“Stingy Orthodoxy?”

Creeds and Confessions after Christendom

Abstract

“To be God is to give” (Luther), and in this light, the gospel purpose of creeds is to articulate belief in divine generosity. This editorial essay argues for the creedal belief that true God is essentially and eternally, and thus also economically self-giving. It clarifies the contested relationship between belief about God and trust in God in arguing that beliefs about trustworthiness are entailed for trust to persevere in adversity. Adversity is then characterized theologically as the absurdity of actual evil in the good creation of God as figured in the devil who out of the malice of envy would drive creatures to lethal despair of God and even, for this purpose, corrupts creedal belief into instruments of stingy, death-dealing orthodoxy. This devil must be named, defeated, condemned, and doomed for the generous love of God to prevail in time and for eternity; we should learn this from the genesis of Christian doctrinal theology in the primitive baptismal creeds that coupled renunciation of the devil with faith’s new allegiance to the God of the gospel. A confessing church of divine generosity, in distinction from a confessionalized church of stingy orthodoxy, situates itself in this apocalyptic confrontation to conceive of its doctrinal beliefs as antithetically structured. “To believe God is to disbelieve the idols” (C. Morse), yet herein the danger arises of a literalistic misunderstanding of the apocalyptic genre which demands clarity about the referent in whom the truth of creedal beliefs consists. The creativity of the Nicene Creed is explained in its ontological grounding of the economy of salvation in reference to the eternally self-giving life of the Father of the Son on whom he breathes his Spirit. The ecumenical intention of the Augsburg Confession is lifted up in this light to point the way beyond the end of Christendom and the institutional collapse of denominationalism to a realignment, which may require doctrinal reformulations in the Spirit’s ongoing work of constructing a gospel-mandated generous orthodoxy.