Solution: Love of the Truth

As we have seen, there is a great deal of confusion about terms that are used to define and distinguish doctrinal departure away from the truth of God’s word. What is the proper solution to this confusion? Can this confusion be properly solved by attempting to draw careful definitions for each term that is involved, distinguishing categories of these departures? Then is it necessary to relate these categories to one another, perhaps ranking them from bad to worse in their distance of departure from the word or in the damage that they cause to the church in its stand for the truth? Can this confusion be solved by saying some errors are chief errors and others are secondary errors?

To properly solve the confusion, it is first necessary to understand the purpose of deliberative assemblies in their treatment of doctrines. Their purpose is to defend and maintain the truth against error. Their responsibility is to keep the churches free from errors that are destructive of the truth and the faith of God’s people and that will keep the people from ascribing all honor and glory to the God of truth. Their duty is to distinguish truth from error and to do so on the basis of God’s word.

That this is the purpose of deliberative assemblies is clear from the Formula of Subscription, to which every officebearer must subscribe by attaching his signature. After a solemn declaration of belief that the doctrines of the three forms of unity “do fully agree with the Word of God,” signatories promise “diligently to teach and faithfully to defend the aforesaid doctrine” (Formula of Subscription, in Confessions and Church Order, 326). On the credentials of classis and synod, the authorization is given the delegates by the consistories and classes sending them “to take part in all the deliberations and transactions…transacted in agreement with the Word of God according to the conception of it embodied in the doctrinal standards of the Protestant Reformed Churches” (Church Order of the Protestant Reformed Churches, 2020 edition, 145–46).

A clear understanding of this purpose makes other debates as meaningless as they are detrimental to the cause of truth in the church of Jesus Christ. How many people might be upset by a decision taken? How might a decision for the truth and against error affect reputations of ministers or their influence in a denomination? What if decisions mean certain ministers will be subject to suspension and deposition? What will happen if decisions of a consistory or consistories are declared to be in error, that what they defended as truth was not truth at all but error?

From these viewpoints the questions we faced earlier fade away into their deserved obscurity. What is the difference between heresy and false doctrine? Between error and unorthodoxy? Misunderstanding and confusion? Heretic and nice? Heretic and misunderstood? What merit do such arguments have when the truth is under attack? Which is more important: truth or persons?

We might try to think of such debates applied to church history. What about Nestorianism or Eutychianism? What about Arianism? What about Pelagianism? Did church councils spend their time asking whether these were heresies or errors or false doctrines? Did church councils ask whether the promoters or adherents of these doctrines were confused or misguided, or malicious and evil? Did the Synod of Dordt entertain any such debates over the Remonstrants?

To be sure, we grant that there is such a thing as a false accusation. Even the apostle Paul was accused of being an antinomian (Rom. 3:8). He was accused by some in the church of Corinth of being two-faced (2 Cor. 1:17–18; 10:10). However, when and where the truth is clearly preached, understood, believed, and confessed, everything else becomes clear. False accusation becomes clear. Heresy also becomes clear. It is also clear that confusion is the devil’s tool to introduce false doctrine. As is evident from the epistles of Romans and Galatians, the slander that Paul was an antinomian was first brought against him, and on the heels of that discrediting of the apostle, the way would be clear for legalism that would drive out the gospel of grace (Gal. 4:16; 5:1–12). In all this warfare, the apostle expressed the simple confidence that God would vindicate his truth. Therefore Paul committed all things into God’s divine hand.

Confusion abounds in doctrinal controversy when deliberative assemblies become mired in discussions and debates over order, legality, and polity. Is the tone appropriate? Are things written that should not have been written? Should an individual have taken a different approach? Have all past decisions been properly consulted and represented in documents? Has too much been written? Too little? Have there been enough meetings? Is there any misrepresentation? There are hundreds of questions that can be asked. There are as many trails to pursue and on which to get lost.

How is this confusion to be eliminated? How are the distractions to be minimized?

Scripture itself knows no gradations of error. Error is always condemned and never tolerated. Error is always explained as an enemy of the truth and a plague from which the church always needs to be cured. Error is everywhere rebuked in the strongest of terms.

I can cite two cases from scripture. The first case is found in Galatians. The false teaching against which the epistle was written was the demand that a believer must be circumcised in order to be saved (5:2). Let us be honest about this. We might be inclined to pass our judgment: “Is that all? How is that something to get worked up over? Doesn’t the law require it?” But that is not what Paul writes about the error. He does not minimize it. He does not call it a misunderstanding or confusion. Nor does he call it a heresy. A label is not his point, nor the Bible’s point. Read what he does write in Galatians 5:2–4: “If ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you…ye are fallen from grace.” What does Paul say about those who promoted this error? He does not identify them by labels or names. He does not “tag” them. He says, “I would they were even cut off which trouble you” (v. 12).

In addition, the same book contains Paul’s sharp words to Peter, which Paul spoke before the church. When Peter had separated himself from the Gentiles, no longer eating with them because of certain Jews who came from Jerusalem to Antioch, Paul did not speak of confusion or misunderstanding but said to Peter, “Why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?” (2:14). Paul spoke earlier in the same verse of what he saw in Peter’s action: “I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel.”

The gospel determined and defined the error, its awful nature, and the necessity of dealing with it, not tolerating it. It did not matter that it was Peter, an apostle, who changed his eating companions. It did not matter that the fellowship of the Galatians was going to be disturbed by this epistle, which attacked certain teachers and leaders in the church. The truth of the gospel was what mattered.

The second case is in the book of Colossians. What is striking about this epistle is that a definite teaching is not named or strictly described. Only its broadest outlines are given. It was evidently a form of Gnosticism, the teaching that a special knowledge of doctrine and ritual that is extra-biblical is necessary for salvation, in addition to Christ. But the point of scripture is not that the error has a name or a certain set of teachings. The point is that it denies the fullness of Christ for salvation.

In these two cases we are taught by example what really matters. For the sake of maintaining the truth of the gospel in the church of Jesus Christ, whatever is opposed to that truth must be rejected and repudiated. Those who introduce and maintain such teachings and doctrines must be opposed. They must be called to repentance and cast out of the fellowship of the church for their refusal to turn. It matters not who they are or how much trouble the church may endure in dealing with them. The church must find such teachers and their teachings intolerable.

The love of the truth is the power to cut through the knots and tangles of distractions, to get to the heart of doctrinal controversy. Zeal for the glory of God that is manifested by the truth is the power to burn away all the fog of confusion in which error hides and thrives. The fear of God that trembles before his holy word of truth disregards the effects upon persons and institutions for the sake of maintaining and defending the truth against error. The fear of God breaks down the respect of persons and the fear of man behind which false doctrines are easily hidden and fostered.

In this same respect article 80 of the Church Order is instructive. “Sins” are the reason for the deposition of officebearers in the church. These sins are identified in a list, to which others can be added. The words “among the gross sins” indicate that what is specifically listed is by no means exhaustive. The members of this list have one thing in common, besides being sins: they are grounds for the punishment of “suspension or deposition from office.”

In this list two sins are set side by side: “false doctrine or heresy.” These two, heading the list of “principal ones,” certainly must mean different things. Much more can be written about the difference between the two, which writing could always be found to be controversial. However each may be identified, one thing must be clear: both are stated as being “worthy of being punished with suspension or deposition from office.” It is simply a moot point of which one an officebearer might be guilty. Just as “false doctrine” is a gross sin rendering its perpetrator worthy of suspension or deposition, so is “heresy” (Church Order 80, in Confessions and Church Order, 402–3).

A high spiritual regard and deep love for the truth has two powerful results in the church of Jesus Christ. First, it brings a clear and sharp discernment of the truth from false doctrine and heresy. Second, it produces a highly motivated willingness to defend and maintain the truth through the use of Christian discipline against officebearers and members guilty of deviation from the truth. This spiritual regard and deep love for the truth does not engage in a debate about terms or helplessly wring its hands over anticipated casualties. It understands clearly that “the truth is above all; for all men are of themselves liars and more vain than vanity itself” (Belgic Confession 7, in Confessions and Church Order, 28).