No Creed But the Bible?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Happy Friday everyone.
00:00:06.640 | A podcast listener named Lauren Belozian
00:00:10.140 | writes in to ask about confessional Christianity.
00:00:12.680 | Dear Pastor John, I'm a fan of your podcast.
00:00:15.360 | My question is this.
00:00:17.040 | Do you subscribe to the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith?
00:00:22.040 | If not, why not?
00:00:24.760 | And in general, what are your thoughts
00:00:26.700 | on the confessional movement and associations?
00:00:30.120 | What would you say, Pastor John, to Lauren?
00:00:31.880 | - Well, before I declare myself with regard
00:00:34.480 | to the 1689 Baptist Confession,
00:00:37.060 | just some general thoughts,
00:00:38.440 | some encouraging, hopeful thoughts
00:00:41.560 | about confessional Christianity.
00:00:43.960 | I think confessional Christianity,
00:00:46.720 | Christianity that's unified
00:00:48.920 | around a written confession of faith,
00:00:52.480 | confessional Christianity at its best
00:00:55.140 | is the best Christianity.
00:00:57.400 | In other words, all other things being equal,
00:01:01.480 | it is a good thing for a people to be united
00:01:06.140 | around a written summary of biblical truth.
00:01:09.600 | And I've got, I think, maybe four reasons
00:01:12.320 | that come to mind why that is.
00:01:14.220 | One, Paul, when he was saying farewell
00:01:19.220 | to the elders in Ephesus, declared,
00:01:23.600 | "I am innocent of the blood of you all
00:01:27.100 | "because I did not shrink from declaring to you
00:01:31.680 | "the whole counsel of God."
00:01:34.060 | So that phrase, whole counsel of God,
00:01:37.940 | points to some kind of unified summary
00:01:42.200 | of essential biblical truth.
00:01:44.300 | And Paul said to Timothy in another place,
00:01:47.100 | similarly, I think it's 1 Timothy 6.20,
00:01:51.220 | "Guard the deposit entrusted to you."
00:01:55.320 | So there's some kind of deposit,
00:01:58.140 | an apostolic deposit that's put down
00:02:01.400 | that you should guard and hand on.
00:02:04.200 | So some kind of body of unified truth.
00:02:08.800 | Same thing in Romans 6.17, Paul said,
00:02:12.780 | "You who were once slaves of sin
00:02:15.100 | "have become obedient from the heart
00:02:16.640 | "to the standard of teaching
00:02:20.240 | "to which you were committed."
00:02:22.040 | So we've got the phrase standard of teaching,
00:02:25.040 | deposit, whole counsel of God,
00:02:28.380 | and those all to me say,
00:02:31.520 | all right, have you done that, John Piper?
00:02:34.080 | Did you deliver to Bethlehem Baptist Church
00:02:36.420 | the whole counsel of God?
00:02:37.800 | Is there a deposit of truth that you gave there?
00:02:40.520 | And I think that points us towards,
00:02:43.000 | yeah, we need something like that
00:02:45.200 | summarized or written down for us.
00:02:47.200 | The second thing is that
00:02:50.160 | without a written summary of biblical truth,
00:02:52.240 | we tend to be vague about what we believe.
00:02:55.520 | Some people think that avoiding confessions of faith
00:02:59.840 | provides greater Christian unity
00:03:03.060 | because writing things down requires precision
00:03:06.360 | and clarity and explicitness,
00:03:08.520 | and all of those precipitate disagreement and arguments.
00:03:13.640 | But the alternative is to obscure those disagreements
00:03:18.540 | under a cloud of vagueness.
00:03:21.840 | And the effect of that so-called unity
00:03:25.480 | is that it constantly depends on keeping
00:03:28.640 | clarity of truth at a distance.
00:03:30.520 | You can't see it with precision up close,
00:03:32.600 | and it lets you down in the end
00:03:34.520 | when crucial applications and decisions
00:03:37.880 | have to be made on the basis of truth,
00:03:40.800 | and it's now been kept obscure all this time,
00:03:43.120 | and we don't have it there to apply in crucial cases.
00:03:48.120 | The third reason I think it's important
00:03:50.960 | to have something like a summary of biblical truth
00:03:53.440 | or a confession is that
00:03:55.640 | the slogan, "No creed but the Bible,"
00:04:01.440 | conceals the fact that in almost any group,
00:04:06.440 | crucial biblical statements will be properly understood
00:04:09.640 | by some and misunderstood by others.
00:04:12.600 | In such cases, it's naive to say that the Bible unites us.
00:04:17.600 | It may not be uniting us at all.
00:04:20.400 | It may be instead a vague cloak for significant disunity,
00:04:25.400 | and that doesn't honor the scriptures.
00:04:29.360 | It was a great education for me
00:04:32.360 | to do a study of Athanasius and realize
00:04:36.720 | that in the debates that he had with the heretic Arius,
00:04:41.240 | both sides affirmed the authority of scripture,
00:04:44.480 | and both sides did extensive quoting of the Bible.
00:04:49.480 | And so, "No creed but the Bible," in that case,
00:04:54.000 | would simply be used to cover the fact
00:04:56.320 | that the denial of the deity of Christ doesn't matter.
00:04:59.360 | Of course it matters, and somebody has to stand up and say,
00:05:01.640 | "That's not what the Bible teaches."
00:05:04.160 | And the fourth reason for why I think
00:05:06.720 | the confessional movement is a good thing
00:05:10.280 | is that such confessional summaries of biblical truth
00:05:15.280 | really do help us in our faith,
00:05:18.160 | because I think faith thrives on deep, true doctrine
00:05:23.160 | that is brought out of the scriptures,
00:05:28.320 | properly summarized, applied to people's lives,
00:05:31.320 | and in our souls, in our families, in our churches,
00:05:34.440 | even in society.
00:05:36.000 | That kind of clear doctrinal truth
00:05:38.200 | is healthy for life and for obedience to Jesus.
00:05:43.200 | I know that there will always be Pharisaic misuses
00:05:48.360 | of doctrine, of biblical truth,
00:05:51.800 | which turn them into a vehicle of pride
00:05:54.720 | and abuse of God's people,
00:05:57.560 | but those kinds of misuses of truth
00:06:01.080 | should not stop us from the right use of truth,
00:06:04.840 | which is to treat it like kindling,
00:06:07.600 | thrown on the fires of love for God and love for people.
00:06:11.560 | That's the way it's functioned in my life
00:06:13.480 | over the years anyway,
00:06:14.400 | that clear, faithful, doctrinal teaching
00:06:19.200 | has been an inflaming means to my faith
00:06:24.200 | and my love for God and love for people.
00:06:26.340 | So yes, I'm in favor of churches and schools
00:06:29.800 | and ministries being defined
00:06:31.280 | by robust affirmations of faith.
00:06:35.400 | One of the practical effects that had on me
00:06:38.000 | was after about 15 years
00:06:39.560 | of my serving Bethlehem Baptist Church,
00:06:43.260 | the elders then, with my encouragement,
00:06:46.920 | worked their way for about four or five years
00:06:50.680 | to the point of composing and agreeing upon
00:06:54.180 | the Bethlehem Baptist Church Elder Affirmation of Faith.
00:06:59.180 | And that affirmation of faith now governs the church
00:07:02.680 | and Desire in God and Bethlehem College and Seminary.
00:07:06.360 | And there are advantages and disadvantages
00:07:10.160 | of composing a new affirmation of faith.
00:07:12.380 | I realize there are dangers.
00:07:13.880 | The great danger is that we might be trendy
00:07:16.080 | or idiosyncratic or selective,
00:07:18.600 | based on our own preferences.
00:07:20.840 | The advantage is that it can be expressed in language
00:07:25.520 | that is more understandable
00:07:27.560 | and can deal with issues and terms
00:07:30.680 | that we're facing today that need to be dealt with
00:07:34.340 | doctrinally and ethically.
00:07:36.320 | So we tried very hard not to be trendy or idiosyncratic.
00:07:40.040 | And we tried to send out the affirmation of faith
00:07:43.680 | in its process of coming into being
00:07:46.400 | to Christian leaders across the country and get feedback.
00:07:50.680 | So that was our approach.
00:07:52.120 | Now, here's the deal with the 1689 Baptist Confession.
00:07:56.880 | I didn't choose to go that route,
00:07:58.840 | even though it's a good, solid, reformed Baptist version
00:08:03.840 | of the Westminster Confession.
00:08:06.040 | And there are several reasons why.
00:08:07.360 | Here they are.
00:08:08.200 | Number one, the language is somewhat foreign.
00:08:10.800 | And its vocabulary, it uses King James.
00:08:15.540 | It's like reading the King James Version.
00:08:17.880 | And I think it's probably a mistake
00:08:20.320 | to try to enshrine that today
00:08:25.320 | as the one that, if you expect families to use it
00:08:28.800 | without any updated form.
00:08:30.640 | So that was one reason.
00:08:32.360 | Number two, while I'm able to affirm
00:08:36.800 | that Genesis 1 referred to literal 24-hour days,
00:08:42.280 | I had a hard time thinking that I should make that
00:08:47.280 | a matter of confessional faithfulness to Christianity.
00:08:53.480 | And so I stumbled over that section.
00:08:58.000 | Third, the understanding of the Sabbath
00:09:02.120 | is perhaps more rigorous and narrow
00:09:07.120 | than my understanding of the implications
00:09:09.360 | of Jesus' teaching about the Sabbath.
00:09:12.040 | Fourth, there are certain historic categories of theology,
00:09:16.180 | like the covenant of works and others,
00:09:19.080 | that have proved useful, but you might wonder,
00:09:22.960 | shall I make that the structure
00:09:26.320 | of the theology I'm going to present?
00:09:29.920 | A fifth idea was that there are little things,
00:09:33.640 | I mean, this is gonna sound so piddly,
00:09:35.280 | and yet you can't be piddly in a confession,
00:09:38.880 | little things like saying that bread and wine
00:09:43.880 | are prescribed in the Lord's Supper.
00:09:47.840 | Nowhere in the New Testament does it say
00:09:50.320 | that wine was used in the Lord's Supper.
00:09:52.640 | That comes as a shock to a lot of people.
00:09:55.560 | It doesn't say that's what was used.
00:09:59.760 | Now, I suspect it was, I suspect it was wine,
00:10:03.440 | but it always uses the term cup or fruit of the vine,
00:10:08.440 | and therefore, if you get into a knockdown battle
00:10:15.160 | and say, we're gonna settle this confessionally,
00:10:17.520 | and you go to a 1689 confession,
00:10:20.280 | it's gonna say wine is what you're supposed to use.
00:10:24.160 | And I would say, well, that's just unbiblical,
00:10:25.720 | because that's not what the Bible says,
00:10:29.640 | even though that's totally legitimate
00:10:31.760 | and maybe even preferable, but not at all required.
00:10:35.400 | So I think the 1689 confession of faith
00:10:38.440 | is a glorious, wonderfully faithful expression
00:10:42.040 | of biblical truth.
00:10:43.520 | I fellowship down to my toenails with people
00:10:46.800 | who love that doctrine, but there are enough
00:10:50.280 | little things and things like I've mentioned here
00:10:54.360 | that made me think, I think probably for us,
00:10:58.280 | we would wanna go another direction.
00:11:00.880 | But my main point here that I wanna say
00:11:03.320 | and leave Lauren with is, I think affirmations of faith
00:11:07.720 | are very important, and that churches should not shy away
00:11:12.540 | from them, but patiently, over time, work their way
00:11:17.560 | towards a unified expression of biblical faith
00:11:20.760 | for the sake of the preservation and the vitality
00:11:24.200 | and the mission of the church.
00:11:27.120 | - A hearty amen to that, thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:29.480 | And I can hear follow-up emails piling in already
00:11:32.980 | in the inbox about creation and Sabbath and wine.
00:11:35.440 | - So can I, oh my, what have I done?
00:11:38.200 | - All right, thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:40.040 | Well, if you wanna see the Bethlehem Baptist Church
00:11:42.240 | Elder Affirmation of Faith, you can find that
00:11:44.160 | at desiringgod.org, it's a beautiful document,
00:11:46.880 | and I know many churches have adopted it as their own.
00:11:50.280 | You can check it out online.
00:11:52.160 | Well, we're gonna break for the weekend,
00:11:53.400 | and we are back on Monday with a fascinating discussion
00:11:55.880 | on the differences between praising others
00:11:58.560 | and flattering others.
00:12:00.160 | You don't wanna miss this one.
00:12:01.800 | And if you've missed any episodes from the week,
00:12:03.440 | you can catch up in our free app for your phone,
00:12:05.600 | and of course, you can catch up online
00:12:07.720 | at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:12:12.440 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, have a wonderful weekend.
00:12:15.400 | (upbeat music)
00:12:17.980 | (upbeat music)
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