Confessing the Event

Preface: A Catechism of Actualism

This catechism is born from the conviction that God is a living act. Divine being occurs as freedom, as the event in which love determines itself to be the ground of all things. The divine life is a history that takes place eternally, a self-movement in which God wills to be God with and for creation.

The modern age has left faith suspended between silence and speech. The metaphysical language of static perfection no longer sustains the searching heart, and the emptiness that follows the collapse of certainty has become its own confession. Theology finds its task within this interval. It must learn to speak again of God as the One whose eternity is presence in motion, whose truth abides through the constancy of self-giving love.

God’s being is decision. The eternal life of God occurs as an act of self-determination. God becomes who God is in the history of Jesus Christ. The Incarnation is the revelation of divine identity. The history of Jesus is the history of God’s becoming.

The catechism follows this rhythm of divine happening in five movements:

1. The Event of God — the self-determining freedom of divine being.
2. The Event of Jesus Christ — the history in which God becomes Godself.
3. The Event of the Spirit — the presence of God’s act within history.
4. The Event of the Church — the communal form of participation in divine actuality.
5. The Event of the New Creation — the fulfillment of God’s eternal resolve.

Each movement unfolds a single act of grace. The words are offered as confessions spoken within the event of revelation. The purpose is formation of vision, so that heart and intellect may perceive divine freedom as the substance of grace.

The Reformed tradition remains the soil of this confession. Its sense of divine sovereignty becomes fidelity that endures, and its sense of election becomes God’s self-determination to be this God, with and for creation, in Jesus Christ. The covenant of God with the world reaches its meaning in this eternal act of communion.

Faith enters the history that gives it life. To believe is to participate in the event by which God defines Godself and creation is gathered into divine purpose. Theology becomes the witness of this participation, speech that arises within the act it names.

This catechism speaks to those who seek the living God amid the fragility of modern faith, to those who discern in the crucified Christ the form of divine eternity, to those who trust that the mystery of God endures as freedom in motion, as love that happens eternally and historically, as life that gives itself without remainder.

I. The Event of God

Q1. Who is God?

God is the One whose being is act. God eternally determines Godself to be God-for-us. In this act, God becomes who God is.

Q2. What does it mean that God’s being is act?

It means that God has no hidden essence apart from self-giving. The being of God is God’s deeds, the freedom and love enacted in Jesus Christ.

Q3. Is this act eternal or temporal?

It is both. Eternal, because it is God’s own life; temporal, because it includes our history. The act that makes God who God is has always already embraced creation and redemption.

Q4. How is God free?

God is free in self-determination — free to be love, to be for another, to be this God and no other. Divine freedom is the constancy of this self-giving act.

Q5. How do we speak of God?

We speak from the event of revelation. We do not define God; we confess the One who has defined Godself by acting toward us.

II. The Event of Jesus Christ

Q6. Where do we see God?

We see God in Jesus Christ. The history of Jesus is the reality of God’s own being coming to act.

Q7. Who is Jesus Christ in relation to God?

Jesus Christ is the event in which God becomes Godself as Source, Word, and Spirit. The Word is constituted in the Incarnation.

Q8. What happens in the cross and resurrection?

There, God interprets Godself. The cross is the act in which divine love is made visible as self-giving; the resurrection is the act in which this love is confirmed as eternal life.

Q9. What is revealed in Jesus Christ?

That God’s glory is love enacted; that God’s eternity is the freedom to be for another; that God’s power is the constancy of mercy.

Q10. Why is Jesus Christ the center of all theology?

Because in Christ the being of God and the history of the world coincide. All speech about God must begin and end in this act.

III. The Event of the Spirit

Q11. Who is the Holy Spirit?

The Spirit is the continuation of God’s act, the divine presence making the event of Jesus Christ actual in our time.

Q12. What does the Spirit do?

The Spirit interprets God’s act to us. The Spirit awakens faith, illumines Scripture, forms community, and makes God’s being present in history.

Q13. How does the Spirit reveal God?

Not by adding new knowledge, but by drawing us into participation. The Spirit actualizes what has already been decided eternally: that God will be known in love.

Q14. What is revelation in the Spirit?

Revelation is the occurrence of God’s presence. To encounter the Spirit is to be caught up in the event of divine self-giving.

Q15. How do we discern the Spirit?

By the shape of God’s act: wherever freedom becomes service, wherever truth is joined with mercy, wherever love overcomes fear, there the Spirit acts.

IV. The Event of the Church

Q16. What is the Church?

The Church is the community formed by God’s act, the people in whom God’s self-determining love becomes visible in time.

Q17. How does the Church exist?

It exists as hearing, confessing, and participating — as the echo of the divine event. The Church bears witness to the One whose grace happens anew.

Q18. What are the Word and Sacraments?

They are the forms through which the divine act meets us. They are signs that do what they signify, events that actualize God’s presence in community.

Q19. What is the Church’s mission?

To participate in God’s act by proclaiming reconciliation. Mission is the continuation of God’s act through human lives.

Q20. How does faith live in the Church?

Faith lives by responding. To believe is to be drawn into God’s act, to be included in the history through which God becomes who God is for us.

V. The Event of the New Creation

Q21. What is the future of God’s act?

The future is the completion of what has already begun. God’s eternal act unfolds toward fullness, where love will be all in all.

Q22. What is judgment?

Judgment is the truth of God’s act, the unveiling of what resists love and the vindication of all that participates in it.

Q23. What is resurrection life?

It is participation in the constancy of God’s act. Eternal life is the world transfigured by the fullness of divine freedom.

Q24. What is Christian hope?

Hope is confidence that God will be God, that the act of love revealed in Jesus Christ will be brought to completion in every creature.

Q25. What is the end of all things?

The end is fulfillment. The event of God’s self-determining love will be all reality. God will be what God has eternally chosen to be: love enacted, life shared, grace without remainder.

Epilogue: Benediction of the God Who Happens

Leader:

God speaks by being.

God lives by acting.

God loves by giving.

People:

We believe in the God whose being is act,

whose act is grace,

whose grace is life.

Leader:

Before all things, the living God determined to be God-for-us.

In Jesus Christ, that determination entered the history of the world.

Through the Spirit, that same determination becomes our breath and our peace.

People:

We live within the event of divine mercy.

We are named within the history that makes God known.

We await the fullness of the act already begun.

Leader:

The living God abides in faithfulness.

Love remains the substance of power.

Freedom endures as constancy of grace.

People:

God will be who God is.

The work of love will reach its fulfillment.

Life will be made whole.

Leader:

Go in the peace of the God who happens,

whose eternity is communion,

whose truth is compassion,

whose glory is love shared.

People:

The act of God is our life.

The love of Christ is our meaning.

The Spirit’s freedom is our song,

now and forever. Amen.