One step forward, two steps back: Confessional Digression

Convictions are the root on which the tree of vital Christianity grows. No conviction, no Christianity. Scanty conviction, hunger-bitten Christianity. Profound conviction, solid and substantial religion. Ignorance is not the mother of religion, but of irrreligion. The knowledge of God is eternal life, and to know God means that we know him aright.

Faith and Life by B. B. Warfield from Selected Shorter Writings, Vol 1

I think at the heart of the motivation for the confessional subscription of both the parish assembly and the governing officers, there lies conviction. Not the desire for status but submission and accountability is what compels the faithful to bear the weight of their conviction. Subscription is nothing more than a public proclamation and attestation to the biblical content of the confession regarding the faith, piety, and practice of the Christian, but it is nothing less than that either.

The abandonment of the confessional framework for preserving and instructing the Church in many areas emanates from the dissolution of conviction-unable to stand against the unwavering assault of cultural secularism and inclusivism- which leads, I think, to the slow, and methodical abandonment of the purity of the Gospel. Because the Gospel of Jesus Christ is simply too exclusive, too socially passive for the philosophical pluralism that seems to be holding sway at this point in history.

But it does not stop at the mere dissolution of conviction but in the concession to ideologies and the metaphysical narratives of secular, philosophical pluralism. With convictions left to wither, a void is left which must be filled in order to balance the ballasts. In relation to this loss of grounding, the question of ecumenism is often at the heart of the call for either the revising or abandoning of the confessional structure and method of subscription because the less that is said, the easier, it is said, we can avoid unnecessarily schismatic altercations and preserve and broaden the unity of the body of Christ; the five sola’s of the Reformation and those who hold to them, being the main cause of such schism. Often it is precisely not that which is common to the historic Christian creeds and confessions which is included in such documents but that which is the bare minimum that must be believed in order to don the moniker of Christian. In relation, Warfield said,

Least of all, are we to seek unity by surrendering all public or organized testimony to all truth except that minimum which-just because it is the minimum, less than which no man can believe and be a Christian-all Christians of all names can unite in confessing. Subjection to the tyranny of the unbeliever is no more essential to unity than subjection to the tyranny of the believer (say the Pope); and this of course can mean nothing other than-”Let him that believes least among you be your lawgiver.” There is a sense, of course, in which the visible unity of the Church is based on the common belief and confession of the body of truth held alike by all who are Christians; but this is not the same as saying that it must be based on the repression of all organized testimony to truth not yet held by all alike.

True Church Unity: What It Is, in Selected Shorter Writings Vol. 1

It seems for some reason that many Churches and Denominations are digressing to a past recollection of a time of ignorance, calling it a simple faith. From Confession to simpler Creedal statements, to end in heresy. Inevitably, the degradation of the confessional nature of a protestant congregation or denomination will result in the loss of that which is exclusive and essential to the historic Christian faith, those theological and doctrinal threads which come together to weave the tapestry of the Drama of Redemption.

We all gotta confess something

What does it mean to be a confessional church? Is it simply the officers which must make their mark in affirmation of the truth and binding nature of a confession or does it take something a bit more drastic, something a bit more comprehensive regarding the lay members of the congregation? Should all take vows to uphold and submit to what is contained in their denominations governing confession(s).

I am of the opinion that a Church that does not require the subscription of all those within her local body is implicitly non-confessional (see bottom) and denies by practice the usefulness a confession has in regulating the faith, piety and practice of the congregation . To require members to be orthodox or to bear the weight of a vow of confessional subscription is not to unfairly burden them with the opinions of man but rather to caution and encourage them with a concise elucidation of what the bible says relative to what they should and should not do and believe. This serves the purpose of providing lines of demarcation which fence in the communicant member within the purview of the Church and her officers, and fence out those who might attempt to creep in to wreak havoc and destruction.

Furthermore, the still small voice of Gnostic pietism is effectively-though not completely-silenced and gagged by a confessional structure, removing much of the opportunities for the “just me and my Jesus” and “me and my bible” attitudes. As well, Confessionalism militates against the modern crisis of identity in broad Evangelicalism by not changing with the ebb and flow of humanities transient ideas of itself. Thus, at the end of the day, when Confessionalism is abandoned, the Church becomes the victim of identity theft and her sense of self taken from her as a result of her own befuddlement. And seeking to emerge from the confusion caused by lack of guidance, two options come to the fore. In many instances the post-confessional church often finally resorts, having completed the abandonment of Confessionalism, to simplistic and schismatic statements of faith, usually emphasizing methods of worship and a dispensational premillenial rapture, or a 6/24 hour day creation theory as marks of orthodoxy rather than the essentials of the faith that we might find, in say, the Apostle Creed. On the other hand, it seems that what is considered innovative and novel becomes irresistibly appealing and immediately orthodox as a result of some perceived rate of success; the permutations of modernity believed to be a path whereby they might “return to the Church of the book of Acts” and rediscover and excite their spiritual passions. Hence the alter call, it not simply being seen as an avenue of gaining converts but dramatically aimed at and calculated to invigorate, excite and give meaning to one who lacks assurance and therefore identity. Ultimately this is an act of crisis management.

Having lost confidence in the historic structure provided and maintained by Confessionalism, the attempt is made to selectively harvest aspects of the old “broken” structure and merge it with the “new” understanding to bring about a modern synthesis; though it ultimately ends with the abrogation of all aspects of true religion and the triumph of Pietism or the”self”. What this displays is a radical dissatisfaction and lack of confidence in the preaching and power of the Gospel, regarding method, content and the appeal that it might have in a modern society. Mainline Evangelicalism, forgetting that the Good News is God reconciling himself to them rather then mans coming to God, has resorted to everything from a Starbucks in the Church to replacing traditional aspects of the Divine Service with elements from the contemporary culture in an effort to engage the masses. In short, the Church is rapidly becoming a religious or spiritual extension of the culture which it thinks it is called to engage with the hope of triumph and transformation. This occurs because the Church is spiritually and ideologically impoverished, without a confessional nature and the safeguards that come with that, it simply does not have as lucid a sense of itself that the world has of itself.

In the end, Confessionalism provides the necessary paradigmatic framework to the pilgrim so that life may be lived without hesitation; a structure that recalls who and what we are when we doubt and when we stray, what our hope is, how we should then live in light of who and what we now are, and how to disseminate the hope of the pilgrim, the promise of journeys end, of home.

 

 

 

* I know that there are many reformed/presbyterian churches that faithfully teach their confessions to their congregations and are functionally confessional as opposed to technically, whose denominations do not have full membership subscription and I am not applying this to them.

Worship: Divine Service or simply competition for network television?

Really good stuff on worship and the necessity of being fed by God over at The Pilgrim People

Points To Ponder

Confessionalism is a churchly, theological, sacramental, disciplined approach to Christianity that is probably fairly described as elitist inasmuch as The faith is mediated to the masses by the ministers. There are not endless permutations of the “Reformed” faith. As Hodge pointed out in the 19th century, anyone with a little effort can discover what Reformed folk believe by reading the classic theologies or, better yet, the Reformed confessions. Further, there is not only a Reformed theology, but also a Reformed piety and a Reformed practice and none of these three things is very compatible with American evangelicalism or liberalism. Both evangelicalism and liberalism are theologically subjectivist, pietist, and pragmatist in praxis.

There are conservatives, who embrace the past but must negotiate a modus vivendi with American Religion, and there are liberals who are quite ready to discard the past and go where ever the culture demands so as to try to remain “relevant” and influential. There is a third way to relate to American religion, however, and that is confessionalism, which is neither liberal nor conservative, but it is what the Reformed Churches have always confessed to be the theology, piety, and practice revealed in the Word of God.

Dr. R. S. Clark

Read the whole article here…

IN CONFLICT WITH THE CULTURE : Do we give or receive from God on the Sabbath

Confessionalism provides the lines of demarcation for spiritual endeavors which prevent the people from determining how they participate in the kingdom whereas those who deny either the necessity or practical usefulness of the confessional structure quite often display inconsistent and immoderate faith and practice. It is this inconsistency which often causes the seeking out and introduction of strange fire into the midst of the people. Lacking a fence, the sheep stray for lack of care.