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CONFESSIONAL THEOLOGY

The term confessio originally referred to the testimony of faith offered by a martyr. From this meaning, the term was extended to refer to the shrines or the tombs of martyrs. It eventually came to take on the sense of a clear and definite statement of religious conviction. Confessional theology, therefore, means theology that takes its point of departure within the framework of faith and a given faith community.

The term “confessional theology” is used in two senses. The first refers to a kind of Protestant theology, predominantly of the Lutheran and Reformed churches. These traditions devised carefully written statements of their convictions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The chief examples are the Augsburg Confession and The Book of Concord in the Lutheran tradition, and the Westminster Confession and Catechism in the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition.

These documents are understood by their confessing communities not to be creeds like the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed that require the assent of believers, but documents that provide interpretative guides to Scripture and earlier creedal traditions. To a lesser degree, the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England serve a similar function for the Anglican (in the United States, the Episcopal) communion, as does the Schleitheim Confession for the Mennonites.

Within these traditions, some theologians engage in confessional theology. They discuss theological topics in modern terms and in ways consonant with these confessional documents. Such theologians defer to confessional documents as authoritative and fundamental statements of the core of Christian conviction, or at least as clear statements of the distinctive features of the understanding of Christian faith according to their particular tradition.

Since the confessional documents provide a framework of shared theological perspective, they enable their communities to engage in focused and lively debate, often in contrast to the diffuse character of much modern theology. Intellectually rigorous theological discussion can often be found most clearly in the communities that share a confessional heritage.

On the other hand, all classical confessions antedate the historical critical study of the Bible and the deep appreciation of historical and cultural relativity of every particular place and time that characterizes modern consciousness. Confessionalism therefore can be highly parochial and make claims to certainty and clarity regarding revelation that are difficult to sustain. Also, a theological idea that is firmly entrenched in a particular confessional tradition (e.g., “law and gospel” for Lutherans) may be difficult to challenge or question from within that tradition in cases where, in light of historical experience, it becomes dated or ethically problematic.

A second sense of the phrase “confessional theology” is distinctively modern, and derives from H. Richard Niebuhr’s The Meaning of Revelation. In that work, he employs the term “confessional theology” to articulate a theological method that accepts the cultural and historical relativism of modern social sciences and yet affirms a distinctive Christian “revelation.” According to that understanding, theology does its proper work when it articulates the language and view of the world that characterizes the Christian faith in all its particularity. Niebuhr’s confessional method, however, recognizes that “self-defense is the most prevalent error in all thinking and perhaps especially in theology and ethics.” Therefore, Niebuhr advocates a theology that concerns itself with finding the communally shared affirmations of Christians. Niebuhr concisely summarizes his method: “[W]e can proceed only by stating in simple, confessional form what has happened to us in our community, how we came to believe, how we reason about things and what we see from our point of view.” Although this use of the term “confessional theology” is Niebuhr’s, there are in this respect clear lines of affinity between Niebuhr’s method and that of Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Although not always labeled confessional theology, Niebuhr’s perspective has wide influence in current theology. Many of Niebuhr’s students (James M. Gustafson and Gordon Kaufmann are two clear examples) approach theological reflection in ways that have deep continuities with Niebuhr. The current emphasis on unapologetic particularity in Christian ethics (e.g., Stanley Hauerwas) stands in a direct line of descent from Niebuhr. Narrative theologies often find at least part of their inspiration in Niebuhr. Not all, of course, would meet equally with Niebuhr’s approval, but they do share fundamental impulses that are in common with his direction.

More broadly, the question of relativism and particularity so clearly stated by Niebuhr lives on in discussions of foundationalism and nonfoundationalism, relativism and objectivism, and postmodernism and theology. Although George Lindbeck, Hans Frei, and William Placher do not use the term “confessional,” many of the same issues lie at the heart of their work.

MARTIN L. COOK

Bibliography

Willard Dow Allbeck, Studies in the Lutheran Confessions.

Nestor Beck, The Doctrine of Faith.

Arthur C. Cochrane, ed., Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century.

Martin L. Cook, The Open Circle: Confessional Method in Theology.

James M. Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, 2 vols.

H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation; Faith on Earth: An Inquiry into the Structure of Human Faith (Richard R. Niebuhr, ed.).

Douglas Ottati, Meaning and Method in H. Richard Niebuhr’s Theology; Hopeful Realism: Reclaiming the Poetry of Theology; Jesus Christ and Christian Vision.

Cross-Reference: Narrative Theology, Soteriology, Systematic Theology, Theological Method.

CONVERSION (See SOTERIOLOGY.)