Perhaps readers of this blog may be unaware that those of us who teach at Calvin (now University) must sign “The Big Black Book.” Let me explain. This is a good story.
The book is held, I believe, in the provost’s office now, though in my time it was in the keep of the college president, who guarded it with sincerity, even zeal. The book contains the three documents that theologically define the Christian Reformed Church: the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession and the Canons of the Synod of Dort.
In the next section of the big book is a place for faculty members to sign their names, in testimony that they agree with the three documents. If you agree, you just sign your name. If you have some objections, there is a place for you to write out those concerns.
I got the call from the president’s office to come up to sign during my first year at Calvin, the academic year 1969-70. The President, Dr. William Spoelhof, was kindly and welcoming as I came into his office. Since I was not CRC in my background, nor a graduate of Calvin, he didn’t know precisely what he was going to get in this meeting. He pointed out the contents of the book, and showed, with I think some pride, the various and sometimes lengthy pages in which faculty people had written out, in their own hand, their objections. He said that there would be plenty of room for objections if I was so inclined. I glanced over the writings and saw many people objecting to things like infant baptism and limited atonement.
I believe I surprised him when I said that I was prepared to sign without objection. Really? No concerns or caveats? No, I said. He handed me the pen I was to use. He asked again if I was sure.
I said that I was glad to give my assent to these documents because I understood that I was, in effect, an employee of the CRC, and thus had to agree with its defining documents – “the form of subscription” — as had all others who serve the church.
My next comment seemed to surprise even more. I said I wanted it understood that in giving my assent here, I was not giving my dissent elsewhere. His face grew seriously, even gravely, concerned. What did I mean about assent and dissent? I said that in agreeing these documents to be “true” I was not saying that others were “untrue.” So, for example, if on this table one found, say, The Westminster Confession I would sign that too. I further said I would also sign the (Lutheran) Augsburg Confession and, for that matter, the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.
Dr. Spoelhof countered, they don’t fully agree with each other. I said that it would be for theologians to argue about, not a young historian beginning his career at Calvin. For my part, an attitude of openness was crucial. I insisted that each of the historic documents mentioned above could inform the other and we’d all be the better for it, in a generous world in which we listened to and learned from other Protestant confessions; in short, just what a liberal arts education stood for, or so I believed.
Dr. Spoelhof apparently didn’t want to have that discussion. He asked me directly if I was indeed prepared to sign without objection. Before I could say anything else, he handed me the pen and said: “sign here.” I did. We shook hands, and the subject never came up again in our years of harmoniously working together.
In my teaching and writing, I continued with a generous attitude to other Christian traditions, believing, as I told the president back then, that we are all better off in open dialogue with fellow Christians. So, do I believe that the CRC’s “Three Forms of Unity” are true? Sure I do. I signed the book, didn’t I?
If anyone reading this ever gets to see this big black book in the Provost’s Office, you can ask to see the page for 1969, with my signature put there some fifty-three years ago, in which I signed without objection. But now you know the rest of the story.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
