Covenant Theology, Scripture, and Reformed Confessions — Unit 6: Why Confessions? Scripture as Norm, Confessions as Servant

Key Verse

"Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus." (2 Timothy 1:13, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain the Reformed teaching that Scripture alone is the final norm, and show how the Westminster Confession and the Belgic Confession state it.

2. Give four reasons why churches write confessions, with a biblical pattern for each.

3. Explain the difference between a norming norm and a normed norm, and why a confession is a servant and not a master.

4. State the objection "no creed but the Bible" fairly and answer it from the Reformed side.

5. Compare the Roman Catholic, Reformed and "no creed" ways of relating Scripture to the church's teaching.

The Voice of This Course

This course is written from inside the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition, for students who belong to it. It is conservative and confessional. When it says "we" or "our churches," it means the churches that hold the Bible to be the inspired and inerrant Word of God and that confess the faith in the great creeds and in the Reformed confessions.

Some students come from churches with no written confession. We honor that concern, because it often comes from love for the Bible, and we state it fairly before answering. Course 1 told how the confessions were born. This unit asks why a church that stands on Scripture alone also writes and keeps confessions.

Scripture: The Norm

Every church must answer two questions. What is our final authority? And how do we say together what that authority teaches? The Reformed answer to the first is short: God has spoken finally in the Holy Scriptures. The second question is the reason for this unit. Authority comes first and the confession comes second.

The Reformation slogan is sola Scriptura, "Scripture alone." It does not mean that the church has no teachers, or that history is worthless. It means that Scripture alone is the final and sufficient rule for faith and life, and that every other voice is under it.

The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 1, teaches this carefully. The whole counsel of God for His glory, our salvation, faith and life is either set down in Scripture or may be deduced from it by "good and necessary consequence" (1.6). Nothing is to be added, whether by new revelations or by the traditions of men (1.6). What is necessary for salvation is clear enough that ordinary believers can understand it (1.7). The final judge of all religious disputes is the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture (1.10).

The Belgic Confession says the same. Article 7 teaches that Scripture fully contains the will of God, and that no one may add to it or take from it. Article 5 says that we receive the books of the Bible as holy and canonical, and that we are convinced not mainly by the church's word but by the testimony of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Calvin taught the same in the Institutes, Book 1, chapters 7 and 9, where Spirit and Word belong together.

The Bible teaches this about itself. "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16). The prophet says, "To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" (Isaiah 8:20). The Bereans are praised because they "searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so" (Acts 17:11). They tested even an apostle's preaching by the Word. If an apostle was tested, then no council, pastor or confession stands above testing.

The Bible Itself Contains Confessions

Here is the first surprise for students from churches without written confessions. The Bible does not only give us a book to read. It also shows God's people confessing the faith in short, memorable forms.

Israel confessed, "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!" (Deuteronomy 6:4). Paul passes on to the Corinthians what he himself received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and rose again the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). He says that "if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9). He reminds Timothy of the "good confession" made before many witnesses (1 Timothy 6:12). Jude urges his readers "to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). Notice the words "the faith": there was a body of teaching to be guarded.

The church also decided questions together. In Acts 15 the apostles and elders met at Jerusalem to settle a dispute that threatened the gospel, and they sent a letter to the churches: "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us" (Acts 15:28). That letter shows that the church may speak together, in writing, to settle questions of truth. A confession of faith is not a foreign thing placed on top of the Bible. It continues something that God's people do in the Bible itself.

The Ecumenical Creeds

The Reformed churches did not begin the work of confessing. They received the creeds of the early church. The Apostles' Creed grew from the old baptismal confession of the church at Rome. The Nicene Creed comes from the councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) and defends the full deity of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Definition of Chalcedon (451) confesses that Christ is one person in two natures, truly God and truly man.

We hold these creeds not because councils are infallible but because they faithfully state what Scripture teaches. The Belgic Confession, in Article 9, says that it willingly accepts the Apostles', Nicene and Athanasian creeds.

Why Churches Write Confessions

Churches write confessions for at least four reasons, each with a biblical pattern.

To confess Christ before the world. Paul links believing in the heart with confessing with the mouth (Romans 10:9-10). Peter tells believers to be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks a reason for their hope (1 Peter 3:15). A confession is the church's public answer to the question, "What do you believe?"

To guard the truth against error. An elder must be "holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict" (Titus 1:9). When Arius taught that the Son was a creature, the church could not answer only by repeating "the Bible says," for Arius also quoted the Bible. The church needed to say in plain words what the Bible meant. A confession draws the line where a particular error has crossed it.

To teach and to unite. Paul writes of "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Ephesians 4:5) and does not want believers "tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine" (Ephesians 4:14). A confession gives congregations and their children a shared body of teaching. The Heidelberg and Westminster catechisms were made for this purpose.

To guard the ministry and protect the people. "The things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also" (2 Timothy 2:2). A church that ordains ministers must know what they will teach. The confession protects the congregation from a pastor who teaches whatever he pleases, and it protects a faithful pastor from the charge of novelty.

An honest remark follows. Every church has a confession. Some write it down and some do not. A church with no written creed still has an unwritten one, held in the habits of its preachers and its songs. An unwritten creed cannot be examined by the people. A written one can be tested against Scripture by anyone who can read it.

Norm and Servant

If Scripture is the final authority, what is the standing of a confession? Older Reformed teachers answer with two Latin phrases. Scripture is the norma normans non normata: the norming norm, which is not itself normed by anything else. A confession is the norma normata: a normed norm. It has real authority in the church, because the church has adopted it as its public teaching, but its authority is borrowed from Scripture and measured by Scripture. Presbyterians call confessions "subordinate standards." The word "subordinate" matters as much as the word "standards."

Our confessions say this about themselves. The Westminster Confession, chapter 31, teaches that synods and councils help to settle controversies and order the church, and that their decisions, when they agree with the Word, are received with reverence, but not as the rule of faith or practice. It adds that all synods and councils since the apostles' times "may err, and many have erred" (31.4). Calvin taught the same in the Institutes, Book 4, chapter 9: he honors true councils but never puts them above the Word. Chapter 20 of the Confession adds that God alone is Lord of the conscience.

This is why a confession can be revised. If a church finds that a statement does not agree with Scripture, it must correct the confession, by its own lawful process, and not the Bible. A slogan from later Dutch Reformed history says that the reformed church must always be reforming. Rightly understood, this means that the church must always be brought back to the Word. It does not mean that doctrine should keep changing with each generation, though some have used it that way.

A good servant carries the master's message accurately, stays under the master's authority, and is corrected if he changes the message. A confession serves the Word by summarizing it, defending it and teaching it. It is not a second Bible.

Objections and Our Answers

Objection 1: "No creed but the Bible."

Many sincere Christians, in Baptist, Pentecostal, Restorationist and independent churches, say that a creed adds a human document to God's Word. They remember the warning of Jesus, "in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men" (Matthew 15:9). They fear that a confession will be treated as equal to Scripture, as has sometimes happened.

Our answer. We share the fear and agree that no human document may be placed beside Scripture. This is why our confessions call themselves subordinate. But the slogan does not avoid the problem. "No creed but the Bible" is itself a statement of belief, and groups with very different teachings each say, "We believe the Bible." The question is not whether the Bible is our authority, since all agree on that. The question is what we understand it to say. A confession is an honest answer to that question, written openly so that it can be corrected from Scripture. Jesus condemned traditions that cancel the Word. He did not condemn teaching that faithfully explains it, and Paul told Timothy to keep a "pattern of sound words," a pattern of teaching that can be recognized and handed on.

Objection 2: The Roman Catholic view.

Rome teaches that God's Word comes through Scripture and tradition together, and that the church's teaching office interprets both with final authority. The Council of Trent said this in 1546. On this view we are wrong to set Scripture above the church's voice.

Our answer. We agree that the church is a teacher, and we honor the early creeds. But we deny that the church's voice is a second source of revelation on the same level as Scripture. Jesus rebuked leaders who set human tradition over God's commandment (Matthew 15:3-6). The church is "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15) as it upholds and declares the truth, but the truth is given in the apostolic Word, and the church stands under it. A church that cannot be tested by the Word cannot correct its own errors.

Objection 3: Confessions are old and tied to their time.

Critics, especially in more liberal churches, say that the confessions reflect the politics and philosophy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that each age should write its own faith.

Our answer. The confessions were written in particular times, and some chapters, such as those on civil government, reflect conditions that have changed. A wise church admits this and revises where Scripture requires. But old is not the same as wrong. The truth of the Trinity, of Christ's two natures and of salvation by grace is not made false by age. A new statement is also tied to its own time, though we cannot see that as clearly.

Objection 4: Did confessionalism betray the Reformers?

Historians have argued over this. Some twentieth-century writers said that Calvin's flexible, biblical teaching was hardened by his followers into a rigid system. Other historians, such as Richard Muller, have argued from the sources that the later Reformed teachers developed Calvin's thought with continuity, adding precision for teaching and debate.

Our answer. Later writers used a more technical method than Calvin, but precision need not be cold. The Heidelberg Catechism, studied in the next unit, is warm and exact together. What matters most is not whether later teachers copied Calvin but whether the confessions agree with Scripture. We believe that they do.

Pastoral Application

A young couple joins the church. They grew up in a Bible church with no written confession. After the membership class the husband says to the pastor, "I am happy to believe the Bible, but I don't want to sign a man-made document. Why do you need one?"

The pastor does not become defensive. First, he thanks the man for his love for the Bible and says this is the very reason the church has a confession.

Second, he asks how the man's old church decided what to believe about baptism and the Trinity. The man realizes that his church had clear teachings, taught by the pastor and never written down.

Third, he opens 2 Timothy 1:13 and 2:2 with him.

Fourth, he explains that the confession stands under the Bible, invites the man to test every statement against Scripture, and promises that the elders will listen if he finds an error. The man is not asked to trust the pastor. He is invited to search the Scriptures as the Bereans did.

Summary

Scripture alone is the final norm for faith and life, as the Westminster Confession (chapter 1) and the Belgic Confession (Articles 5 and 7) teach. The Bible itself contains confessions of faith, the early church wrote creeds, and the Reformed churches received them. Churches write confessions to confess Christ before the world, to guard the truth against error, to teach and unite the people, and to guard the ministry. Scripture is the norming norm. A confession is a normed norm, a servant under the Word, and councils and confessions may err, as the Westminster Confession itself says. "No creed but the Bible" shows love for the Word, but the slogan is itself a statement of belief. The Roman view makes the church's voice a second authority, which we reject. Old confessions are revisable under Scripture, and historians' debate over Calvin and his followers does not change the main question: do the confessions agree with the Bible? We believe that they do.

Further Reading

• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Beveridge translation, 1845), Book 1, chapters 7-9; Book 4, chapter 9 (on councils).

• The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chapters 1, 20 and 31.

• The Belgic Confession (1561), Articles 2-7 and 9.

• The Second Helvetic Confession (1566), chapter 1, on Holy Scripture.

• Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (1872-73), volume 1, on the rule of faith.

• B. B. Warfield, essays on the authority and inspiration of Scripture.

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