This series is intended to touch briefly on the key teachings of and the history surrounding the Reformed minor confessions. These confessions include the ancient church creeds, the liturgical forms, and to a lesser extent the Church Order of Dordrecht. The major confessions are the three forms of unity: the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dordrecht.

The minor confessions are otherwise referred to as the lesser confessions, not because they are any less significant or any less important in comparison to the major confessions. Neither is the name meant to compare the smaller length of the minor confessions with the larger length of the major confessions. Rather, the name refers to their limited scope: each minor confession focuses on a single point of doctrine, whereas the major confessions cover the whole of Christian doctrine.

While this is a useful classification, it is by no means perfect. The Belgic Confession most closely follows this classification, covering the whole system of doctrine in correspondence with the six loci, or topics, of Reformed dogmatics. It could be argued that the Canons of Dordt has a somewhat limited scope, focusing mainly on setting forth the truth of the Reformed faith over against the errors of the Remonstrants. Similarly, while divided into three separate sections, in its whole system of doctrine, the Heidelberg Catechism maintains the very specific theme of comfort. However, the classification is useful for the intention of distinguishing the minor confessions from the three forms of unity. For the duration of this series, I will be referring to them simply as the minor confessions.

While there is much material that I hope to touch on throughout this series, it is beneficial to be reminded concerning what the confessions are and their necessity in the true church of Jesus Christ. This is important for us to insist on in a day and an age when men hate ecclesiastical authority and despise church government as that government of the church is exercised according to the word of God and by means of the confessions.

The Idea of the Confessions

The idea of the confessions can be understood by their main labels: creeds, symbols, and confessions. The word creed is an English derivative of the Latin verb credo, which being translated means I believe. This phrase appears as a constant refrain in the Apostles’ Creed, the content of which the Heidelberg Catechism in Lord’s Day 7 defines as those things that are necessary for a Christian to believe. In a very concrete way, a creed is meant to form the essential doctrinal content of faith, what scripture often refers to as “the faith.” A creed answers the question, what does true faith believe?

Therefore, first, a creed is a statement of faith, the articles of which set forth the truths that the framers of each creed believed to be necessary unto salvation and essential to the well-being of the church. The antithetical character of a creed comes out in the name creed. A creed is not merely an organization of pious-sounding thoughts or religious speech with which a church or an individual may agree or disagree with no serious consequences. A creed is unlike any other statement of principles from an earthly club or association. Instead, a creed is the fruit of Christ’s promise to send forth his Spirit to guide his people into all the truth (John 16:13). For an individual and a church to reject a creed, therefore, is for them to reveal themselves as faithless and unbelieving.

Second, creeds are symbols. That they are symbols refers to the fact that the true church does not subscribe to her creeds begrudgingly nor out of custom or superstition. Rather, the church wears her creeds like badges of honor and spreads those creeds over her walls as great banners. This is what we mean when we say that we are the Reformed Protestant Churches. We often tend to think that we are Reformed because we believe that our doctrine is the heritage of the Protestant Reformation. This is true. However, this does not answer the question, how did the Reformed Protestant Churches come into the possession of that doctrine? These churches are Reformed for no other reason than that they have adopted the Reformed creeds. The Reformed creeds inform the key doctrinal positions of the Reformed Protestant Churches as witnesses over against those who also call themselves Reformed but are not Reformed, and the Reformed creeds are tests that must be used to examine every doctrine and every teacher.

Third, the creeds are confessions. The word confession comes from the Latin verb that means to say together with. In the Reformed confessions the church speaks together with God. In the church’s confessions she agrees with the word of God, which is God’s own exegesis of himself. By those Reformed confessions the church speaks together with the church of all ages concerning what she believes to be the doctrine of the word of God. This is crucial. We are Reformed for no other reason than that we have adopted the Reformed confessions. And we confess that we are Reformed according to the word of God.

Here I answer the objection of those who stand opposed to creeds and confessions, presuming that the church that holds to creeds must necessarily ascribe to them equal authority with the sacred scriptures. This is a fictitious charge that easily can be dismissed. For the truly Reformed, confessional church, the word of God is the sole rule of doctrine and practice (sola scriptura). And yet the Reformed church also confesses that her creeds “do fully agree with the Word of God” and contain “the true and complete doctrine of salvation,” as is evident from the Formula of Subscription and the questions posed to every confessing member of the Reformed church in his or her public confession of faith (Confessions and Church Order, 326, 266). The Reformed church admits that the authority of the Reformed confessions is derived from the word of God. The confessions are not infallible rules in themselves, containing original authority like the inspired scriptures. However, the truths that are taught in the Reformed confessions are binding insofar as they do fully agree with the scriptures, and in that understanding the confessions are indeed regulative for doctrine and practice.

The Necessity of Confessions

The value or usefulness of creeds is not the main consideration when answering why the church has creeds. Of course, the Reformed church admits that the creeds are very useful in many ways. The creeds settle doctrinal controversy in the church. The creeds form clear and concise statements of faith that guard membership in the church from those who do not believe the truth of the word of God and those who would bring in damnable heresies, thus disrupting the unity of the church in the truth. The creeds are often quite useful in teaching the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, laying out the main teachings of the Bible from the clearest and plainest passages. However, while the Reformed creeds are very useful, the Reformed church believes that the creeds are necessary.

The Reformed church does not merely confess that she may adopt creeds, but she confesses that she must have creeds. There is a creedal imperative. By this creedal imperative we always must insist on the creeds and must condemn all those who wish to slight those creeds either publicly or privately, in preaching or in writing.

The church must have creeds because it is the chief calling of the true church of Jesus Christ publicly to testify as one united body concerning the truth. This is the teaching of 1 Timothy 3:15: “If I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.”

Paul gave Timothy specific instructions on how Timothy ought to conduct himself as a young minister in the true church of Jesus Christ. The church in the text is a reference to the instituted church, the local manifestation in the world of the universal body of Jesus Christ. And the instituted church is called “the church of the living God.” The church is the church of the living God. This is what must be confessed about every true church of Jesus Christ. God is God from everlasting to everlasting. God is the same in the instant and constant fullness of his divine being as the only good God, the implication of all perfection—the God who is his perfections and is eternally the same in all his perfections. God is the living God because God is the triune God. In God, life is fellowship: God the Father fellowshiping with God the Son in God the Holy Spirit. The life of God is the life of breathing and being breathed. In that life of God, God never changes. That God is the living God means that God cannot change. God cannot change with respect to his being nor any of his perfections. And God cannot change with respect to his eternal counsel.

First Timothy 3:15 certainly has in view God’s eternal counsel. That the church is the church of the living God means that the church is the product of the eternal counsel and will of God. The church of the living God is not merely the church as the universal body of Jesus Christ but also the church as instituted. It is God’s house wherein he is pleased to dwell and wherein he rules graciously by his Word and Spirit. It is God’s house wherein he makes known the wonder of grace in Jesus Christ and unfolds his sovereign will and good pleasure, wherein God communicates himself to his people.

This explains the innermost essence of the instituted church. The church as she is manifested in the world is the result of the decreeing God. God is a living God, possessing a living will, according to which God performs all things in time and history. God decreed the church and every member of it. And according to that sovereign will, God calls his people out of the world and gathers his elect from the four corners of the earth into the church institute. And God also decreed what the church’s chief task is in the world: to be the pillar and ground of the truth.

The church of the living God that God elects, that God calls and gathers into one body in Jesus Christ, and that God manifests in the world in the institute is the pillar and ground of the truth. This is God’s purpose for his church in the world. This is her sole office or task in the world. The church’s task is not a bunch of other things. The church’s task is not to be a place where everyone feels loved and accepted for who they are, where no judgments are cast. The church is not called to aid and assist movements for reform in society. Rather, the church is called to be the pillar and ground of the truth. The church’s task is to uphold and to establish the truth.

Being so founded upon the truth of God, the church is tasked with supporting that truth in such a way that everything in the church flows from that truth. The church has the right, authority, and calling to confess what the truth is according to the word of God. Likewise, the church has the right, authority, and calling to threaten with eternal damnation all those who depart from her confession of the truth.

If it is true that the church is called to be the pillar and ground of the truth, then how does the church carry out this task?

The Reformed church answers, “By the confessions!”

That this is the case is demonstrated by the apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 3:16: “Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” The words “without controversy” in the King James Version can also be translated as confessedly. By this the high calling of the church to be the pillar and ground of the truth is given a concrete expression, which is that she makes a confession of that truth. The calling of the church is not merely that she makes a confession. There is an antithetical character to the church’s confession. In 2 Timothy 1:13 Paul exhorted Timothy to “hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.”

Indicative in this exhortation is the reality that not every confession confesses the truth. This is evident from the context in which Paul further exhorted Timothy to “shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness” (2 Tim. 2:16). And Paul warned of those who had departed from the truth, “who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some” (v. 18).

This is further demonstrated in Galatians 1:8–9 by the apostle Paul’s very serious warning to the churches of Galatia, which seemed to have departed from the gospel that Paul had preached to them:

8. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

9. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

Another gospel is not another, but it is a perversion of the gospel of Christ. “There be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ” (Gal. 1:7). Another gospel is any lie of man that overturns or corrupts the truth of the gospel of Christ. Certainly, there can be no greater condemnation of the lie than to declare it to be no gospel at all and a perversion of the gospel of Christ. Notice how the inspired apostle not only condemned the lie but also issued a word of condemnation to the man who brings such perversions of the gospel into the church: “Let him be accursed.” The calling of the church, therefore, in her confession of the truth is not to settle for a merely outward profession. Neither is the calling of the church to be accepting, allowing several different sounds within her walls in the name of Christian charity and toleration. Rather, the church’s chief task and calling according to the word of God is to hold forth the form of sound words that are contained therein by confessing the truth and condemning every lie that perverts that truth and those who teach and promote it.

Additionally, the church needs confessions because confessions are the weapons of her spiritual warfare. By the church’s confessions, she guards herself against terrible heresies promulgated by wicked men who seek to make shipwreck of the faith and make merchandise of the church. The effect that false doctrine always has in the church is that it disrupts the unity of the church, which unity is in the truth. The members of the church are not like the staves of a barrel that are bound together by an iron ring. Rather, the members of the church are as several members of a body, each operating in harmony with each other as living members of one single organism, growing up into Christ as their head.

The church is admonished to be of one mind. None can walk together except they be agreed (Amos 3:3), and that is no less true for the members of the church who are united together in true faith and in brotherly love. Agreement in the truth is not only necessary, but it is also the sure fruit of the Spirit’s operation in the church. The calling of the church is to endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:3). To this end it is utterly inconceivable that the church should not have any test of orthodoxy, officially agreed on and ecclesiastically adopted for the promotion and the maintenance of that unity. Presbyterian minister Samuel Miller, in his book on the doctrine and utility of the creeds, makes a point that those who would acknowledge that the church has the responsibility to maintain peace and unity and to be a witness to the truth in the world and yet rob the church of the creeds as a means to that end are like the cruel Egyptian taskmasters who demanded that the Israelites make bricks without providing them the straw and materials with which to accomplish that task.¹

The Value of Confessions

The usefulness and value of the Reformed confessions can be understood properly in connection with their necessity. The creeds are greatly useful in the true church of Jesus Christ. The church has many callings, including the calling to teach the following generation the truth.² The usefulness of the Reformed creeds cannot be slighted in the education of our covenant youth. It is utterly absurd to disregard the creeds in the instruction of our children. The children must learn from church history about the development of the Reformed faith as that Reformed faith has been delivered to them via the Reformed confessions. The children must also learn about themselves in relationship to the church of the past, as the heritage of the church has been tested and proved through the fires of intense doctrinal controversy. The children must learn how the Lord preserved his church through controversy. The children must be taught that the creeds are God’s gifts to his church, which present the truth of their salvation in simple terms from scripture’s plainest passages. This informs our Reformed insistence on catechetical instruction.

Teachers in our good Christian schools must be encouraged to use the creeds in their curriculum, to keep themselves and the children in constant remembrance of them. The teacher is greatly mistaken who naïvely supposes that the creeds do not have much to offer in the way of lesson planning. The creeds touch on many of the subjects taught in the curriculum and often can serve as helps in directing the attention of the lesson away from the carnal and mundane and toward the spiritual significance of any subject. Parents must teach their children from the Bible, but parents may not neglect to teach their children the creeds. This is part of the parents’ vows that they made at the baptisms of their children, to see that the children are instructed and brought up in the articles of the Christian faith as those articles are taught in every true church of Jesus Christ.

While there is more that can be said about the value of the confessions in the Christian church, my allotted space is filled. The value of the confessions will be highlighted as I navigate through the minor confessions, beginning first with the Apostle’s Creed, the earliest of the ecumenical creeds. Until next time.