts; the Kingdom continues on and has no end.
Dana
T,
Check out the sermons in Acts, the summary gospel statements in the NT that seem to be creed-like, and you get variations on 1 Cor 15.
after reading the complete document, i am amazed that something could be so inclusive and yet, simultaniously, so comprehensive and disctinct. it really goes to show how many of the various emphasis, among different CHristian groups, are complimentary to one another.
anyone looking upon this document with fear or indifference needs serious help.
no doubt there is something that each individual will not like too much, however, no one can honestly criticize anything as unbiblical or strained.
i really wish certain evangelical groups would take the time to acknowledge the overwhelming biblical content concerning social justice, and learn to understand the history of their bias.
Dana,
Much can be inferred to be included in Jesus’ kingdom having no end. But whether something can be inferred is different from whether it is front and center. I applaud this most recent articulation (the CTC) precisely because of its express elevation of love by God, and love of God and others to a central place of the Christian faith and mission. The creeds simply don’t do this.
Scot,
I think you and I agree on this more than we disagree. That said, should we include the gospels in our search for summary gospel statements or creed-like articulations? If so, we get something more than the historic creeds. In a nutshell, I think what’s NOT in the historic creeds has contributed to this phenomenon that Wright notes, which Michael Bird affirms after quoting Wright:
“‘For many conservative theologians it would have been sufficient if Jesus had been born of a virgin (at any time in human history, and perhaps from any race), lived a sinless life, died a sacrificial death, and risen again three days later.’ Reading those words felt like being slapped in the face with a very soggy fish. That was exactly how I read the Gospels. They beheld Jesus, the Lord of Glory, the propitiatory sacrifice of Paul’s theology, but they were just the hors d’oeuvres to Paul’s meaty theology of atonement and justification. I knew why Jesus died, but I had nothing in my theological repertoire to justify why he lived. On this point, I confess that Wright did for me what David Hume did for Immanuel Kant; he interrupted my “dogmatic slumber”. Or as I tell my students, this was the point that I left the Matrix.”
T, when you see my book this fall called The King Jesus Gospel you’ll know we agree.
The title alone makes me smile.
I’ve followed the CTC closely and really appreciate Chris Wrights’s works. I’ve seen the Lausanne Covenant used recently for an eclectic group of churches forming an outreach event in RI and this new doc. will serve the church well. One Mission official from our denomination noted some of the tensions of Social/Evangelism stirring but the document was well accepted. Wright describes riding with John Stott and sharing his epiphany on the love focus. Stott enthusiastically affirmed the direction which gives the whole thing a personal and prophetic feel. Looking forward to the posts.
Not seeing. Hearing.