6. Three Facets Of The Faith
Follow thou me: “I Am the way, the truth, and the life.”
Without the way, there is no going; without the truth, there
is no knowing; without the life, there is no living. I Am the
way which thou oughtest to follow; the truth which thou
oughtest to trust; the life, which thou oughtest to hope for.
I Am the way inviolable, the truth infallible, the life that
cannot end. I Am the straitest way, the highest truth, the
true life, the blessed life, the life uncreated.1
Thomas à Kempis
With the apostle Paul we resolve to proclaim Christ (Col. 1:28). The Lord himself is the essential and basic content of our teaching ministry. In the last chapter we explored the first principle in our Christ-proclamation. We preach and teach the glorious Gospel of God to believers and unbelievers alike. We argued that we should never depart from the Gospel, as if there were more important or more critical content to which we must progress. But as we have seen, the Gospel is multifaceted and deep beyond measure. Its implications and applications are innumerable. In this chapter, we explore some of these other dimensions of our Christ-proclamation.
The Gospel as Our Plumb Line
One way to express what we mean by speaking of various implications and applications of the Gospel is to identify the Gospel as the plumb line for all our thinking, speaking, teaching, and living.2 A plumb line is a cord or string to which a weight is attached at the end. Plumb lines have been used through the centuries for two main purposes: to measure verticality or perpendicularity and to determine depth. A plumb line might be cast into a well or into a body of water to measure its depth. With the Gospel in mind, Paul marvels at the depths of the love of Christ and prays that by the Spirit’s illumination we may come to fathom the unfathomable (Eph. 3:18–19). But no plumb line could be long enough to measure the depths of the glorious Gospel. As a new believer Gary was captivated by the imagery of an old hymn from the very first time he sang it in congregational worship:
Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment
made,
Were ev’ry stalk on earth a quill, and ev’ry man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, tho’ stretched from sky to sky.
O love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure, the saints’ and angels’ song.3
From those depths of love, mercy, and grace we draw upon the life-giving benefits that invite us into communion with the living God and empower us to walk in his Way. Though no plumb line can fathom the depths of the Gospel, the Gospel itself can be the plumb line by which we measure the depth and quality of our own lives, ministries, and doctrines.
Plumb lines have also been used by builders to help ensure that what they construct is properly vertical, that it is “true to plumb.” In the book of Amos God tells the prophet that he has set a plumb line in the midst of his people Israel (Amos 7:7–8). God uses the plumb line to indicate that his people have departed from the Way, that they are not living “true to plumb,” and thus have come under his judgment. In similar fashion the Gospel is for us the plumb line by which we measure both our living and our teaching. Paul commanded Timothy to watch both his life and his doctrine, and to persevere in doing so. Thus would Timothy save both himself and his hearers (1 Tim. 4:16).
Paul writes to Timothy further of “the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious Gospel” (1 Tim. 1:10). Elsewhere he tells Titus that he must “teach what is in accord with sound doctrine” and goes on to detail instructions about the way in which believers are to walk, conduct themselves, and live their lives (Titus 2:1–10). A similar idea is seen in both instances: there is sound doctrine or teaching that properly accords with the Gospel, and there is a manner of living which properly accords with sound doctrine.
The King James Version rendering of Titus 2:1 is an interesting expression of the principle we are presenting. It reads, “But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine.” For contemporary Americans this would likely be a confusing use of words. What could Paul mean by speaking of things which become sound doctrine? Does he mean to suggest that anything we teach—if we “massage” it enough and repeat it enough—can become sound doctrine over time? As Paul says elsewhere, May it never be! The sense here reflects an older English usage of the word become. We still hear it from time to time in expressions such as “That dress really becomes you.” This expression implies that the dress enhances the natural beauty of its wearer, that it suits the person very well indeed. Paul’s point in Titus 2 is that the church must teach its members to live in such a way that their very lives “make the teaching about God our Savior attractive” (Titus 2:10). Earlier in the letter Paul commanded the teaching of the sound doctrine itself (Titus 1:9). Now in chapter 2 he commands Titus to teach believers to live accordingly, to live in a manner which befits and adorns that doctrine.4
When the church teaches doctrines or permits patterns of living that are out of plumb with reference to the Gospel, much damage occurs. We grieve the Holy Spirit, with whom we have been sealed for the day of redemption (Eph. 4:30) and who is the Spirit of Truth (John 15:26). Doctrines that miss the mark will sow the seeds of heresy or at the very least lead to distortions of the truth. And an unholy lifestyle, rather than making the “teaching about God our Savior attractive,” can have quite the opposite effect. By substandard, ungodly living we may drive a wedge between unbelievers and the church’s teaching, making it more difficult for them to hear, believe, and receive the message of the Gospel. Citing the prophets, Paul reminded Jewish believers in Rome that when they walk unworthily of their calling “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles” as a result (Rom. 2:24; cf. Isa. 52:5; Ezek. 36:22). When Christians fail to walk worthily of the calling we have received (Eph. 4:1), we may likewise cause God’s name to be blasphemed by the unbelieving world.
Paul provides us with a concrete example of failure to live according to plumb in reference to the Gospel. He tells the Galatians about his confrontation with Peter, his fellow apostle. Peter had come to Antioch to see what wonders the Gospel had wrought among the Gentiles. He clearly approved what he saw there and had joined gentile believers at meals. Then Jewish Christian observers came to Antioch, having been sent from James and the other leaders of the church in Jerusalem. Peter, we are told, “began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles, because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group” (Gal. 2:12). This “hypocrisy,” as Paul bluntly labels it, led astray the other Jewish believers who were present, including “even Barnabas” who had diligently labored with Paul in preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles. Paul confronted Peter and the other offenders about all this, for he “saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the Gospel” (Gal. 2:14).5
Peter himself had articulated vital aspects of the truth that derive from the Gospel when, at the home of the gentile Cornelius, he said, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right” (Acts 10:34). Later, to those present at the Jerusalem council that was convened to wrestle with the question of the incoming of the Gentiles, Peter stated, “God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. . . . We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are” (Acts 15:8–11). But Peter had become guilty of denying by his actions the very doctrines that he had so boldly articulated.
We must not be too harsh toward Peter, for who among us is without similar sins? If we read Paul’s writings well we certainly know that he made no claim of having attained perfection (Phil. 3:12). Indeed he saw himself forever as the worst of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). This side of glory, not one of us lives in a manner that fully accords with God’s standards. But as Paul and Peter were both obliged to do, we too must make it our aim to walk worthily of our calling, to press on toward the prize of the high calling of God in Christ, to live up to the truth that we have already received (Phil. 3:16).
What are the sound doctrines that accord with the glorious Gospel? There are many, to be sure, and they touch upon all areas of theological concern— what we believe about God, humanity, sin, Christ, salvation, the Spirit, the church, last things, and much more.6 Surely all the doctrines of grace are in view here, including a sound theology of the atonement, which is so much discussed and debated today. All our teaching in these areas is to be discerned by faithful use of Scripture as we hear, read, and study its meaning “by the power of the Spirit and in the company of the faithful.”7 Careful discernment will lead us to theological conclusions that are fully in line with the glorious Gospel. If they are not, our teaching is out of plumb and we will need to start again.
Likewise, translating sound doctrine into a way of living has innumerable implications and applications. All our behavior toward God and neighbor is to be congruent with and expressive of the truth of the Gospel. When like Peter in Antioch we are guilty of racial discrimination, we are out of plumb. If we show favoritism to the rich and insult the poor—sins which we are warned against in passages such as James 2—we are out of plumb. When we see a brother or sister in need but offer them mere words instead of giving from our plenty to tangibly help them in their want, we are again out of plumb (1 John 3:16–18). The more we meditate upon the Gospel the more we see of its wonders, awesome doctrines of grace, and righteous demands upon our lives.
The essential content of the Faith, then, includes first of all the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, which covers the whole many-sided reality of the divine plan and work of salvation. Secondly, the Faith includes the sound doctrines of the Truth that properly accord with that glorious Gospel. It includes thirdly the Way of living that conforms to those doctrines. And fourthly it includes the experience of all the life-giving benefits that flow from the power of the Gospel and enable us to walk in the Way of the Lord. The last three of these elements may be regarded as three facets or dimensions of the Faith that derive from the Gospel. Having stated these things in principle, we will now consider other historical and biblical ways of articulating and framing these concerns.
The three facets or dimensions of Christian teaching—which we identified in chapter 4 as the Truth, the Life, and the Way—are biblically grounded, psychosocially validated, and historically affirmed by the practices of the Christian church over two millennia. These dimensions of the Faith are inherent in the Gospel. Each of these facets must be further unpacked in its own right though they are never disconnected from the whole. We examine them here in something of an inductive fashion. First we will bring forth “witnesses” testifying to the wisdom of the threefold plan, and then we will offer a summary argument and a proposal. Our witnesses include testimony from various domains—historical, biblical, and psychosocial.8
Historical Witnesses
In all its orthodox expressions the church has consistently affirmed that Jesus Christ alone is the answer to the deep needs and longings of the world. But it is not typically noted that the church has also testified to the wisdom of proclaiming Christ in a threefold manner through its teaching ministry. This is most easily overlooked by those communities that have little experience with the ministry of catechesis, for it is in the historic catechisms of the church that we see this threefold witness most obviously.
As we discussed earlier in chapter 3, the Reformation-era catechisms focused primarily on instruction in three great summaries of the Faith—the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer.9 Alongside these three, each also contains some instruction in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, though these are not generally afforded quite the same frontline status as the three summaries. We noted as well that the catechisms of the Puritan era for the most part followed the same pattern.
We argued in chapter 3 that Luther and others were in fact essentially correct to say that what they were teaching in their printed catechisms corresponded to what the church had always included in its unprinted catechisms—creedal instruction, ethical instruction based upon God’s commands, and instruction in prayer based upon the Lord’s Prayer. Having established this we must proceed to ask why the church settled upon these three particular summaries as the basis for catechetical instruction.
It would be difficult to argue that church leaders acted in any officially coordinated way to settle upon the three formulae. In fact it is apparent that they did not. Instead it seems that consensus spontaneously emerged around these three, a consensus that was only later sanctioned by church officials. Why such a consensus occurred becomes clearer when we consider the testimony of the various prefaces and commentaries that have appeared through the centuries relative to the various catechisms that have been published. At least three central arguments appear with frequency.
First, there is an affirmation of the wisdom of historical precedent. This argument may seem least compelling to many evangelical believers today. We are, after all, “Bible people,” always demanding in the end, “Where stands it written?” Such concern for biblical fidelity is absolutely essential and praiseworthy. But a flippant dismissal of our own Christian history is not praiseworthy in any respect. It is rather a willful refusal to adopt a biblical spirit. The fact is that we are not the first Christians to wonder about how to make disciples for Jesus. Wisdom and humility demand that we consider what our brothers and sisters through the ages have done by way of catechizing and discipling, and test the merit of these efforts by consideration of the biblical data. We are most unwise to try to continually reinvent the catechetical wheel or to assume that we are more likely than our forebears to be faithful to Scripture.
Our antipathy toward philosophies and practices that emerged throughout church history (particularly with regard to pre-Reformation history) also betrays either a willful ignorance or a profound naïveté about the proper role of the historic church in shaping who we are as Bible people today. Whether we are speaking of the canon of Scripture, what constitutes biblical orthodoxy, what a Judeo-Christian ethic looks like, or why we worship in the ways that we do, there is almost no aspect of what we prize as biblical Christianity that has not been deeply affected by the centuries of church history that have preceded us.10 Indeed it may well be argued that purposeful inattention to the history of the church makes us far more likely to become unbiblical in some significant way.
In the spirit of Jesus’s warning in Matthew 7 we should take care before we presume to judge our forebears about the splinters in their eyes while doing nothing about the planks in our own. Were the ancients or the Reformers affected and shaped, sometimes adversely, by their surrounding cultures? Of course they were. But if we think that we ourselves are free from similar limitations we are deluding ourselves. Let us therefore in a humble spirit listen well to what our predecessors in the Faith may be able to teach us about our tasks.
A second reason the church settled upon the three great summaries of the Faith seems to be the belief that the three summaries are themselves biblically undergirded in specific ways. This is very obviously true with reference to the Lord’s Prayer and the Decalogue. These two summaries are not only inspired Scripture; each actually bears added marks of divine origin. The Decalogue (enunciated in its entirety twice—in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy 5) was written, we are told, by the very finger of God (Exod. 31:18). These “Ten Words” are referred to many times throughout the Bible, including numerous references in the New Testament (e.g., Mark 10:18–19; Rom. 13:9). What we call “the Lord’s Prayer” (to most Catholics, the “Our Father”) was articulated by Jesus himself. It is recorded twice in the Gospel accounts (Matt. 6:9–12; Luke 11:2–4) and it seems probable that Jesus taught this prayer on other occasions as well. It is no surprise then that the church accorded special weight to these two formulae.
Regarding the Creed, however, there has not been so uniform an endorsement. The Westminster catechisms do not include expositions of the Apostles’ Creed. The Creed itself is often included in printed versions of those catechisms, sometimes as an appendix but without exposition. There is no clear sense of antipathy toward the Creed in this case and churches that use the Westminster catechisms almost always affirm their acceptance of the Creed and its teaching. Still, not including an exposition of it was a departure from the earlier Reformation catechisms.
Some Protestant churches have been far more blatant in their dismissal of the Creed. It is not uncommon, as we have already noted, to see on a church signboard a slogan something like this: “No book but the Bible; no creed but Christ; no law but love.” This captures the mindset of many in free church movements. In a sense, however, such pithy slogans are themselves creedal confessions and are part of significant traditions that have been handed down and embraced by others.
We acknowledge that for evangelical Protestants at least neither the Apostles’ Creed nor any of the creeds hammered out through the history of the church bear the authoritative weight of sacred Scripture. Nevertheless both Protestant and Catholic Christians from nearly all nations and in nearly all eras have found and proclaimed that the Creed is a faithful and concise witness to basic biblical teaching. For many of the Reformers and their descendants, the Creed is nothing less than a faithful, clear, and concise summary of the most central tenets of our faith.
A third reason why these three great summaries have been at the heart of historic catechetical practice is that they provide introductory instruction in essential biblical concerns and in so doing provide a comprehensive introduction to the Christian faith. The Creed provides basic training in theology. The Decalogue provides a primer in ethics. And the Lord’s Prayer introduces the believer to the life of prayer.
These three areas of concern—theology, ethics, and prayer—have been taken up in other ways in the history of the church. In more than one tradition, the same comprehensive triad is denoted by means of the Latin expressions lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. Most commonly, two of these appear together: lex orandi, lex credendi, meaning “as we pray (or, as we worship), so we believe.”11 By adding the third expression lex vivendi we would be further saying “and as we pray and believe, so shall we live.”
What is true of Christian experience was already true in the life of Israel centuries earlier. Abraham Joshua Heschel summed up the Jewish experience of religion in this way: “These three ways correspond in our tradition to the main aspects of religious existence: worship, learning, and action. The three are one, and we must go all three ways to reach the one destination. For this is what Israel discovered: the God of nature is the God of history, and the way to know him is to do His will.”12
Furthermore, the synagogue has been historically understood as having three central purposes to fulfill. It is a house of assembly, a house of study, and a house of prayer.13 The purposes of the synagogue also call to mind the rhythm that was built into the life of the Benedictine code and became normative in most expressions of Christian monasticism. A monk’s day was typically devoted to three tasks—sacred study, manual labor in service of the community, and most importantly the ministry of prayer, which was the opus dei—the “work of God.”
In the table below we review at a glance some of the historical examples of this triad of concerns.
Biblical Witnesses
Our next concern is to consider whether or not the Bible directs us into the comprehensive pattern that we have discovered from the historical witnesses. We have already tipped our hand regarding this question. We do, indeed, believe that the Bible affirms this comprehensive triad of aspects of the Faith as guidance for our teaching and our living. The pattern is not always completely clear, and we will not assert that it is. Nor will we assert that thinking of the comprehensive pattern as threefold is the only way that this comprehensiveness of concern could be organized. But we do believe that there is biblical warrant for concluding that the church has been both pastorally wise and biblically faithful to point believers toward these three aspects of Christian living—what we believe, how we relate to our neighbors, and how we commune with God.
In the great confession of the Jewish faith, the shema—as recorded in Deuteronomy 6:4—we find these words. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Here is a call to believe and adhere to the most basic of theological truths, that there is one God alone—the Lord. Although Jewish writers through the years have commonly affirmed that Judaism is primarily an ethical rather than a theological religion, it is not disputed that theology matters in Judaism and that this is the central theological tenet of that faith. This most basic Jewish faith confession is immediately followed in Deuteronomy with a command toward the obvious and necessary response: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deut. 6:5).
In this foundational biblical text we see at work what might be called two forms of theology—indicative theology and imperative theology. The idea is that to every theological truth we affirm as fact there is a corresponding command attached, implicitly if not explicitly. The same pattern might also be described as the principle of revelation and response. Whatever God has revealed to us about himself, about his mighty deeds or about his will for our lives always requires an appropriate response from us. In the Deuteronomy passage, we can reason as follows: Given that it is true that there is only one God and he is the Lord, then to that One who alone is God we must offer our entire love and devotion.
In several New Testament texts, we find this indicative-imperative, or revelation-response, pattern rather obviously in play. John, for example, writes that “God is love.” This indicative theology embraces the imperative to “love one another” (1 John 4:7–8). A few verses later, John expands. “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his only Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:10–11). In the same letter, John writes that God is light and exhorts his readers to walk in the light (1:5–7). God is righteous, and thus only those who do what is right can be considered “born of God” (2:29; 3:7). It is clear that as critical as right belief is, it must always be matched by right behavior. This reminds us of our earlier consideration of the Great Commission and Jesus’s command that we make disciples for him by “teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded” (Matt. 28:20).
Another witness to the notion of a comprehensiveness of teaching concern in Scripture is the threefold division of the Hebrew Scriptures, of which we wrote in chapter 2 above. In his book The Creative Word Walter Brueggemann has made a compelling argument that the threefold division of the Tanakh represents three distinct types of teaching in Israel.14 The Torah, he argues, represents “the disclosure of binding” to the commands of the Lord. The Prophets represent “the disruption for justice.” And the Writings represent “the discernment of order.” In building his case Brueggemann appeals to an interesting passage in Jeremiah in which we read the words of evil men who were plotting to kill the prophet: “They said, ‘Come, let’s make plans against Jeremiah; for the teaching of the law by the priest will not be lost, nor will counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophets” (Jer. 18:18). While these schemers had only evil in mind, Brueggemann asserts that they quite correctly named the three categories of teachers among the people of Israel— priests, prophets, and sages. These three types of teachers correspond to the three types of teaching represented in the Tanakh.
In the New Testament as well we find a number of passages and ideas that affirm the comprehensiveness of concern we have argued for above. The first letter of the apostle John provides us with a particularly helpful example. John notes that there are several witnesses that testify as to whether or not a person truly knows God, has been born of God, and is a child of God. There is, first, a theological test. Those who know God believe that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2:22), the Son of God (1 John 4:15; 5:5, 10) who has come in the flesh, being sent by the Father to make propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:2, 9–10). There is, second, a moral test—only those who do what is right (1 John 3:6–10a), especially by loving fellow believers (1 John 3:10; 4:7–8, 16, 19–21), are born of God. There is also, third, the witness of the Spirit within our hearts (1 John 3:24; 4:13), the Spirit who anoints us so that we may discern, hear, and heed the truth (1 John 2:20; 4:6).
We remember also that Paul in his pastoral epistles is especially concerned that Timothy and Titus give proper attention to both sound doctrine and to the lifestyle in which believers must walk. To Timothy he writes, “Watch your life and your teaching. In doing so, you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Tim. 4:16). He instructs Titus to teach leaders both to heed “sound doctrine” (Titus 1:9) and to walk in the pattern of life that “is in accord with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1).
Jesus himself also modeled for us this comprehensiveness of concern in his teaching ministry. He testified to the Truth (John 3:31–32; 18:37) and in his own person and work incarnated the Truth for us, perfectly revealing the invisible God (John 1:14, 18; 14:9). Jesus invited men and women into a vital relationship with the transcendent God and offered Life in and through that relationship (John 5:21; 7:37–38; 10:10; 17:3). And he taught much about the Way of God in which we must walk—the Way of loving both God and neighbor. More than offering instruction at this point, he himself perfectly walked this Way, leaving us an example to follow (Mark 10:45; John 13:15, 34–35). We see in him, in other words, the threefold office of Christ our Prophet, Priest, and King—all evident even in the days of his earthly life.
Finally, we return to the four commitments of the newly baptized believers as mentioned in Acts 2:42. We recall that they had steadfastly devoted themselves to four things: the apostles’ teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers. We see here yet another testimony to holistic Christian experience. The apostles’ 
, as we have argued, was Gospel-centric through and through. The fellowship was a participation with one another as the body of Christ. The breaking of the bread was a regular sharing of what we call the Lord’s Supper, and the prayers were largely communal and liturgical in nature. It is easy to understand how in some faith communities the catechetical commitment would thus have four elements rather than three. Much Roman Catholic catechetical work, for example, is structured under the headings: We Believe, We Celebrate (in the liturgy), We Pray, We Live. As we have seen, the Reformation catechisms also included instruction in the sacraments. But we also noted that even with this fourth category of instruction there has been consistent reference to the “three summaries” or the “three formulae.” It has often been pointed out that this catechetical triad provides believers with a creed, a code, and training in cultus, that is, corporate worship.15 All are related to our communion with the living God. While not dismissing the validity of a fourfold approach, we elect to stay with the threefold pattern we have outlined in this chapter and therefore combine attention to worship and prayer together as the substance of lex orandi.
There seems, then, to be sufficient biblical warrant for a multifaceted approach to the content of our teaching ministries. If we combine some of these biblical witnesses with some of the historic witnesses we considered above, our table now looks like this:
Psychosocial Witnesses
Finally, we turn to briefly consider what we will call “psychosocial witnesses” to see how the three dimensions of the Faith speak to the deepest needs and longings of the human heart.
That humans possess thirsty souls has been well attested by many notable thinkers, both Christian and non-Christian. In his Confessions Augustine articulated the matter with these famous words: “For Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts know no rest until they rest in Thee.”16 Pascal spoke of the futile efforts of people to fill with other things “the infinite abyss” in their souls which, in fact, can be filled “only by God himself.”17 C. S. Lewis used the German word Sehnsucht, meaning “longing” or “yearning,” to describe this deep longing in our souls. Writing of his childhood, Lewis says,
What the real garden had failed to do, the toy garden did. It made me aware of nature—not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant. I do not think the impression was very important at the moment, but it soon became important in memory. As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother’s toy garden. And every day there were what we called “the Green Hills,” that is, the low line of the Castlereagh Hills which we saw from the nursery windows. They were not very far off but they were, to children, quite unattainable. They taught me longing—Sehnsucht; made me for good or ill, and before I was six years old, a votary of the Blue Flower.18
In her book Is It a Lost Cause? Marva Dawn expands upon the notion of Sehnsucht. Drawing upon the work of Lewis she describes this phenomenon as a deep, insatiable longing:
This pressing, restless longing for fulfillment that nothing can satisfy more than temporarily. . . . If we have this intense longing and nothing in the world can satisfy it, and nothing in the world can push it under, then we must be made for another world! To recognize that Sehnsucht is our God-created longing for our true home in God is to find the roots of the longing itself.19
What Lewis and Dawn describe by their use of a single term can also be perceived as having several aspects. John Stott has written of “three quests” that engage all humans in every age and in every culture. These are the quest for significance, the quest for transcendence, and the quest for community.20 Our Sehnsucht, if we follow Stott here, has these three distinct features. We have not only a vague sense of inner hunger; we have specific psychosocial needs as human beings. In God’s wisdom and mercy these needs, Stott argues, can be met through the ministry of the church. Through the ministry of teaching the church offers answers to the search for significance. Through the ministry of worship we respond to the quest for transcendence. And the koinonia of the church is God’s provision for the human need for community. But tragically, Stott goes on to say, through unfaithfulness and ineptitude local churches too often fail to offer anything that can satisfy searching hearts. Our teaching is too often inadequate, our worship too often inane, and our fellowship too often excludes rather than embraces.
Still other witnesses have testified to this threefold description of our spiritual hunger. Gene Edward Veith, drawing upon the earlier work of Adolph Koeberle, has taken some notions from Luther to speak of three false spiritualities. These he describes as speculation, mysticism, and moralism.21 Attempting to fill the great void within us and the quest for significance in which we must engage, some tread a path of intellectual speculation. But this often leads to a situation in which people are “ever learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7). Indeed, many have already concluded that truth in any absolute sense does not exist. Thus no destination is ever envisioned for some on this path. They simply join the journey and ask the questions, never waiting for answers.
The second path, that of mysticism, corresponds to Stott’s quest for transcendence. Through a landscape of varying “spiritual experiences” one seeks to connect with the divine—whether that divine is perceived as personal or not. This might include forays into various forms of meditation, experimentation with mind-altering drugs, or even the search for ecstatic experiences through sexual exploration.
The third path Veith discusses is moralism. This reminds us of an aspect of Stott’s quest for community. In moralism one seeks to do good to his or her neighbor. Enough philanthropic efforts and one may finally find the satisfaction so desperately longed for. But in the end this road, like the path of speculation, proves to be a dead end. It is not uncommon for some “searchers” to try out more than one of these spiritual roadways at various times in their lives. They are like the author of Ecclesiastes who, after seemingly having tried it all, can only conclude, “Meaningless! Meaningless! . . . Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” (Eccles. 1:2).
The three quests of Stott and the spiritualities Veith renounces bring to mind depictions of human enquiry from earlier times. One of the traditional ways of classifying fields of philosophical study is to use the threefold division of epistemology, ontology, and axiology. Epistemology is the study of knowing and knowledge. It asks, “What is true, and how do we know it?” Ontology ponders the question, “What is the nature of being?” Axiology asks the question of value: “What is good?”22 Here we find another searching witness to the threefold pattern that we have been discussing.
Recalling our earlier consideration of the historic witnesses, we find an intriguing correspondence. The human heart seeks significance. The Creed begins to explain to us the momentous Story into which God has brought us. We seek transcendence also. The Lord’s Prayer (together with the sacraments) invites us into a life of communion with the living God. We long for community with others. The Decalogue in turn instructs us in how to live well and wisely in relation to both God and our neighbors.
When we take the testimony of these various witnesses together, we see how the glorious Gospel of Christ and the three dimensions of the one Faith speak powerfully to the deepest of our human needs and desires. The old Sunday school joke that no matter what the question is the answer is “Jesus!” surely applies here, but it is no joke. Jesus—the Truth, the Life, and the Way—is truly the answer to our every need, as here to our three profoundest needs. Thus we see fully the wisdom of Paul’s resolution: “We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ” (Col. 1:28).
Naming the Three Facets
We have argued thus far that our proclamation must have a comprehensiveness of concern—that is, it must address individuals and congregations holistically, attending to the various aspects of our humanity. In later chapters we will explore the significance of all this for the how of our teaching ministries. In this chapter, however, our focus is on the what of our teaching—the content of our catechesis. We hav129e suggested that the one Faith we are called to proclaim has three facets. These facets overlap and interrelate, and we therefore make no overly fine distinction between them. But we do well to name each of the three facets so that we may better understand and apply ourselves more effectively to them.
St. Augustine, as we saw earlier, would label the three dimensions faith, hope, and love, thereby centering attention upon what have been called the three “theological virtues.” The wisdom of this approach is heightened by the fact that this triad of terms is found throughout Scripture and has a long history of emphasis in the life and teaching of the church. Through the centuries there have been many authors, Catholic and Protestant alike, who have stressed the foundational importance of these three graces. It is our conviction, however, that these are more fitly seen as the aims of our teaching rather than as its content. That is to say, we teach with a view to eliciting faith, hope, and love. By persistent instruction in the three facets of the Faith these responses are cultivated in our hearts.
To name the facets themselves we choose to utilize a different set of biblical terms: the Way, the Truth, and the Life. These are drawn of course from Jesus’s words concerning himself in John 14:6. In the passage Jesus tells his apostles that having seen him they have seen the Father. The Son reveals the Father and no one can be in relationship with the Father apart from him. In John’s Gospel account Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” These words are so familiar to Christians that we may not often think about what the terms actually communicate. Where did these terms come from? Did Jesus simply pull them out of the air and string them together? Or what?
We will not engage in a full exegesis of John 14:6. Nor do we suggest that Jesus uses the terms in this passage precisely as we employ them in naming the three dimensions of the Faith. But we would make the following points. First, in the larger context of John 14 Jesus is reiterating both his unique personal intimacy with the Father and his claim to be the One through whom we gain access to the Father. Those who know Jesus know the Father (John 14:9; see also John 5:19–27; 17:3). Second, the three expressions that Jesus utilizes—the way, the truth, and the life—speak both to how Jesus incarnates the invisible God and leads us toward relationship with him. Let us now turn to a brief consideration of each term.
The Way
“The way,” as seen in the context of John 14:1–5, points us directly to the fact that Jesus alone provides access to the Father. As Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (14:6). In this sense “the way” reminds us of his earlier words in John’s Gospel: “I am the gate for the sheep” (10:7). And again, “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture” (10:9). “The way” reminds us also of Hebrews 10:19–20. There we read that through the shed blood of Christ “a new and living way” has been opened for us into the most holy place, through “the curtain, that is, his body.” Paul also refers to the destroying of barriers by the power of the cross, with the result that Jews and Gentiles “both have access to the Father by one Spirit” (Eph. 2:18). “The way” points us to the reality of the atoning death that Jesus was about to die and to the resurrection life, both for him and for us, that was to follow. As Jesus had said earlier concerning the manner in which he was to die, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32).
Elsewhere in Scripture, however, “the way” has a different connotation and plays a large role in both the Old and New Testaments. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the expression bespeaks the pattern of one’s walk or manner of living in this world.23 In this respect a contrast is made between “the way of the righteous” and “the way of the wicked” (as in Psalm 1). The way of the righteous is the way of life and of blessing; it is “the way of the Lord.” The way of the wicked is the way of death, of cursing; it is the way of this fallen world. Thus a clear choice is consistently set before God’s people (as in Deut. 30:11–20). Often, “the way of the righteous” or “the way of the Lord” is simply referred to as “the way” or “the ways of the Lord,” “his way,” “your ways,” and so on (e.g., Ps. 25:4, 7–10). In Jeremiah 6:16 we read of both “the ancient paths” and “the good way” that God’s people ought to have walked in—but they refused to do so. In the Old Testament order of things, one discerns the way in which one ought to walk through contemplation upon torah (Ps. 119:1–16, 32) and with the aid of wise and godly teachers (Ps. 32:8; Isa. 30:21).
What is “the way of the Lord”? In a word, it is love. To walk in God’s way is to live a life characterized by love of God and neighbor. Love for God is manifested by obedience to his commands (Deut. 6:4; John 14:15; 1 John 5:3). Chief among the commands we must obey is his command to love our neighbor. Combining Deuteronomy 6:4–5 with Leviticus 19:18 Jesus (and many of his contemporaries) concluded that there are no greater commands than to love the Lord and to love one’s neighbor (Mark 12:28–31).
The concept of two ways that stand in stark contrast to each other is taken up by Jesus in Matthew 7 when he refers to two gates with two roads—one leading to life and the other to destruction (Matt. 7:13–14). Those who believed in Jesus came to be called followers of “the Way” early on (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 24:22). In the earliest Christian writings after the New Testament era, teaching about the “two ways” is commonplace. Thus the Didache of the Apostles, as we saw above, begins with the words “There are two ways: the way of life and the way of death.”
How might we join this large biblical concept of the Way with Jesus’s declaration that he is the only way to the Father? We suggest the following line of argument. The way of the Lord is the way of life and blessing. Those who walk in that way by obeying God’s commands shall live and prosper before the Lord. As the Torah testifies, “The man who obeys them will live by them” (Lev. 18:5). But as we read in Romans 3:9–18 and elsewhere, there is no one who has fully obeyed God’s commands. And the Torah testifies further, “Cursed is the man who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out” (Deut. 27:26). The apostle Paul refers to both these Scriptures and argues that (1) no one can be justified on the basis of the law (since none of us fully obey that law); (2) Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us through his death on the cross; (3) thus we are justified by faith in Christ alone and live by the gift of the Spirit (Gal. 3:6–14). Jesus’s full and perfect obedience (Rom. 5:19), even unto death on a cross (Phil. 2:8), overcomes the burden of our disobedience. He has become “our righteousness, holiness, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30). In other words, because Jesus is the only one who has fully walked in the way of the Lord he is the only way we can come to the Father for life. From Genesis 3 onward, we had been cut off from “the way to the tree of life” (Gen. 3:24; cf. Heb. 9:8). But through Christ “a new and living way” has been made for us (Heb. 10:19). Believing in him alone we have life in his name (John 20:31).24
The Life
This leads us to another of the terms in John 14:6, “the life.” To understand this we focus on the Johannine writings where the term is repeatedly used.25
• “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (1:4).
• “That whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (3:16).
• “The water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (4:14).
• “Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it” (5:21).
• “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him” (7:38).
• “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full” (10:10).
• “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25).
• “This is life eternal, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (17:3).
• “That you may have life in his name” (20:31).
• “God has given us eternal life and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:11–13).
A consideration of these references makes it clear that the Life promised in these passages is nothing less than a vital relationship with the living God.
This relationship means that the one who has believed in Jesus has “eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24). Thus eternal life is a gift to be enjoyed both now and forever. Those who believe in Jesus possess it already and thereby the hope of glory is truly theirs. This gift of life is clearly linked in John’s account to the gift of the Holy Spirit (John 7:38–39). The Spirit’s presence ensures and assures us that we are God’s children (1 John 4:13), works in us sanctification (2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Peter 1:2), and guarantees our future glorification (Eph. 1:13–14). How do we experience this life? Only in and through a relational embrace of Jesus Christ. Life is in him. He is God’s life incarnate.
An intriguing reference to the Life is found in Acts 5. There we read that the angel of the Lord opened the doors of the prison into which the authorities had put the apostles. As he freed them he instructed them to “go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life” (Acts 5:20). Some have suggested that “the Life” may thus have been an early identifying name for Christianity, along with “the Way.”26
The Truth
Finally we focus on the middle term from John 14:6, “the truth,” which Jesus also claims to be. All that is true about the invisible God is revealed to us in Christ. Christ is the mystery of God made manifest; in him “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:2–3). This God to whom the Hebrew prophets faithfully witnessed has disclosed himself fully in his only-begotten Son (Heb. 1:1–3). God’s logos “was made flesh,” writes John. “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). To us has been given, writes Paul, “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).
We label the three dimensions of the Faith as the Truth, the Life, and the Way. An additional benefit of doing this—as opposed to using terms like faith, hope, and love; or learning, worship, and action; or any other nomenclature—is that we are reminded that it is Christ himself we are to proclaim. The One who is set forth in the Gospel is further explicated in our Bibles as the incarnate truth of the unseen God; as the only One who can offer thirsty souls the very life of God; and as the One who both shows us God’s way (by the obedience of his earthly life) and has become that way for us (through his full obedience to the Father, even unto death on the cross for us). All this is to be celebrated and reproduced in our catechetical instruction.
We offer below one final summary table of our findings and suggestions to this point. In so doing, we bring together the historical, biblical, and psychosocial witnesses whose testimonies we have considered in this chapter.27
The Relational Claims of Catechesis
We close this chapter with one more table, this one intended to highlight what we might call the relational claims of catechesis. If the preceding has all seemed too categorical and propositional for the sensibilities of some readers, there is another way we may look at things. Here our focus is on both proclaiming Christ and responding to him. Believing the table to be self-explanatory, we add to it no further remarks.
We Proclaim Christ (Col. 1:28)