A Brief Defense of Confessions

A common tale could be told of those who, over the past two decades, have migrated from popular Evangelicalism, to the so-called New Calvinism, to confessional Reformed churches. The value of the creeds of the early church and those confessions and catechisms of the Reformation are now a firm conviction. But not all are so convinced.  With as many representatives of the Old Calvinism as the New falling head over heels for a place at the Woke table, it would be tempting to blame some of the wrong things in both Old and New, especially when considering whether or not the historical documents speak to the present attacks on the church.

There are five truths about confessional documents that will answer all of the usual objections against them. The confession is 1. inevitable, 2. public, 3. clarifying, 4. tested, and 5. regulative.

No doubt there are also positive ways to convince others of their value, but even these positive designs that are pedagogical, ecclesiological, and doxological, will show up here in a polemical way. Thus before we can apply the Confession to this or that controversy, we must emerge from the subjective and muddy waters of modern Evangelicalism to first see that confessionalism triumphs in that controversy over itself. 

First, the confession is inevitable.

Let us consider the most popular attacks on confessionalism in the nineteenth century atmosphere of revivalism. They were at once a full scale assault on the whole fortress of doctrine and history as “the traditions of men.” In what form did they come? Whether it was from the Restoration Movement’s “Bible only!” and “No creed but Christ!” or the more liberal flavor, “Deeds, not creeds!” All of these were clearly articulating that a “purer” faith would be one where the individual came straight to the Bible without the imposition of extra-biblical formulas.

However, the rallying cries “No creed but Christ!” and even “Deeds, not creeds!” are both creeds. One is a reduced Jesus and the other pragmatism, but both have uttered words to which the speaker expects full subscription. And of course both will have fine print. The one who holds to such a view will nevertheless have all sorts of implications that they mean by it, such that if one presses them, they will be most eager to defend. Such a defense will take more words, and such words will be intended with authority. 

We may go further. Every church is a tradition and thus “confesses.” One’s tradition refers not only to the church past, but to one’s present church community. Both of these shape us. More often than not, they do so in ways of which we are unaware.

Now to confess is nothing but to say with the mouth what is most necessary for the soul. Such declarations are in Scripture: “Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’” (Mat. 16:16); and the words of Jesus in the hearing of Pilate are called “the good confession” (1 Tim. 6:13).

Trueman gives a helpful definition with a qualification: “Creeds and confessions are human attempts to summarize and express the basic elements of the Christian faith. They have been constructed throughout the ages by people from very different contexts but who are all bound together by the shared horizons of God’s revelation in Christ and in the biblical text and their own common human nature as readers of that text … All creedal formulations are subordinate to Scripture and subject to correction thereby” [1]. 

Every church tradition will seek a balance between permanence and adaptability. Why will they do this? From a cynical perspective, they will do so for the very same reason that the first opponents of papal infallibility were the late medieval popes [2]. A human authority who will not submit to Scripture will want to be his own supreme authority, but not in such a way that the words of his predecessors form chains around his present edict.

Within a healthy submission to Scripture, a church will still be cautious in ever breaking from the ancient landmarks, yet cognizant of the fact that not all traditions are equal. So, wherever that line is between the permanent and the adaptable, everything on the permanent side of the line is the church’s confession.

Finally, every church tradition will draw a line between leaders and non-leaders. Now the moment one does this, there is some higher bar of “right teachings” to which the leaders will be expected to commit. This is nothing but confession plus subscription to the confession [3]. 

Second, the confession is public.

Implicit in the objection against confessional standards is that they are abusive, and, like orthodoxy itself, decide for everyone who is “in” and who is “out” [4]. The suggestion is that this is all very elitist. Trueman alerts us to an irony in this:

“Christians are not divided between those who have creeds and confessions and those who do not; rather, they are divided between those who have public creeds and confessions that are written down and exist as public documents, subject to public scrutiny, evaluation, and critique, and those who have private creeds and confessions that are often improvised, unwritten, and thus not open to public scrutiny, not susceptible to evaluation and, crucially and ironically, not, therefore, subject to testing by Scripture to see whether they are true” [5].

So this second truth just follows the first. Since confessions are just inevitable, the only question is whether they will be an objective thing to which all have access—and a law standing over all—or whether they will remain subjective and thus the secret whim of those wielding the most power of charisma or connection. Hence a confession forms a kind of “republic” of the wide open ecclesial country, and the alternative a tyranny of the unarticulated. In short, while the presence of confessions do not uproot the sins of elitism in our hearts, yet they do constitute a check against our native pride over which their absence will exert no power. 

Creedal and confessional documents, in addition to fencing out false teachers and other potential divisions, also “delimit the powers of the church [6]. This is true not only in the later scrutiny stage, but in the construction stage. The reason is biblical: “in the multitude of counsellors there is safety” (Prov. 11:14; cf. 15:22). That which comes out of rigorous debate among the best will, on the whole, exemplify more wisdom than that which issues forth from one finite mind. Of course the Belgic Confession is exceptional in this regard, being the product of Guido de Brès. 

Third, the confession is clarifying.

This is both pedagogical and doxological. Confessions have always been seen as a teaching instrument. For example the Catechism forms a schedule for preaching as well as making for the best method of instructing the children of the congregation. Many things could be said about the place of confessional statements in liturgy. Philip Schaaf gives a more general principle: “Faith, like all strong conviction, has a desire to utter itself before others,” citing the words of our Lord, “for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Lk. 6:45). Confessional documents give us that balance of the succinct and thorough. And that which is both concise and collaborative has a tendency to channel the profound into the memorable. 

Creeds and confessions do not simply clarify on the tail end of the theological assembly line. The reason they come into being has much to do with error. There is a bright side to heresy after all. It forces a more specified orthodoxy. In each generation, the faithful must “preserve the mystery of faith,” and thereby draw out the truth which was always implied by the Bible, but which none had been forced to put in quite this way or that.

During the Reformation, the basic aim of extra-biblical statements remained the same. For example, the goal of the Westminster Assembly has been described as giving “to the accepted Bible system of truth a complete, impregnable statement, to serve as a bulk against error, as a basis of ecclesiastical fellowship and cooperation, and as a safe and effectual instrument for the religious instruction of the people of God and their children” [7]. To the Reformed, “confessions have only a provisional character, since they reflect the limited insights of mere men. Their authority is derived and must always be subordinate to Scripture, which possesses intrinsic, divine authority” [8]. Letham saw the Reformed confessions as representing the “acceptance of tradition, under the authority of Scripture” [9].

Fourth, the confession is tested.

The assault on confessionalism was not only a product of the top tier of the Enlightenment’s “free thinking,” but also on the frontier of American anti-historical bias. The assumptions of scientism and consumerism blinded the past several generations to the value of simple endurance. Trueman is profound in the observation that our culture sees “baggage” [10] as a cardinal vice. Naturally the longer a people group or institution has been around, and that in a fallen world, the more embarrassing moral scars one’s tradition will have accumulated. Without ever critically examining the comically absurd premises, our present-tense culture will invest more authority in that which has never done a thing. This is “purity” and, worse yet, “authenticity.” Whether this includes never having uttered an intelligent thought is beside the point. Thus Trueman concludes that confessions “relativize the present” [11].

Fifth, the confession is regulative.

Our English word “rule” comes from the Latin regula, which Bray tells us “was used in Roman law to mean a summary of a statute … They were not arbitrary productions but carefully ordered statements of the main points of the law” [12]. Kelly uses the term “rule of truth,” which is arguably preferable for our purposes here [13]. The Apostles’ Creed was the earliest form [14], and it is a faithful presentation of Scripture in two ways, according to Allen and Swain:

“First, it summarized the plain teaching of Holy Scripture … Second … it summarizes that teaching in a way that reflects Scripture’s own proportions and purpose … Moreover, by orienting its confessors to Scripture’s main subject matter, the triune God, and to the scriptural record of his wonderful works, the rule of faith also orients them to the supreme goal or purpose of Scripture” [15].

In other words, the Creed did not compete with Scripture. It reinforced its meaning against erroneous renderings.

In giving definition, such statements both unify and divide. While confessions divide in plain light what is already divided in fact, they also maintain unity among any who would honestly gather around that light. But not everyone would be so honest. R. C. Sproul spoke of what he called “studied ambiguity.” Here one could distract from the exact point where one’s error deviates from orthodoxy by using a web of agreeable terms. Sproul explained that this “is an intentional ambiguity by which words and phrases are left blurry enough for antithetical views to be safely held by both sides in a debate … Church history testifies that the studied ambiguity is the refuge of the heretic. If he can blur his meaning, he can safely continue to slither along on his belly” [16].

Likewise, in his classic Christianity and Liberalism, J. Gresham Machen drew attention to “the religious teacher [who], in his heart of hearts, is well aware of the radicalism of his views, but is unwilling to relinquish his place in the hallowed atmosphere of the Church by speaking his whole mind. Against all such concealment or palliation, our sympathies are altogether with those men, whether radicals or conservatives, who have a passion for light” [17]. 

Confessions are that spotlight. Confessions are ambiguity-destroyers. Confessions are disciplinary reference points and thus exist within that authority delegated by Christ to the shepherds of his churches.

Should anyone inquire whether I think subscriptions ought to be applied to ministers and elders of the local church, my answer is essentially the same. Gordon Clark asks the common sense questions about this: “No one compels a young man to become a Presbyterian minister. It is a voluntary choice. Therefore honesty seems to require that he be loyal to the flag he has chosen; or rather than he choose a flag to which he can be conscientiously loyal. If he does not believe the Confession, why should he solemnly affirm that he does? … How can God be expected to bless perjury and hypocrisy in the pulpit?” [18]

We do not theologize in a vacuum anymore than we preach to a mirror. God has placed the whole of us—our minds, our books, and our conversations—in a community which he has formed by gracious covenant and in which our intellectual activity is to serve and to benefit from others. The confessional standards form bridges to that past and present, and bulwarks against even our own minds from taking the rebel path.

________________________

1. Carl Trueman, The Creedal Imperative (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 65.

2. Keith Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2001), 58-61.

3. John Frame gives an interesting defense of a general subscriptionism, while maintaining that “‘strict subscriptionism’ violates the principle of sola Scriptura” (Systematic Theology, 628). He does so without a clear line of demarcation between what the general and strict kinds would look like, which only highlights the need for some form of subscription to confessional standards.

4. Stanley Grenz, Renewing the Center (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 184-85.

5. Trueman, The Creedal Imperative, 15.

6. Trueman, The Creedal Imperative, 163.

7. John Richardson, Introduction to Gordon Clark, What Do Presbyterians Believe? xii

8. Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, 1:105.

9. Robert Letham, Systematic Theology (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), 226.

10. Trueman, The Creedal Imperative, 29.

11. Trueman, The Creedal Imperative, 180-82.

12. Gerald Bray, Creeds, Councils and Christ: Did the early Christians misrepresent Jesus? (Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus Publications, 1997), 92.

13. Douglas Kelly, Systematic Theology: Volume One (Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus Publications, 2008), 387, 426-44.

14. In a letter On the Veiling of Virgins (ca. 200), Tertullian gives the first reference to the regula fidei in the form similar to the Apostles’ Creed.

15. Michael Allen & Scott Swain, Reformed Catholicity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 110-111.

16. R. C. Sproul, Introduction to Francis Turretin, Justification (Phillipsburg, NJ: Prebsyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2004) xvii, xviii

17. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1923), 17-18.

18. Clark, What Do Presbyterians Believe? 5