An Article on this subject appeared in our January OUTLOOK (p. 20). It was written by a seminary student after a critical study of this Testimony by a number of the students and it elicited an extraordinary amount of interest and responses from our readers. Now an article by another seminarian sheds further light on this testimony, which is to be considered for approval by the June C.R. Synod.

At Synod this year, the delegates will be asked to approve of the final draft of the Contemporary Testimony, “Our World belongs to God,” which the Synodically appointed committee finished in January of this year.

The Testimony had its beginnings in 1971, when Classis Chatham overtured Synod “to replace” the creeds (Acts, 1971 overture 5, p. 109). Synod instead appointed a committee to re-express the Reformed Faith in modern language, thus the title “Contemporary Testimony.” The committee itself views the creeds in this manner:

The issues to which the confessions speak have not entirely disappeared, and the truths which they formulate are still valid. But all three of the confessions, even the least crisis-orientated parts of them, reflect an assumption which is now strange to us . . . Our world is different: the modern crisis is the secularization of the society, the modern challenge is the mission of the Church in the world (Acts of Synod, 1979).

So the committee went to work, because

“There are new challenges to our faith, and new insights, especially about the work of the Spirit, and Missions.”

(Preface to the 1983 edition)

Now the final edition has been drafted. With over 200 additions to, subtractions from, or substitutions of clauses and words, this final draft can only be called a significantly altered document from the 1983 version. The 42,000 plus copies of the testimony sent out to the churches since 1983 are now obsolete. Since this is so, our church must look carefully before it makes any decision concerning the Testimony.

The Heidelberg Catechism brings a message to those who have been united to Christ. Found in Lord’s Day 1, it is the message of comfort. The Testimony, speaking of our faith to the world, brings something else: “We declare with joy and trust” . . . What? “That I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ”? No! It declares:

“Our world belongs to God”

“The future is secure for our world belongs to God”

“God holds a broken and scarred world together and gives us hope”

The Catechism holds out comfort, the testimony holds out hope. Although “hope” is a Biblical theme, we have more than that in Christ.

And what exactly is their new development for missions? What is their “Good News”? Is it that which Paul excitedly preached, “Jesus Christ, and Him crucified”? It is this: “. . . the good news: Our World belongs to God, and he loves it deeply” (para. 44). Is this what the Gospel is about? Is this what Paul and Guido de Bres, author of the Belgic Confession, died for? It is not. They both died confessing that Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, suffered and died on the cross under the holy wrath of God, so that we might be righteous before the Father. This is the Good News, and because we are unconditionally elected and saved, we serve God gladly, out of gratitude. The Testimony says something different, and it does so because of a very disturbing characteristic of the Testimony: it has a weak view of sin.

An example of this is found in para. 57, where we read,

All who have been on the Lord’s side will be honored, the fruits of even small acts of obedience will be displayed. But tyrants, oppressors, heretics, and all who deny the Lord will be damned.

Compare the first sentence above, a description of faith, to the Heidelberg’s description, found in Q/A 21:

True faith is not only a knowledge and conviction that everything which God reveals in His Word is true; it is also a deep-rooted assurance, created in me by the Holy Spirit through the gospel that, not only others, but I too have had my sins forgiven, have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation.

The second sentence quoted above gives the Testimony’s view of sin, describing the reprobate. But notice that the language seems to say that it takes a deliberate, radical act of denial in order to be damned. There is a current theological trend within our denomination which says that only those who hear the message proclaimed and then deny it will be damned. All of the unborn and those who have never heard the message will fall into the ranks of the redeemed. This view is quite different from the orthodox claim “By faith you have been saved”; yet it appears that the contemporary trend has replaced our standard doctrine within the Testimony.

The Testimony says in para. 14 that “Adam and Eve fell for Satan’s lie.” This present revision puts their actions in a very passive light, as if they were duped into sin. Para. 15 says “apart from grace we prove daily we are sinners,” but the Heidelberg Catechism says that even with grace we “daily increase our debt.” These statements are made because the Testimony does not take sin or God’s wrath upon it seriously.

The effect a weak view of sin has upon the doctrine of divine wrath is seen in para. 19, which now reads:

In his just anger, God did not turn his back on a broken world bent for destruction, he turned his face towards it in love . . . He judged it with a flood (1983 ed. “washed”).

This illustrates another of the characteristics of the Testimony, namely, making statements which contain biblical truths, but not the whole truth. What is written is partially true: God still continued to love what he had made. But the complete truth found in scripture is that God turned away from a totally wicked earth and destroyed it with a flood. Only Noah found favor in God’s eyes. It is concerning this covenant God made with Noah that another half-truth is evident. Para. 21 states:

He covenanted with every creature that seasons would continue, and that such destruction would not come again until the final day.

This statement, again, is partially true. But it would be more accurate to say that God made a covenant with Noah, and through Noah as the head of the covenant, all of creation is blessed. All of creation benefitted from the Noahic covenant, but only Noah, his family, and those animals in the Ark were saved; the rest of creation was condemned. So God turned to Noah in love, but turned away from the rest. As noted above, the final revision did change the wording from “washed” to “judged,” yet did not say “destroyed”. Certainly such terminology is biblical. But it appears the Testimony believes sin could be washed or judged out of the creation, and that it did not have to be destroyed.

As mentioned earlier, the Catechism says that we serve out of gratitude. But now that the Testimony’s weak emphasis on sin has been shown, the results can also be shown: when the necessity for redemption is weak, believers no longer act out of genuine gratitude. This leads the Testimony to state in para. 32:

The spirit thrusts God’s people into world-wide missions.

Webster’s dictionary defines “thrust” as: “to push or drive with force: shove.” The Testimony makes it sound like the Spirit is taking believers and flinging them out to witness to the world against their will. What a difference between this and the Catechism, or Canons II.5!

The committee also claims new insights into the work of the Spirit. Statements made concerning the Spirit include the following:

The Spirit is at work, renewing the creation (para. 2)

The whole creation groans in the birth pangs of a new creation (para. 4)

The work of renewal has always been ascribed to the Holy Spirit; yet such language with its explicit reference to the Spirit renewing creation is foreign to both the creeds and Reformed theology. The authors make such statements because they have failed to distinguish between the general and special operations of the Holy Spirit.

The general operation is the work in which the Spirit “originates, maintains, strengthens, and guides all of life: organic, intellectual, and moral” (Berkhof, Systematic Theology, p. 426). In creation the Spirit is maintaining the created order, restraining the deteriorating and devastating effects of sin. This “restraining” is one aspect of so-called “common grace”.

The special operation of the Spirit is that work in which he convicts a person of sin, applies the benefits of Christ’s work, and begins the process of sanctification. This activity is beautifully stated in the Canons of Dort, III, IV, sec. 11. Thus, there is an essential difference between the operation of the Spirit in regards to nature, and that in regards to man. Thus, the term “renewal” must be restricted to the elect, and this is the crucial distinction which the authors have failed to recognize.

In speaking of renewal we note another characteristic of the Testimony: internal contradiction. The Testimony, on the one hand, says that the creation is being renewed. Yet in para. 57 it says creation is waiting for the purifying fire of judgement. Why would the Spirit renew the earth only to purge it? Passages such as Romans 8:21 and Revelation 21:1 indicate beyond any doubt that the present earth will pass away, being “set free from bondage and decay.” Couple these passages with a correct understanding of the operations of the Spirit, and one could not make the statements the Testimony does.

The committee said there are new insights into the work of the Spirit and missions. They also said that the need for the Testimony arose because of the modern challenge of “secularization.” But is the church today facing an essentially different crisis than the church of the 16th and 17th centuries? “Secularization” simply means “relating to the worldly or temporal.” How is this any different from the time in which the creeds were written? The world then, according to the introduction of Ecumenical Creeds and Reformed Confessions, was

. . . a gentile world, rich in competing philosophies and religions.

Are we not competing with the same kind of world today? And is not our mission the same as then: “Preach Christ, and him crucified”?

The committee claims the creeds no longer speak to the complexity of today’s society. But the creeds, especially the Heidelberg Catechism give clear principles from which specifics may be deduced. It would seem that the committee is searching for a detailed instruction manual, not a Testimony. Yet they wrote the Testimony, and now our Synod will be asked to approve of a document which has been significantly altered at a late date, and is pervaded with partial truths and weak doctrinal formulations.

The committee said that apart from stating positions of doctrine, the creeds are antiquated documents. The sad part is that they believe it.