Not Static But Living. . .

The Church has always struggled with those who believe that nothing can change and those who believe everything can change.  It was part of the conundrum faced when such terms as homoousias was used in the creed or the refinement of how we define Christ's incarnation resulted in the term Theotokos.  But it is not quite the same struggle we face today where the presumption is that the faith grows in the same way a child grows up to look, sound, and act differently than when he was a youth.  Change is certainly inevitable as doctrines are questioned, debated, and sharpened as iron against iron but this is not the change of substance but of the way that substance is confessed.  

In 2017, Pope Francis stated that the deposit of faith is not “something static.”  We all know what he meant by that.  This was, after all, the same Pope who summarily restricted a form of the Mass in use for more than four centuries by suggesting that a new form had developed to replace the old and that the two could not live side by side.  In his case, the Pope was treating the form like the content -- if it lives, it must change and that change means it will be different than it was before.  The new does not merely supplant but replaces what went before.  It rightfully made people nervous -- the prospect that a non-static faith means one subject to change not simply in its confession but in its content.

Francis, like many, has misunderstood what it means not to be static.  The deposit of faith is certainly not static but the reason for this is that it is alive -- not because it is subject to the changes of culture or definition.  This is, in one sense, at the heart of the Reformation.  Is the faith subject to edit by council or magisterium or papacy or is it something that lives as the creation of God, subject to His direction?  It is the quest for that which is the true authority in the Church.  Those opposed to council, magisterium, and papacy point to Scripture -- the Word of the Lord that endures forever (by its own claim!).  Often this is dismissed as a naive Biblicism and characterized by a false understanding of sola Scriptura.  At the heart of the claim for Scripture alone is not that it is alone or that it is ripped from its context or from the beating heart of the faith believed and confessed.  No, the claim for Scripture alone is the pursuit of an absolute in the context of constant change.  It is not static because the deposit of faith lives and it lives not because we make alive but because it is the domain of the Spirit, the means through which the Spirit is at work, and because, at heart, it is the living voice of the Lord still speaking the one and eternal Gospel.

Not static does not automatically subject to change or change on its own.  It means alive with the power and purpose of God, doing what He has promised as He wills it.  We meet it not on the level of intellectual understanding or an equal reason but always by faith.  Hebrews is clear as it recounts the generations of those who encountered the promise of God and received its fulfillment not with eyes to see or minds to understand but by faith to trust.  Hebrews 11:1-12:3  Francis is as guilty as those on the other side who view Scripture as something to be harnessed to a cause or used to an end instead of believed and confessed as the means through which God is now at work in His Church, among the faithful, and there in the world.  Perhaps the Protestants have forgotten this but the Lutherans should not.  

We confess the Word that is not simply eternal but efficacious -- the power to do what it says and deliver what it promises to those who believe it (with faith itself the prompting and creation of the Spirit).  This was Luther's intent in the explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles' Creed -- the Spirit who calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies.  No static Word can do this and no deposit of faith that is merely a record of the past has the power to act in this way.  Only the living Word that once spoke and now speaks still the Word that changes not in its content but changes those who hear it.  It is not static but living and it lives to breathe life into the hearer and all of this is met upon the ground of faith as the Spirit wills and works in fulfillment of the Father's sending and the Son's direction and promise.

Those who view Scripture as a book of facts to be protected against modernity are in the same place as those who view Scripture as a book of changing truth.  In contrast to this, the Church confesses that Scripture is the Word of the Lord that is forever, the living voice of God addressing us with the words of salvation, and the living means through which we apprehend that voice and believe it by the Spirit.  In this way Scripture lives not for itself but for us, for all who are saved, and for the cause of a world loved by God and redeemed in Christ.  Faith is not our conviction that Scripture is true but that it does what it says and delivers what it promises.  In this respect, the Word is always liturgical -- it is a Word that acts and in acting, saves, and in saving, makes new.  Perhaps the problem with both sides in this debate is that they have pulled Scripture from its liturgical context and placed it within the domain of the individual -- who determines its truth and defines its action for himself as if the Word and the deposit of faith had nothing to say or do on its own.  When that happens, it always ends up as a dead Word that is fragile and must be protected instead of a strong and life-giving Word that acts according to God's own will and purpose OR a Word that lives only to reflect what we say it means and therefore ends up just as fragile and weak because we are constantly redefining it.  Neither of these bear any resemblance to the way the Word of God and the deposit of faith are spoken of in Scripture.  We guard it not by burying it or hiding it or by preserving it but precisely by believing it, hearing it, and confessing it before the world.  That is how the Word of God lives and the deposit of faith lives.