What is Reformed? Part 3: Confessional

Reformation

May 21

Teach and urge these things. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.
-1 Timothy 6:2-5, ESV

In our series on Reformed theology, we have covered the Reformed view of salvation through the five solas and the five points of Calvinism. But salvation is only one part of theology, so Reformed theology must go beyond the five solas and Calvinistic soteriology (salvation) by subscribing to a theologically-holistic Reformed confession. Therefore a Reformed church must not only be Calvinistic but confessional. This post will look at the impIortance of confessions and the relation between the need to be always reforming with the need to follow a historic confession in order to avoid straying from what Scripture clearly teaches.

The Importance of Confessions

From the earliest days of the Church, defining what we believe has been extremely important. Throughout the epistles, we see evidence of various heresies that dogged the Church, requiring divinely-inspired reiteration of what Scripture teaches. One extra-persistent early heresy was Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ. In large part to refute this, the early Church adopted the various creeds: the Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed, and Chalcedon Definition. When we consider this context, it is easy to see why these creeds so strongly affirm Christ’s divinity. Each generation faces new challenges to the faith, forcing the Church to strongly state what Scripture clearly teaches about those specific topics. An example in our day is the challenge to biblical manhood and womanhood from feminism, homosexuality, and transgenderism. To address this, a pair of ecumenical councils quite similar to Nicaea produced the Danvers and Nashville Statements that we addressed here. Since such statements address particular heresies, they are somewhat limited in their scope. But by the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church had strayed so far from the teachings of Scripture into a wide variety of heresies that a complete and robust definition of what Scripture teaches on all of faith and life was required. As the Reformation spread, different groups began to form with varying interpretations regarding secondary doctrines, so those groups needed to define their beliefs. This as the origin of the various confessions of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries which ultimately became the defining documents of various Reformed denominations.

We have need of the same comprehensive definition of beliefs. Many Christians do not venture beyond soteriology in defining their doctrines, thus leaving themselves open to various errors. They chant “no creed but Christ”, and therefore stumble into all manner of heresy. Lacking a Scriptural foundation, they ultimately worship a god so different than the God of the Bible that their worship is idolatry. The confessions like the ancient creeds prevent such errors by keeping us grounded in the faith, providing vital guardrails against new and strange teachings. It is true that only Scripture is inerrant and timeless while the confessions are the product of men. However, this does not prevent them from being useful to us. Error comes not only from the denial of what Scripture clearly teaches but from new and creative interpretations of Scripture. There is nothing new under the sun, so any new error derived from a creative interpretation is likely just a restatement of an error that has appeared at some point in Church history. Therefore, most of these errors are addressed in the Reformed confessions. But when we ignore Church history, we exalt ourselves over our spiritual ancestors as if we are far wiser and more enlightened than they were, only to fall prey to the folly that they have already so wisely and eloquently addressed. The errors of Rome at the time of the Reformation were so pernicious and comprehensive that God was especially gracious to gift the Church at the time with many wise scholars well versed in Scripture to create the confessions. We would be foolish to ignore them.

The Reformed Confessions

Last time, I mentioned the importance of John Calvin documenting all of the doctrines that characterized the Reformation—not just soteriology—in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which was essentially the first Reformed systematic theology. Others built upon this by codifying what Scripture teaches on all topics of faith and life. As the different Reformed groups began to distinguish themselves from each other, it became vital to distill these beliefs down into a single, Scripture-based document that all of the ministers within the group could agree on. These were their confessions, which laid out their beliefs on Scripture, God, man, sin, the church and sacraments, civil authorities, the home, and eschatology (the end times). They are often accompanied by catechisms, which are sets of questions and answers used to teach what the confession contains. Together, these form a robust theology for faith and life. The confessions were so important to this period that it has been called “confessionalization”.[1] They became even more important during the rise of liberalism and the Enlightenment of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, at which point many churches abandoned the robust theology of the confessions in favor of conversion-focus and individual experience.[2] That mentality has persisted to this day such that many churches reject the notion of confessions altogether, dismissing them as antiquated human works of little value today. But the historic confessions provide a necessary bulwark against the liberalism of mainline denominations and the individualistic emotionalism of seeker-sensitive American evangelicalism just as they have historically defended the Church against Roman Catholicism and other heresies. Therefore, to be truly Reformed is to be confessional.

To be confessional requires understanding the Reformed confessions enough to subscribe to one of them. These include the 39 Articles of Religion used by Anglican and Episcopal churches, the Three Forms of Unity (Belgic Confession, Heidelberg Catechism, and Canons of Dort) used by Dutch Reformed churches, the Westminster Standards used by presbyterian churches, the Savoy Declaration used by Reformed congregationalist churches, and the 1689 London Baptist Confession used by Reformed Baptist churches. All of these are very similar in much of their theology, differing primarily in church governance and elements specific to the context in which they were written. This is why Reformed churches that subscribe to different confessions can look vastly different in practice but still hold very similar theology. Therefore, being confessional means choosing to subscribe to one of these confessions. Since they are so similar, I will focus on the Westminster Standards which my church subscribes to. The Westminster Standards consist of the Westminster Confession of Faith, Larger and Shorter Catechisms, Directory of Public Worship, Directory of Family Worship, Sum of Saving Knowledge, Form of Presbyterian Church Government, and Solemn League and Covenant. They were written in and around 1646 during the short time in which the Puritan-controlled Parliament ruled England. This I believe was divine providence so that these documents could be created. I believe that future people will look back on the Westminster Standards as one of the most important contributions of England to the world—right alongside the Magna Carta, common law, the proliferation of blue water navigation and industrialization, and even the global abolition of slavery. Their importance to the Church is difficult to overstate. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that like all confessions, the Westminster Confession of Faith is a result of its particular context. Specifically, it was written after long periods of persecution and conflict with both Catholics and other Protestants.

Can We Object to Parts of the Confessions?

This brings up an important question: can a person or church disagree with particular points of a Reformed confession but still adhere to that confession? This is especially timely after a social media post by Pastor Uriesou Brito, the Presiding Minister of Council for my denomination (the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches). In it, he listed paedo-communion as a distinctive of the denomination, which spurred strong reactions from other Reformed Christians. They claimed that since none of the historic Reformed confessions include paedo-communion, we cannot be considered confessional and therefore cannot claim to be Reformed. They even suggested that we should create our own confession that includes paedo-communion and other distinctives of the denomination. Should we? To answer this, we must examine the legitimacy of taking exception to the Reformed confessions and weigh the risks of taking such exceptions compared with the risks of writing a new confession.

First, I must reiterate that while heavily based on Scripture and written by men who spend their lives immersed in it, the confessions are still the products of men and therefore not infallible or timeless. If we hold too firmly to the confessions, we risk teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. Even if the confessions completely align with Scripture, we must in some ways treat them like civil laws, taking their original context into consideration before applying them to our own context. The Westminster Standards were written nearly four hundred years ago in response to issues very different than our own. For example, the resurgence of Catholicism was a very real threat in the Puritan era, so the Westminster Standards are filled with statements aimed at preventing that. It should be unsurprising then that Westminster Confession of Faith states that the pope is the Antichrist (WCF 25.6) but equally unsurprising that many churches who say that adhere to the confession would deny that interpretation (as my church does). That said, we must also be careful to avoid the “cultural cop-out” that assumes anything we disagree with is cultural when it may be more broadly applicable to our own context. An example of this error would be churches today that claim to subscribe to this confession but allow recreation on Sundays (WCF 21.8) or deny six-day Creation (WCF 4.1).

Therefore, we can and should take exception to certain aspects of historical confessions. When we do, we must carefully examine Scripture and take the original context into consideration so we can ensure that our exception still aligns with Scripture and the original intent of the confession’s authors. We must also carefully document exactly where we differ from the confession and why. This allows us to take exception without abandoning the great value and intent of the confession in the first place. Adherence to our chosen historical confession except as carefully documented guards against departure from Reformed orthodoxy, which would be a very real risk if we choose to author our own confession because of the slightest disagreement. We would also be disregarding the lessons of the past and succumbing to the intellectual snobbery common in academia today, assuming that we are so much more enlightened than the great men of God who so carefully authored the historic confessions. Therefore it is much safer and more preferrable to choose a historic confession and document reasonable exceptions to it than to author a new confession.

In the specific case of our denomination, it is important to note that it would be impossible to come to a consensus on a new confession. In order to enter our denomination, a church must choose at least one historic Reformed confession and then document any exceptions to it. The denomination must then weigh those exceptions as part of the process of inducting that church. Many of our churches subscribe to the Westminster Standards, Three Forms of Unity, or 39 Articles, but some use the London Baptist Confession. Therefore, we would never be able to create a single confession that adequately addressed baptism—which is of vital importance in any confession—in a way that would be acceptable to all of our churches. We want to ensure our tent is as broad as possible while still being Reformed and faithful to Scripture. Nevertheless, certain practices have become distinctives of the denomination, most notably paedo-communion. But is this too large of a departure from the confession to be a reasonable exception? Here is the text of the confession and the exception from my church’s constitution:

Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this sacrament, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified, and all benefits of his death: the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are, to their outward senses.
-Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 29, paragraph 7

We would clarify that “worthy receivers” of the Lord’s Supper should include all baptized covenant members who are able to physically eat and drink the elements, and participate in corporate worship, including very young children being raised in the discipline and admonition of the Lord. We deny that an artificial standard of age or mental capacity is consistent with Biblical basis for partaking of the Supper. We defer to the elders of the church, in concert with the heads of households, in discerning the capacity of young children to partake in the Supper.
-Constitution of The Shepherd’s Church, Section 3.6

Notice how this is much more of a clarification than an exception, as the confession never precisely define “worthy receivers” other than excluding “ignorant and ungodly persons” (WCF 29.8). Since a compelling argumentcan be made that baptized children would not be the “ignorant and ungodly”, this is a reasonable exception to the confession.[3] Therefore we and other churches practicing paedo-communion can take this exception—or rather make this clarification—but still adhere to this confession as a whole. In this way, we can avoid straying from Reformed orthodoxy while also keeping to semper reformanda and adequately applying Reformed doctrines to our specific context. To be truly Reformed requires us to be confessional, which means choosing a historic confession and carefully documenting any exceptions we take to that confession, holding both the confession and our exceptions subordinate to Scripture.

In our day it is especially important to be confessional. When we looked at the dismal state of theology in the American Church, we saw significant and disheartening errors in the average Christian’s views of Scripture, God, man and sin, salvation, the Church, and current issues like extramarital sex, abortion, gender identity, and homosexuality. Basically all of these errors are clearly addressed in the confessions, so adherents to the confessions can easily avoid them. The more churches adhere to the historic Reformed confessions, the more these errors would cease. Therefore the confessions are just as important to the Church today as they were when they were written centuries ago. To be truly Reformed we must be confessional. Next time, we will see how we must also be covenantal. While Reformed churches can vary in how covenantal they are and how that impacts their practices, we will find that to be Reformed is to be covenantal to some degree.