pilgrim people

A couple of days ago, as I was doing some reading on the background of the Synod of Dort in preparation for our Sunday evening sermon series on the Doctrines of Grace, I realized that we are less than two weeks away from the 400^th anniversary of the day Jacob Arminius became a Calvinist. That is to say, October 19, 1609 was the day Arminius died and departed this world (and thus ceased to be an Arminian, get it?).

Who exactly was Jacob Arminius and why is he important? Arminius was born in Holland in 1560 and educated at the Reformed University of Leiden and under Theodore Beza (Calvin’s successor) at Geneva. He was ordained as a minister in the Reformed churches in 1587 and served as a pastor until 1603 when he was to the theological faculty of Leiden. During the 1590s, his preaching through the book of Romans caused many to question his fidelity to Reformed doctrine.

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(this post was originally posted on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 08:50AM)

With the rise of American biblicism and "Scriptura Solo" (in contrast to the Protestant and Reformational principle of Sola Scriptura), came the erosion of ecclesiastical authority. Populist hermeneutics, which promoted the autonomy of the individual conscience, gave way to an anti-clerical, anti-authoritarian attitude. Like creeds and confessions, the value and necessity of well-trained clergymen was challenged. As Hatch points out, a revolution within the church was called for “to place laity and clergy on equal footing and to exalt the conscience of the individual over the collective will of any congregation or church organization.” This was seen most vividly in the renouncement of all institutional forms of church government (including church membership) and the upsurge of untrained preachers and their vernacular style of preaching.

Ironically (and sadly), American biblicism - both then and now - fails to see in the very Bible they tout as their "only creed" the divinely prescribed order of the church and the offices God has given her (Acts 14.23; 20.28; 1 Tim 3; 5.17; Tit 1; Heb 13.17). The canon of Scripture is the means by which Christ shapes his church and exercises his authority over her (Mt 16.19; Tit 1.13; 2.15). This is the very reason for subscription to creeds and confessions; they act as summary statements of biblical truth to keep the church on course and from falling into error.

Yet, in its attempt to free the Bible from the fetters of the traditions of men, American biblicism has actually removed Scripture from its authoritative function. Rather than being guided by the principle of Sola Scriptura, biblicists have been guided by the egalitarian spirit of the American culture. The result has been a Protestantism that "has been pushed and pulled into its present shape by a democratic or popluist oreintation."

Sadly, this continues to be a great problem for the Christian Church in America. Anti-authoritarian attitudes that scorn ecclesiastical offices and church government incessantly prevail. Well-educated and well-trained clergy (both pastors and missionaries) is increasingly becoming a norm of the past. Just as the American biblicism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries produced self-called ministers who relied completely on their inward call and neglected “almost every ministerial qualification required in the sacred Scriptures,” so too at the present day nearly anyone possessing skills to persuade a crowd and a belief of some personal, inward experience can proclaim himself a minister, set up shop, and often obtain celebrity status...sort of the ecclesiastical version of a garage band. As one of our elders at Christ URC likes to say, it becomes the Church of Frank Sinatra: "I Did it My Way."

Creeds and confessions help curb that sinful spirit of autonomy in each of us. They protect the church from wild-eyed biblicism and privatized religion. They protect us from "Scriptura Solo" while upholding Sola Scriptura. They protect the health and care of the church from American egalitarian ecclesiology.

Sola Scriptura can easily be misunderstood to mean, "me-and-my-own-interpretation-of the-Bible-is-authoritative." The question we must ask is: should the Bible be read and interpreted with the church or apart from the church?

American biblicism answers that question a little differently the Protestant Reformers. The early-American biblicists, for example, demonstrated their misunderstanding of Sola Scriptura by adopting a subjective method of interpretation. Creeds, confessions, and historical theology were thrown out in order to proclaim the primacy of the Bible and re-establish pure Apostolic Christianity. In the book I mentioned in the previous post, Nathan Hatch notes that “[a]ny number of denominations, sects, movements, and individuals between 1780 and 1830 claimed to be restoring a pristine biblical Christianity free from all human devices.”[1] The early-American biblicists held suspect doctrines and systems of theology developed by men, and viewed them as a likely perversion of genuine biblical truth.

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(this post was originally posted on Friday, February 29, 2008 at 09:15AM)

OK, maybe we won't wrap this series up just quite yet. There are still a couple of points to be made. Perhaps we might do this by asking, Do creeds and confessions threaten the principle of Sola Scriptura? Many people would say they do. In fact, the ecclesiastical climate in American evangelicalism (which has made huge inroads into Reformed and Presbyterian circles) is very adverse to creeds and confessions. Why is that?

In his book The Democratization of American Christianity, Nathan O. Hatch presents a provocative reassessment of early-American Christianity and its development in an egalitarian culture. Hatch documents the rise of “biblicist” Christianity, its appeal to the democratic spirit of the American masses, and its opposition to confessional Christianity, viz., Calvinism. In their attempt to have “no creed but the Bible,” the biblicists propagated an anti-authoritarian, anti-traditional religion that made Sola Scriptura a license to think and say whatever they pleased. According to Hatch, these professing Christians misunderstood Sola Scriptura by making it a principle for the primacy of the individual conscience rather than the primacy of the Bible’s authority.

So, what is the principle of Sola Scriptura then? The Latin term, birthed in the Protestant Reformation, simply means, "by Scripture alone." It is a slogan that stands for the principle that Scripture alone is the written authority and inerrant rule for the church's faith and life (BC 5, 7; WCF 1; WLC Q.3; WSC Q.2). The Reformers rejected Rome's attempt to bind the consciences of Christians with doctrines and moral regulations that weren't found in Scripture. The Reformers asserted that only the Bible has the ultimate authority to bind the consciences of believers, and that the church cannot maintain infallibility in interpreting it.

For the Reformers, Sola Scriptura also meant the right and responsibility for every Christian to read, understand, and obey God's Word with the rest of the church, especially under the direction and guidance of official pastors and teachers. The reason for this was that over and against Rome, the Reformers believed the Bible produced and shaped the church, rather than the opposite. Believers and their children, therefore, were to be catechized in biblical doctrine in order that they might "rightly divide the Word of truth." Any notion of studying the Scriptures apart from the church and without ministerial guidance was altogether foreign to the Reformers' understanding of Sola Scriptura. The right of private interpretation did not give an individual the right to interpret the Bible any way he pleased. The Bible is not a wax nose to be twisted and shaped in order to fit one's subjective opinion. 

Reading Hatch's presentation of biblicist-Christianity leaves one with the impression that little of the above was properly understood by those he studies. Rather than an emphasis upon the Scriptures as the authority to shape and govern the church, emphasis was put upon a "radical Bible-centeredness" in privatized religion in which individual opinion ruled. The most two distinctive features of biblicism's primacy of the individual conscience are its populist hermeneutics and its egalitarian ecclesiology. In forthcoming posts, I will briefly evaluate these.

But in the meantime, what do you think? Do creeds and confessions threaten Sola Scriptura? Are the two antithetical?

(this post was originally posted on Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 11:52AM)

As we wrap up this four-part series of posts on why we need creeds and confessions, I want to make the brief point, without repeating what has already been said in the previous posts and comments, that creeds and confessions provide basic instruction on the essentials of the historic Christian faith.

Creeds and confessions help us “connect the dots” of the Bible. They instruct us on the doctrine which arises from the story of redemption. They are one of the ways the church fulfills her responsibility to “Go…and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that [Christ has]commanded.” (Matt 28.18-20) The church has the responsibility to teach apostolic doctrine, which has been laid as a foundation for our faith. Incidentally, this is why we call is the Apostles’ Creed. It is not because we believe that the apostles themselves wrote it, but because it is a faithful expression of apostolic doctrine, which Christ commanded his church to teach and continue in.

Moreover, this is why the Reformation gave us rich catechisms. The Heidelberg Catechism goes through the Apostles’ Creed and explains it, line by line, so that we are instructed in what we believe and why we believe it. You see, we don’t confess the Apostles’ Creed or any creed or confession without reading it critically and understanding it. But when we do, we should be able to say with the Reformed churches in 1561-62, who sent a copy of the Belgic Confession to the Roman Catholic King Philip II along with a letter that said that they were ready to obey the government in all lawful things, but that they would “offer their backs to stripes, their tongues to knives, their mouths to gags, and their whole bodies to fire” rather than deny the truth expressed in their confession.

Are you ready to say that? Are you willing to die for what you confess to believe is true? Are you ready to stand with the historic Christian church and confess what she has confessed through the ages? Are you prepared to teach these things diligently to your children, and talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise?

Indeed, it requires work. It means we cannot be lazy. But this is a necessary part of every Christian’s growth and survival; to take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and not let the sword drop from our hands. We must be willing to work our doctrinal confession into the fabric of our lives. What we confess should consistently be part of who we are, our worship, our prayer life, our evangelism, everything.