So, the poll currently is about your attitude regarding confessions of faith. Out of five respondents (and while I could look and try to figure out who’s who in the IP addresses, I’m not going to do that), two so far have taken the extreme anti-confession position (”no creed but the Bible, baby”). Assuming that they weren’t joking, can I ask you all a few questions? Respond on your blogs and trackback, or leave a comment here, if you are going to participate.
- Do you differentiate yourself from other people who claim to be Christians?
- If so, how? If not, why not?
- Do you think that it was a mistake for people fighting heresies to write confessions or creeds to clarify their position, or to determine who was orthodox (by which I mean, who had the right theology) and who wasn’t?
- If you do think that it was a mistake, then what would you have done differently?
- What is the minimum amount of doctrinal agreement you would require before considering fellowship or “having church” with a fellow Christian?
Seems like a good conversation starter, if somebody is willing to do more than just click a poll button.
Actually, anybody can answer these questions, but let’s leave some room for the 40% so far who claim to be against creeds and confessions.
Update: maybe I should point out, too, that there was supposed to be a spectrum of answers here. Extreme confessionalism is represented by the “Pope is the antichrist” entry. I do know people who subscribe that fully, but they’re not readers of this blog. Then there’s “I love the confessions, but have reservations,” followed by “I would use the confessions but list exceptions, ” followed by “I wrote my own confession of faith” (this is kind of middle-of-the-road in my thinking), followed by “I don’t trust them but they have their uses,” followed by “no creed but the Bible” (the extreme anti-confessional position). Most Protestants would probably consider themselves somewhere between “use them, list exceptions” and “don’t trust them, but they have their uses.” Most Protestants, for example, will accept creeds like the Nicene Creed (a specific answer to contemporary heresy), although none I know of will claim that that is the be-all, end-all statement of faith for the Church. Does this help?
Update 2: Also, I realize that you can be confessional and not be in one of the Puritan traditions. So, feel free to consider yourself confessional for the purposes of my post if your church is more at home with the Three Forms of Unity (Dutch Reformed), or the Augsburg Confessions (Lutheran), or something along those lines. The Baptist Faith and Message counts, too (and for the moment we’ll leave discussions of whether that is really derived from Puritanism for another time).
11 Comments
Um, uh oh. *blushes* I confess to having picked “no creed but the Bible, baby.” And my reasoning is totally lame: I got a laugh out of the “baby” at the end.
I probably would’ve picked the one with “reservations” in it.
Hm. I don’t know whether to give up on this post or not, then. One person out of five is unlikely to speak up, or at least less likely than two out of five would have been.
I guess we’ll see. I was really hoping for some interesting and edifying conversation, with somebody who doesn’t think that human beings should write statements of faith.
But I suspected that maybe at least one person had clicked just to make me laugh… or at least wonder.
Speak up, you non-Patrick clicker on “no creed but the Bible, baby,” if you were joking, so that I can give up on hopes of an interesting conversation in the meta here, and get on to gadflying in other ways.
Hey, now there are six voters, with one saying that s/he would “list exceptions.” We’re getting somewhere.
Four out of seven going with “reservations” now. Hm.
Can I change my vote?
Actually, I’m really interested in the “list exceptions” person.
Ha ha
I picked the “reservations” one. Though I must admit I was very tempted to select the “pope” one. “If the WCF or LBCF says that the Pope is the antichrist, then he is.” Hehe… 
You laugh… there was at least one fellow on a confessional list of which I was a part, who regularly closed his posts that had anything tangentially to do with the confession with “And yes, the Pope is still the Antichrist.”
I don’t say that to make fun of him; actually I have a lot of respect for him, and his position. But the only position more extreme than that would be to canonize the confession.
I voted for the reservations. I think the old confessions are beautiful. They certainly weren’t afraid of being clear about their beliefs, no “PC language” like you find in some faith statements today. I think they’re good models, and I sometimes think I should have my own Confession of Faith that I can tell people when they ask why I believe in God.
But ultimately, they are human too, so of course I don’t believe they are inerrant. The only writing I take as Truth is the Bible.
Hi Charles,
I tried to read more of your posting. So that, I might be able to score better, in the future
I voted for reservation too. (After I read this posting but before the comments.)
Continuing from Amber’s comment; I also loved the old confession because thy don’t care of ‘political correcness’. I salute them for their faith and courage.
I agreed they were not inerrant; but still they were much more spiritual than believers these days. Even though I believe only the Bible is inerrant, but our intepretation of it won’t be so. That’s why I still think when in doubt, better go with the old confessions.
Actually many believers these day don’t even believed in inerrancy of the Bible anymore; not to mentioned the confessions.
On Pope in the Antichrist, several years ago while I lived in South, one time I also heard the pastor (non-Reformed church), said that he believed antichrist will be the ‘future’ pope. But that was not a confessional church.
~abel
1. Maybe it’s possible a particular pope in the past (or possibly present) might be called an antichrist?
2. Also, I don’t necessarily think the Reformers and other Protestants who followed in their footsteps (such as those who penned the WCF) were wholly unjustified in identifying the then popes with the antichrist.
For one thing, arguably from the crowning of Charlemagne to well into the 1600s (the WCF was written in the mid-1600s, during the English Civil War), as the papacy accumulated more and more political power and military might, it often used its power and authority to beguile, then persecute, and finally murder thousands of Christians faithful to the Bible — either directly or indirectly through entreating or compelling kings, princes, and other rulers to do so. (Of course, keeping in mind this is a huge swathe of time, and further, that it’s not entirely fair to color the Catholic Church with one broad brush stroke since the Catholic Church changed considerably throughout a millennium, I nevertheless think it’s a fair assessment.)
3. Perhaps a practical response to many of our dear but in my opinion mistaken brethren’s worries about the antichrist, the end times, and so forth is to simply keep preaching the gospel in its entirety. The entire counsel of the Word of God. Not bits and pieces, but the entire Bible.
First, preach it to yourself. Pray that by God’s grace, and obviously through diligent study, you would better understand it. Learn it inside and out.
Have the same attitude as Luther had: “First I shake the whole apple tree, that the ripest might fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf.”
Or as Spurgeon said of Bunyan: “I would quote John Bunyan as an instance of what I mean. Read anything of his, and you will see that it is almost like the reading the Bible itself. He had read it till his very soul was saturated with Scripture; and, though his writings are charmingly full of poetry, yet he cannot give us his Pilgrim’s Progress — that sweetest of all prose poems — without continually making us feel and say, “Why, this man is a living Bible!” Prick him anywhere — his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his very soul is full of the Word of God. I commend his example to you, beloved.”
Pray that the Word of Christ would dwell in you richly, that it would make you more and more holy, more and more like Christ.
Pray that you would draw nearer to Christ, to trust him, obey him, know him, and love him.
And then, as one beggar to another, preach and teach the Word of God to others in love. Preaching and teaching the Word of God is the best way to “combat” the antichrist, so to speak. Remember Christ not only paid for your sins but also defeated Satan on the cross. One little word shall fell him.
Thus you will begin to long for Christ’s coming as well. Maranatha!
Wow, we got a vote for no exceptions or reservations.