The Aquila Report

Your independent source for news and commentary from and about conservative, orthodox evangelicals in the Reformed and Presbyterian family of churches

Providence College
  • Biblical
    and Theological
  • Churches
    and Ministries
  • People
    in the News
  • World
    and Life News
  • Lifestyle
    and Reviews
    • Books
    • Movies
    • Music
  • Opinion
    and Commentary
  • General Assembly
    and Synod Reports
    • ARP General Synod
    • EPC General Assembly
    • OPC General Assembly
    • PCA General Assembly
    • PCUSA General Assembly
    • RPCNA Synod
    • URCNA Synod
  • Subscribe
    to Weekly Email
  • Biblical
    and Theological
  • Churches
    and Ministries
  • People
    in the News
  • World
    and Life News
  • Lifestyle
    and Reviews
    • Books
    • Movies
    • Music
  • Opinion
    and Commentary
  • General Assembly
    and Synod Reports
    • ARP General Synod
    • EPC General Assembly
    • OPC General Assembly
    • PCA General Assembly
    • PCUSA General Assembly
    • RPCNA Synod
    • URCNA Synod
  • Subscribe
    to Weekly Email
  • Search
Home/Biblical and Theological/What We Still and Will Believe

What We Still and Will Believe

The Precious Clarity of Enduring Creeds

Written by Joe Rigney | Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Confessions are like suitcases; they enable us to pack a lot of content in a small amount of space. They flow from a recognition that, as creatures, we can’t say everything all of the time. And so we must condense. We must distill.

 

The people of God have always been a confessional people, offering short summaries of their beliefs and convictions about who God is and what he’s done. Israel’s foundational confession, known as the Shema, is recorded in Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The New Testament likewise contains short distillations of the Christian confession, sometimes in the form of poetic hymns (as in Colossians 1:15–20 and Philippians 2:6–11) and sometimes in the form of “trustworthy sayings” (as in 1 Timothy 1:15 and other passages in the Pastoral Epistles).

Since the first century, the church has been marked by disputes and controversies that have inevitably produced confessional statements — from the Apostles’ Creed to the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople, to the Definition of Chalcedon, to the multiplication of confessions around the Reformation with the Belgic Confession, the Westminster Confession, and the London Baptist Confession, all the way to the present day, with documents such as The Gospel Coalition’s Confessional Statement. My own institution, Bethlehem College & Seminary, has an Affirmation of Faith that it shares with Bethlehem Baptist Church and other like-minded churches. Indeed, from the beginning, the people of God have been in the business of crafting creeds and confessions.

But should we? It’s one thing to confess the words of Scripture. The Shema and Paul’s hymn to Christ in Philippians 2 and his “trustworthy sayings” are all well and good. But isn’t it obvious that these short biblical statements are significantly different from the lengthy, detailed summaries of doctrine set forth in the Westminster Confession and the Bethlehem Affirmation of Faith?

If we have the Scriptures, do we need these additional statements? And if we do need them, do we need them to be so long? The Shema is eleven words; some confessions are more than eleven pages. Are there good reasons for having creeds and confessions of different lengths?

No doubt many answers could be given to these questions. I want to dwell on two of them. First, confessions summarize and clarify the truth for new contexts. Second, confessions serve the unity of the church.

Clarifying the Truth

At their best and most basic, confessions are faithful summaries of the beliefs of the people of God. The Shema itself was one such summary. Israel believed far more about Yahweh than that he was one. But the confession of God’s oneness was a distillation and summary of a fuller array of beliefs and affirmations about God.

The Shema isn’t the only example. The Law of Moses in some measure could be summarized in the Ten Commandments. And Jesus himself further summarized the Law by reducing it to two: love God with everything, and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37–40). In like manner, written confessions summarize the church’s belief about God, man, Christ, and the way of salvation.

In this respect, confessions are like suitcases; they enable us to pack a lot of content in a small amount of space. They flow from a recognition that, as creatures, we can’t say everything all of the time. And so we must condense. We must distill. We must fold our doctrines into tightly defined statements and package them together into our confessions. Confessions are a way of summarizing the teaching of the whole Bible and putting it into a usable form.

Derived Authority

Now, it’s important to recognize that while such summaries ought to be grounded in Scripture, they are not identical to Scripture. Scripture is unique. Scripture alone is inspired by God, without error, and infallible. As a result, Scripture alone has supreme and final authority for testing all claims about what is true and right. Confessions, on the other hand, have a derived and dependent authority. This means that a confession of faith should be embraced only insofar as we understand it to be a faithful summary and distillation of what God himself has said in the Bible.

Read More

Related Posts:

  • The Role of Creeds and Confessions in Doing Theology
  • Forming a Great Commandment Culture
  • Clarifying Scripture’s Perspicuity: A Look at the…
  • 3 Reasons Every Christian Needs To Use The Creeds
  • Confessions in Practice

Subscribe, Follow, Listen

  • email-alt
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • apple-podcasts
  • anchor
Tulip Singles - A Dating and Courting Venue for Reformed Christian Singles
Freedom to Enjoy - A new book by Cindy Taylor - Feasting Responsibly on the Wagon Train of Life for the Glory of God, 
 -- Who Gives us All Things to Enjoy

Archives

Books

Geerhardus Vos: Reformed Biblical Theologian, Confessional Presbyterian - by Danny Olinger

Special

5 Solas of the Reformation
  • About
  • Advertise Here
  • Contact Us
  • Donations
  • Email Alerts
  • Leadership
  • Letters to the Editor
  • Principles and Practices
  • Privacy Policy

Important:

Free Subscription

Aquila Report Email Alerts

Special

5 Solas of the Reformation
  • About
  • Advertise Here
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Principles and Practices
  • RSS Feed
  • Subscribe to Weekly Email Alerts
Providence Christian College - visit

DISCLAIMER: The Aquila Report is a news and information resource. We welcome commentary from readers; for more information visit our Letters to the Editor link. All our content, including commentary and opinion, is intended to be information for our readers and does not necessarily indicate an endorsement by The Aquila Report or its governing board. In order to provide this website free of charge to our readers,  Aquila Report uses a combination of donations, advertisements and affiliate marketing links to  pay its operating costs.

Return to top of page

Website design by Five More Talents · Copyright © 2021 The Aquila Report · Log in