Hope—Theological Vision Part Three
[We are continuing to expand and explain AMR’s Theological Vision, offering a closer look at each of its core commitments. as it shapes the church’s pursuit of renewal, faithfulness, and mission amid fear, cynicism, and cultural uncertainty.]
By Kyle Wells
The Westminster Confession presents a clear-eyed account of the church. Particular churches are “more or less pure” (WCF 25.4), and even “the purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error” (WCF 25.5). Synods and councils, too, “may err; and many have erred” (WCF 31.3).
As the confession acknowledges, the church is not yet the spotless bride she will one day be (Eph. 5:25–27; Rev. 19:7–8). Her doctrine may be mixed with confusion. Her practice may lag behind her confession. Her courts may fail. Her leaders equivocate.
And those are the internal threats.
The Catechisms remind us that in the Lord’s Prayer we pray against “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” enemies that oppose God’s kingdom and seek to harm God’s people (WSC 102; WLC 195). Until glory, the church lives in contested territory.
These real dangers give rise to two understandable temptations. The first is fear. When we see corruption in the church and darkness in the world, we can act as if the church’s purity ultimately depends on us. Hunkering down and circling the wagons feels prudent. But the more fear motivates us, the smaller that circle becomes. Suspicion expands and trust contracts until fewer and fewer people remain within the circle we regard as safe.
The second temptation is cynicism. After enough controversy, failed overtures, and online potshots, one can wonder whether the church can grow in wisdom, love, holiness, and witness. A culture that seems to move further and further from Christian assumptions, much less Christian convictions, only seems to confirm our doubts. Is there, to channel Van Til, any “point of contact” left for meaningful gospel engagement?
Over time, fear and cynicism lead us to expect decline more than renewal and retreat more than advance.
Against the church’s real mixture and error, the hostility of the world, flesh, and devil, and the fear and cynicism they awaken, stands Jesus’ enduring promise: “I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18). AMR’s theological vision invites us to a posture of hope because it looks to the promise of the risen Christ who continues to lead, instruct, preserve, and correct his people by his Word and Spirit (Matt. 16:18; John 16:13; Eph. 4:11–16):
“Because the exalted Christ continues to lead and instruct his Church by his powerful Spirit, we commit to a posture of hope. Though the demonic dysfunctions of our society and the persistence of our indwelling sin tempt us to retreat into a bunker mentality or to capitulate to passive cynicism, Christ promises never to forsake us. Therefore, even as we look backward in gratitude for God’s previous blessings of theological understanding and fruitful ministry, we also look forward with confident expectation of the Church’s future blessings through Christ.”
A church where hope wanes becomes an anxious system. Preservation becomes the primary goal, and legislation becomes the primary means. In recent years, this anxiety has shown itself within the PCA in an over-reliance on overtures and judicial processes, and in the constant sounding of alarms online. Overtures and courts have their place. Warnings may be necessary. But when control becomes our reflex, something has gone wrong. Fear often masquerades as faithfulness, but it reveals a lack of confidence in Christ’s presence and work.
Fear makes us frantic. Cynicism makes us passive. Both assume the most we can expect is to preserve what we have. Both expect too little from the living Christ.
They also exact a cost. Constructive theological inquiry begins to look like a threat or feel pointless. Biblical fidelity takes a backward-looking, defensive posture: preserving what has already been said and resisting anything that sounds new, different, or comes from outside our circles. That is a serious loss, because Christ perfects his church by the Spirit working through the Word.
Hope creates a different posture. Because Christ has promised to build his church, we can labor without panic, contend without suspicion, correct without despair, and pursue renewal without needing to control every outcome. Hope preserves concern for purity, doctrine, and discipline while making us less anxious about the church’s present and future. Hope believes Christ is at work building and renewing his church by Word and Spirit.
Westminster’s doctrine of sanctification suggests the scope of this hope. What Christ does in the individual—renewing “the whole man after the image of God” (WSC 35)—gives us a pattern for what we should seek in the church: orthodoxy and orthopraxy, confession and character, patience, humility, teachability, courage, and charity.
Hope therefore sends us back to Scripture with confidence and humility. Westminster teaches that “the whole counsel of God” is either expressly set down in Scripture or may be deduced from it “by good and necessary consequence” (WCF 1.6). Scripture is sufficient for the church’s doctrine and life. Yet the Confession also says that “the inward illumination of the Spirit of God” is necessary for understanding what Scripture reveals, and that “all things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all” (WCF 1.6–7). We see “in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12). Hope trusts the Spirit to keep teaching the church what she holds in her hands.
Acts 15 gives us an early picture of the Spirit’s work. The apostles and elders searched the Scriptures, attended to what God was doing among the Gentiles, and reached a Spirit-guided judgment for a new and contested circumstance. Later, when Nicaea confessed the Son as homoousios—a word not found in the Bible—the church made explicit what Scripture authorizes Christians to confess about the Son. In both cases, the church went deeper into Scripture to say and live what Scripture required for its time and need. Like the trained scribe in Jesus’ parable, the church brought out treasures new and old (Matt. 13:52).
Kevin Vanhoozer commends recovering the Reformation practice of Table Talk, in which ministers gathered to search Scripture together, inquire, correct, and sharpen one another under a common authority. Calvin called it “the best bond to retain constancy in doctrine” (Hearers and Doers, 179–83). Yet Table Talk must be practiced with Reformed catholicity because Christ’s promise to build his church and lead her into all truth was not made to Presbyterians alone. Table Talk that never listens beyond our tradition risks contracting the circle and dulling our awareness of the Spirit’s work through the wider body of Christ.
A posture of hope also lifts our eyes beyond the work Christ is doing now to the consummation of that work in the future. Consider how Paul deals with the conflict at Philippi. Euodia and Syntyche had labored side by side with Paul in the gospel, and yet they were at odds. Paul pleads with them “to agree in the Lord” and then immediately adds, “Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand” (Phil. 4:2–5). The word translated “gentleness” carries the sense of yieldingness, forbearance, and a willingness not to insist on one’s own way. Because the Lord is near, we do not have to meet every unresolved tension with panic, suspicion, or control. The confidence that Jesus will complete what he has begun makes us free—free to labor alongside those with whom we disagree, trusting that Christ will resolve what we cannot. Hope gives us room to work together amid unresolved differences.
The hope AMR commends rests on the confidence that Christ is and will be at work. Because “the one who is in us is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4), we may expect more than institutional survival or defensive maintenance. We may labor for renewal without fear, correction without cynicism, and mission without retreat.
Kyle hails from Memphis, TN—the birthplace of Rock and Roll, home of the Blues, where Elvis is King, Jesus is Lord, and barbecue is spicy. This upbringing has deeply influenced this love of food, music, and Jesus. He is author of Grace and Agency in Paul and Second Temple Judaism (Brill, 2015), for which he was awarded the 2016 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. His most shining accomplishment, however, is getting his wife Pam to say “yes”. They have one daughter, Niamh (pronounced Neeve), whose looks and personality bear an uncanny resemblance to her father, which makes him as scared as it does proud.