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Note #8112 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Call to confession
04072
February 11, 2004

Call to confession

Kuykendall celebrates 'revival' in expressions of Christian belief

by Jerry L. Van Marter

LOUISVILLE - The latter half of the 20th century has been marked by "a
revival of confessionalism" that Christians should embrace, a renowned
student of the Book of Confessions told a joint meeting of the General
Assembly Council (GAC) and the Committee on the Office of the General
Assembly (COGA) Tuesday.

	John Kuykendall, a former professor and president at Davidson (NC)
College and now interim president of Louisville Presbyterian Theological
Seminary, said creeds developed in recent years by Christian communities in
Africa and South America "amplify, enrich and even challenge our own."

	This revival movement is a logical extension of the proliferation of
confessions in the Presbyterian Church (USA) in the past half-century,
Kuykendall said.

	"For 200 years, we American Presbyterians had a love affair with the
Westminster Confession," he said. "But in the 1960s we finally recognized
others, and our Book of Confessions was born."

	The renewed interest in articulating what we believe has
"accomplished the traditioning of our faith," he said, creating a "rich
inheritance to pass on to succeeding generations."

	Despite the difficulty of bringing contentious Presbyterians into
theological agreement, Kuykendall added, the effort to create confessional
statements is "a worthy enterprise."

	He said we are obliged to the church and to the world "to put into
words, to ourselves and for ourselves, and to anyone else who is interested,
what scripture tells us we believe and therefore how we should behave."

	The growing body of richly expressed Christian confessions reminds
us, he said, that a "God's-eye vantage point does not belong to any one
individual." He said the proliferation of statements of belief "have rendered
moot the issue of creedal subscription."

	With so many confessional statements in the contemporary mix, it is
virtually impossible nowadays, he said, "to confuse creed with scripture - we
simply have to subordinate our words to the authority of scripture."

	Kuykendall urged Presbyterians to study the Book of Confessions  and
"claim the richness of sources with recurrent themes that typify our own
heritage, and passages yet to come."

	He also called for dialogue with Christians of other cultures and in
other contexts.

	"What might we learn from dialogues with other Christians in other
traditions and cultures?" he asked. "Our Western European confessional
tradition is neither complete nor exclusive - we can never say 'we finally
got it right, no others need apply.'"

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