Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Don't be anxious.
Why you say that?
Do I seem anxious?
Why? Do I look anxious? Do I look like I have anxiousness? I think you would be anxious for me if.
If I saw you.
Listen, let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. I've been there, Brian. You've been there.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Anxiety?
[00:00:26] Speaker A: No. Low bank accounts.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
You ever overdraft?
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Oh. What I like to do is I like to stack my overdrafts nice so that I get the most taken away from me as possible. That's what I prefer to do.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: I remember as a college student discovering what an overdraft fee was, and I was raging. I was like, this is.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: You charge me money because I have no money.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: All I have is a high school diploma. But that sounds dumb to me.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Debtors prison.
It feels lovely inside. Yeah. All right, guys. Welcome to another episode of Swimming the Rome.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Did you say swimming?
[00:01:17] Speaker A: And I'm not gonna say it again because we're authentic.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. This is our authentically broken faith dream. Oh, jee.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: I'm Pastor Stuart Ammon from Christchurch. Christchurch. Maybe we should start over.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Christchurch.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: And with me is Pastor Brian Rhodes from Grace Presbyterian.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Grace Presbyterian in Alexandria.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: We really should start over.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: We met just five minutes ago.
I feel so.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: This is a rough start. This is a rough start. But you know what?
[00:01:50] Speaker B: We're going.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: We're plowing for it, and it's going to be. Oh, man. We've talked about a lot of fun things on this so far.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: We have, like, I've.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: It's been helpful. Talked about preaching.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: We talked about soteriology.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: And we're. What we're really trying to do for people to bring everybody up to speed. If this is your first time jumping in on this is. We're trying to help bring people along into the journey towards. I don't know, what do you want to call this?
[00:02:16] Speaker B: The journey towards the Reformed faith. Presbyterianism, et cetera.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: The fully fleshed out, the fully flowered Reformed faith.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: That's. That's right. Truly.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: How many Fs can I put in there? Like, a lot. So I remember. I remember whenever I first became a Reformed Baptist and all my Presbyterian buddies would make fun of me.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: They were like, you're not Reformed. I was like, I am Reformed because I believe God is sovereign in salvation. And they were like, that's not what that word means.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: They would say, well, you're a Calvinistic Baptist. And it was like, why does that not sound as cool?
[00:02:47] Speaker A: That seems way less exciting.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: I'M being excluded.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: But today we're getting more into this. Today we're digging a little bit deeper. So we talked about a lot of different things, but I saw today's notes and I got excited. We're going into creeds and confessions, Right? Okay. Steer the ship, O Captain, my Captain.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Well, I can speak to the process of ordination and mind denomination. A big part of it is your. Not just your knowledge, say, but your. Your agreement with the Westminster Confession of Faith and the larger and shorter catechisms.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: As a recovering Baptist, whenever somebody says the word confessions to me, I'm like, You mean like Augustine, Right?
You mean a document that would actually bind my faith and conscience in such a way?
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Right. Well, and it's.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: How dare you?
[00:03:44] Speaker B: You actually got there. I was going to. The direction I thought you were going is that generally when people hear confession, there's one of reactions. The third one, which I was saved that one for last. The one you just said, which is what we're talking about. Oh, the, the first one would be Augustine's Confessions. Like, okay, so is this a series of. A series of prayers?
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Am I saying I'm sorry?
[00:04:04] Speaker B: Right? I said I'm sorry. The second one would be like, well, wait, is that the. Is that the. The Roman Catholic practice of confessing? Going to confession?
[00:04:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: And having a confession are not the same thing. So we want to be clear about what we're talking about when we talk about having a confession of faith that is adhering to, subscribing to an explanation of what the Bible teaches.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: But wait a minute, Pastor Brian. So I'm going to be this guy. I'm the, I'm the freshest Baptist in the room, so I'm going to be this guy. Okay, but wait a minute, Pastor Brandon. Pastor Brandon. You heard that, Pastor Brian?
I thought all we needed was the Bible.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: Okay, what does the Bible teach?
[00:04:47] Speaker A: Well, you want me to read it to you? I can start in the beginning, right?
[00:04:51] Speaker B: If you only had five minutes to explain to me what the Bible teaches.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Well, I guess I'd have to paraphrase some things.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: You would have to paraphrase some things.
And so in essence, that would be your confession of faith, your summary. And if I only gave you five minutes, it would be your five minute summary, which would be bad, right? Well, yeah. So if I gave you five minutes, it'd be your six minute summary of.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Of what the Bible actually teaches. Now, functionally, everyone lives by some kind of answer to that question.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: What do you believe the Bible says.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Exactly what do you believe the Bible teaches? And we all have a way of answering that question that appears to us to be rather obvious.
And so to that extent, I prefer to say everyone has a confession of faith. Everyone has a summary of what they believe the Bible teaches.
Whereas as a Presbyterian, as one who is an inheritor of the reformed tradition, I'm receiving those explanations that have survived through several centuries, penned by people much smarter than me. Let's just go with that.
And that have been sustained over time. And so is it possible that I could invent something this afternoon that would say, contradict the confession, but. But be more biblical and correct? Of course that's possible. I just happen to not think that it's likely.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Okay, I got it. I got it.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: And so, so what, What a confession of faith does is it acknowledges some realities that we actually all agree on, even if we don't talk about them, which is that we, we have a, if you want to put it this way, we all have a sort of functional operating system about what we believe the Bible says. And maybe if we're honest, what the Bible obviously says.
And so being confessional is a way for a people to, to gather around, as it were, a particular explanation which is just what a denomination is, and say, this is what we believe the Bible teaches. And so if somebody asks me what so, so they, they might say, pastor Brian, I know that you teach the importance of believing the Bible, believing what the Bible says about God, about man, about eternity, et cetera. So what is it that that Bible teaches? I would say, well, there's actually a really wonderful summary of it in the Westminster Confession of Faith. And the reason why I subscribe to that is, that's accountability for me both to my people and to my fellow elders and to my presbytery and so on, that I've come in saying. Yes, I, I am agreeing with this statement of what the Bible teaches. Not because I think it's inspired, not because I think it's the 67th book of the Bible or that it came down from heaven like on a pillow or something like that. No, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a summary of what the Bible teaches. Written by men. That necessarily means fallible men. Yes, but, but, but as far as, as far as confessing it, we are gathered around it. We say this is what we believe the Bible teaches because, and this is maybe a whole different track. But every heretic has his Bible verses.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Oh, say it again.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Every heretic calls himself or herself a Bible Christian, right.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Yeah, they do. I'm just saying what the Bible says.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Exactly. And so what a confession of faith does is. It is. It brings us kind of closer, if you will, to terra firma, putting our feet on the ground and saying, when we say we believe the Bible, this is what we mean. Okay.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: And it makes it a lot easier for the body to gather around that.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Having a very precise confessional statement. Right, yeah, that's helpful.
[00:08:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: So the. You're a Presbyterian. So primarily Westminster Confession.
Is that the. I know that there's a difference between the English and the U.S. but I can't. I don't have my boots on the ground enough to know.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So I should know that off the top of my head. I know that it has to do with chapter 23, mainly, which is about the civil magistrate. And so there's language in the original 1646 Westminster Confession.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Was that the divine right of kings?
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Yes. Well, it's gonna. I mean, it's gonna parse that a bit better than, say, divine right of kings, but. But it's gonna give certain responsibilities to the king in a British, Scottish context, et cetera.
That. That's. That's incoherent for Americans.
[00:09:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: Right. And so. So the. The American version of the confession still uses language like rulers and magistrates and things like that, but not so much the language of kings and the king's responsibility and so on.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Got it.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: But interestingly, even the American version does say that it is the responsibility of the civil magistrate to promote the true religion.
I'll let you.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: How dare you.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: I am.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: How dare you.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: I'll let you think on that.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: We were not a Christian country, Brian. Don't suggest such.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: I would never.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: And yet here we are. That's great, man. No. So confessions helpful. It's a way of condensing what the Bible says into a belief statement. Right.
Relate to me. So let's pretend that we don't know what we're talking about or that I don't. You do.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: We can both pretend like we don't know what we're talking about.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Relate to me. So there's confessions and then there's catechism questions. Now, those are based on confessions. Like the Westminster Catechism is based on the Westminster Confessions.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: Yes. Okay, so the two Confessions. Excuse me, two catechisms. The Westminster shorter and the Westminster longer. You would think that, wouldn't you? But no, it's larger and I don't know why. What?
[00:10:54] Speaker A: How dare. I can't believe this.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just to Keep things interesting.
So the Westminster shorter is both shorter in the number of questions and shorter in the answers.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: So a lot easier to memorize. A lot easier to kind of get under your belt, as it were.
[00:11:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: The Westminster larger. The answers are much more expansive and there are a lot more questions. And so, so that's the distinction. But, but yes, to answer what I think your. Is your question.
The purpose of the catechisms is to set forward the content of the confession.
[00:11:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: With, with greater specificity.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Than say the confession has. But also to shape it in a question and answer paradigm, which I think is wonderful. That's a way of communicating like from, from the get go. We're all saying the way that we learn is by asking questions. Right. Because that's, that's what a catechism is. It's the assumption that the way you learn the faith is by asking questions.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: I understand.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: And by getting answers to those questions.
[00:11:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: So that, that, that answers sort of both. The, both the, the, the. The steer. Stereotypical fundamentalist.
[00:12:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: Who says, you know, don't, don't question what we're saying. And then the sort of stereotypical deconstructionist who says, I can't really find any answers. There are no answers. There are only responses.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: So a catechism has answers for both of those saying, no, no, no. We grow by asking questions and those questions actually have answers.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: There is a definable truth present.
[00:12:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: See, that's one of the things that I've run into in debates with other believers who I think are genuinely believers.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: They'll get into places where they say things along the lines of, well, you and I just disagree on this. To which my response is, well, okay, that's fine, that's step one. But as long as we both agree that somebody's wrong, there's a chance both of us are.
But there is a single definable truth that is able to be obtained that God has given us through his word. If we can both agree right there, then cool. I'm fine with saying we agree to disagree as long as we understand that there is still a single truth out there and hopefully one of us got it. Sure, we'll figure that out. I've found that as to be a defense tactic of secularists too. In conversation and debate. They'll be like, well, that's just your.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Interpretation, just your interpretation.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Or something along those lines. And I'm like, well, there is a single definable truth. One thing is true because other things are false. And Therefore, you need to be worried about what that truth is.
Everybody does. This is like a classic rebuttal to somebody who is dealing with, like, one of the easy examples is the problem of evil. So there's like this resurgence of spirituality in the west recently that I've seen a lot of people have reawoken to Wiccanism and all different kinds of things. Witchcraft and just this vague spiritual idea. And so a lot of people will agree that there is a God. I've had conversations with folks in this room even who have agreed, like, yeah, no, we know there's a God. I believe that there's a God. And I'm like, who is it? Well, I'm just not sure. I don't know yet. And I think the easy rebuttal there is, well, you need to figure that out, because you need to. Eternity hangs on that question, who that God is. So that needs to be a higher priority for you to be able to answer before those things come out. All those details are helped. Whenever we have categories of confessions where we can say, no, this is. We've been trained and instructed. Now, it's not the Bible like you talked about before. Right. But it helps to put everything in its proper category and say, here's your. I don't know, your desk reference, you know, or something along those lines.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. And it's.
There are. Even within. Even within confessional Presbyterianism, there can be.
I think there might be more than two, but I think there's at least two distinct approaches. One of them sees the confession as a sort of rich inheritance from which we can continue to draw almost kind of your desk reference. I'm going to keep going back to this.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: Because it's a well, from which I can draw a lot of good.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Okay. And then the other one sees it almost as a fence. Right. So this is a line that I can't cross. Okay, Right. And that creates a lot of. The second one creates a lot of problems, I think.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: Because then the confession is reduced to this thing where as long as I'm within the fence, I can do anything I want, which is not. Which doesn't really see the confession, say, as like a beautiful inheritance, something that we're excited that we get to confess, but rather it's just sort of like a safety patrol that we get in trouble if we. If we try to jump the fence.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: Oh, I see.
[00:15:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Yeah, but. And so as long as I'm not jumping the fence, or as long as. As long as you can't prove I'm jumping the fence. Anything I say and teach, preach, sing is legit.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Now, what if. I've heard a lot of folks say things like, well, I don't really hold to the confession on that issue.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: That seems edgy. You know what I mean? Well, I'm not really with the confession on that. I think I understand what they're saying, and I'm sure that there's. I've done a little bit of digging into the 1689 and the Westminster and the Sabbatarian principles that they have in there are pretty strenuous.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: And so I'm like, yeah, if I say I hold to this, does that mean I hold to this? Because I don't know if I can hold on to some of these Sabbatarian principles at this point in the game. Like, how do you deal with those kinds of issues?
[00:16:43] Speaker B: I mean, well, the way that modern Presbyterianism has dealt with them in large part. I mean, so I'm not talking about the Orthodox Presbyterian Church or the rpcna, the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, which are both, like, very strict subscriptionist denominations, really.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Yes, the confession says that, therefore it is.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: And so that's what you mean by subscription.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: So this is Right. This is my understanding. And if I'm wrong, then, you know, the. The OPC and the RPCNA can come after me. It's okay. That's probably like 50 people.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: You can find him on Twitter at.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: I'm just kidding.
But I think the distinction is that in the opc, all of your elders have to be full subscriptionists, and I think all of your deacons as well, rpcna. I think all of your congregants have to be. I could be wrong on that.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: Oh, dang.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: I'm sorry if I'm wrong on that.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: But. But either way, like, it's. It's a culture of strict subscriptionism.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: And so there's where. Whereas, like in the PCA and the epc, say that's a. That's a culture of what we call good faith subscription.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Which is that you can take exceptions as long as those exceptions don. Strike at the vital substance of the faith, whatever that means.
That can be some tricky language.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: We got to write a confession to define that term. We got to figure that one out.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Plenty would agree with you on that.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: So it's not necessarily hard and fast in all applications.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: Okay. It's more of, like, guiding principles.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: I mean, again, it depends here. So.
And just the standards tend to be in different places with different people here. That's where. That's why things can be tricky.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: So.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: So, I mean, you brought up Sabbath keeping. That tends to be, for the majority in. Of conservative American Presbyterians. That tends to be the issue that we don't set up strict fences on.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: So it is really not all that uncommon to hear candidates for ordained ministry in, say, the PCA and the EPC take exception, especially to what we call the recreation clause in. In the. In the Catechism.
That has to do with Fourth Commandment. That has to do with Sabbath keeping. Whether or not you can engage in recreations on the Sabbath.
[00:19:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: Because a lot of the Puritans didn't.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Right, Correct.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: I remember hearing stories. I think it was the Laura books. Laura Ingalls Wilder.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: Like, she and her siblings would go. They were allowed to sit and look at their toys on the Lord's day, but they could not play with them.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Right. I mean, I. I always want to be terrible. I always want to be careful about laughing at such things. There's a. There's a. There's an impulse in me that wants to honor that piety, but, like. Sure. But coming out of. You choke on it as it's coming out of your mouth.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Because it just sounds so absurd.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: You may look at them.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Don't touch it.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: Which sort of sounds like, let's exercise it in temptation, but not.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: So let's. What about this, though? So we've got confessions, but there's also creeds, and then there's statements of faith. So what's the.
This is like a hierarchy here or something? Like, how does this play out?
[00:20:08] Speaker B: So the way that creeds tend to work, as far as I can tell, I mean, creeds tend to be a lot older. They get the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, perhaps even the Athanasian Creed. The thing about creeds is that whereas, you know, we just got finished talking about how in a confession, even those who subscribe to it and love it might find things in it where they're like. I don't know so much about that bit.
[00:20:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Creeds don't really give us that option.
So, like the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed. We're not. We're not setting that before you as saying, you know, some of this is take it or leave it. We're saying, this is the Christian faith.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: This is it.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: If you deny anything in this.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: You're not a believer.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Yeah. And so. Right. So at that point, this is the distinction between heresy and heterodoxy. So, so heresy is. If you, if you confess heresy, you're not a Christian. If you confess heterodoxy, you know, you might be confessing a false teaching, but not a false teaching that puts you outside of the faith.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: That's. That's the way this language often gets.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: We need a whole episode just about heterodoxy. We gotta, we gotta make a note and come back to that one later because I got a. Of things to talk about and I don't want to side rail.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: Fantastic.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: So, but the. Okay, so we got creeds, essentials. Right. We got confessions, which are essential, but there's a little bit of squishiness on the edges.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Then we've got. Now, okay, let's talk about statements of faith.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: They're the most vanilla.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: I was going to say you might have to. You might have to do some more of the talking here.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: Well, I'm talking about. I go to a person, I go to a church's website and they have the. Every church has this. The what we believe button.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: You know, I'm talking about.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: I do know what you're talking about.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: And you click it and it says, God, creator of all things, Jesus.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: Sometimes you get a trinity statement in there.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Sometimes maybe, you know, maybe Holy Spirit. And it's got the most vanilla statement for everything. That is all just all the way down the list. In my mind, I'm like, why do I even bother putting this up anymore? I'm pretty sure there's. With the exception of the Unitarians.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: I think just about everybody would see those vanilla statements of faith and be like, yeah, yeah, that's us.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: So this is, this is what I put in the notes. The difference between a statement and a confession is statements are meant to be brief with the widest possible door.
Right.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: So, yes. Okay. Okay, okay.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: To mix my metaphors here, how big can the door be without getting beyond the fences of what Christianity is?
[00:22:35] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: Some have called this lowest common denominator Christianity.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: What's the absolute bare minimum we can agree on and still.
Still get away with being called a Christian?
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: Whereas a, Whereas a confession of faith is meant to be comprehensive. That is all of the most important matters we're going to address directly.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: Got it. Okay.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: And we anticipate that that's going to put some people outside that circle. Yeah.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Within the. With the confession being finer. I understand, I understand, understand. So then what is the application? Like, why. Why would we utilize a statement of faith? Is that, Is that something that we're just Trying to say, hey, we're not heretics, as so far as you can tell right now. You know, like, is that the general gist?
[00:23:27] Speaker B: In some places, I think it is. You might have a. You might have a culture where it's like, as far as theology and doctrine go, we're checking a box to make sure that, that, you know, that this isn't like super wild, super crazy. Yeah. Into the sort of cult territory.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: So it's a cult check.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: Cult check.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Past the culture.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Nope, not cults. All right.
[00:23:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: I can tell a lot from a church by the aesthetics of their website. Almost way more than I can tell by their statement of faith that there's.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: Some real truth to that.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Are we feeling. 829. Are we feeling. This website hasn't been updated since 95. So I'm going to say this is a fundamentalist Baptist church.
You know, some sort of like awful.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Pink background with green letters.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: That's great. It's glorious.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: There's a. There's a parchment background at this church.
[00:24:16] Speaker C: All right.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: I'm going to.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: With a papyrus font.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: That's right. We have landed in the late 90s Presbyterian model. Like, we're getting closer. There's. There's like, I can determine that pretty well. But the statement of faith thing. So what about this? What about this?
As a Baptist guy, as a recovering Baptist, I came out of the BF&M 2000.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: Sure. Which I just read this morning.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Really?
[00:24:44] Speaker B: I'm not super familiar with it.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: Isn't it the most vanilla thing ever?
[00:24:47] Speaker B: I mean, so in one sense, it's.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: Not as bad as the statements of faith on church websites. It's not that vanilla.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: That's absolutely right. I even got to the end of it and thought, man, there are some things in here I would. I would love to have seen in Westminster, to be honest.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Really?
[00:25:01] Speaker B: I mean, like toward the end, that last bit on the family. Oh, yeah, that was pretty base.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: I think that's relatively new.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: I can't remember. Yeah, like, one of those articles is relatively new.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: It was good. There's this last bit on. On the Family, and I think it hits abortion as well. And I mean, it hits a number of things and really clearly, I mean, I mean, very concise, very straightforward, and just, just kind of lays out what. The importance of the biblical family. Biblical model of the family.
Husband is a servant leader, which. Okay.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: What do you mean by that, sir?
[00:25:36] Speaker B: That term has fallen on some interesting, interesting times. But, but, but, but basic principles, like we're all there. And I thought, well, this is actually very good. Yeah. So. So, so, yeah.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: So kudos to the Baptist bros.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: Indeed.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: They're doing it.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: Indeed.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: They're working hard.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: They're getting things done. Yeah. The Baptist faith and message, I remember whenever I was reading through it, I was thinking at the time, this was a while back, it didn't say too much. It wasn't too specific in things. And then whenever I compared it to the Westminster, they were very detailed.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Like it was. Here's every nuance that you could possibly ascribe here and the citations for all the Bible verses that goes with it.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: But at the same time, confessions are not exhaustive. So Westminster, for example, has nothing to say about how to do church government.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Really?
[00:26:26] Speaker B: So, yeah.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: No polity.
[00:26:28] Speaker C: No.
[00:26:29] Speaker B: So even though Presbyterian churches are elder led, there's nothing about elders per se in the confession.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: Now, but the Westminster Confession, was that originally a Presbyterian document?
[00:26:40] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Oh, okay. For some reason I thought it was an Anglican document.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Well, you're challenging my background here. I might have to concede that I cancel because certainly there's no question that there were Anglicans among the Westminster divines who wrote the confession.
To which I would want to then add, of course there were. You can't have Presbyterians before there's a Westminster confession.
But Presbyterianism is really what happened when sort of Westminster Christianity came to Scotland. And then you have John Knox and so on.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: So it says. I just googled it.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: You just Googled it?
[00:27:21] Speaker A: I just googled it. It's a Presbyterian document.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: Presbyterian document.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: It says, it says the great Google says it was a confession of English speaking Presbyterians.
[00:27:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: That's what it was for.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: So then, so unavoidably, what that means is that these English speaking Presbyterians were probably certainly majority, if not universally, they were all recovering Anglicans.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: Oh, there it is. Instead of recovering Baptists.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Oh, look at that. We're all united by the WCF in our recovery.
That's awesome. That's awesome. So like, was it difficult for you to make that jump to the confession?
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah, well, yes and no. So the yes is getting over that initial hump that it feels weird to. I mean, I'm speaking metaphorically here, to carry around a book other than the Bible.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: Did you hear that?
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Yes. You got some people working on something somewhere.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: Okay, so back to this confessions.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So getting over the initial hump was sort of just the. This feels like I've got my Bible and my Westminster Confession of Faith.
[00:28:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: And there's something about that. That feels weird and wonky.
[00:28:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: For, for a Bible only Baptist.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:28:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: So coming around to that understanding of, of saying it's good for us to be clear about what we believe the Bible teaches, which is different from saying it's good for us to agree that this 1646 document is perfect.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:29:02] Speaker C: So, yeah.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: So coming around to see the goodness of a confession is saying it's good for our fellowship to be clear about what we believe, even if within the circle of our fellowship, there are people who might take exception to this or that sentence.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I got you.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: So when I, when we bring someone into membership, one of the first things we do, assuming they don't have a Bible, if they don't have a Bible, the first thing we do would be to give them a Bible.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: But the second thing we do is to give them a copy of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Not because we're saying that you have to subscribe to this in order to be a church member, but it's like, we want you to know what you're getting into. This is who we are. We want to be very clear with you about who we are. We want you to know who we are down to the bottom of our feet.
[00:29:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: And so I'm not saying that you have to agree with every line to be a member here, but I want you to know who we are, and this is who we are.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: And so, yes, I think that's qualitatively better than saying what everybody says, which is, well, we believe the Bible. It's like, okay, but you're a non denominational church. That Lutheran Church down the road just told me the same thing.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: And you all do different stuff.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: Right. And when I talked, and when I talked to their pastor, here's what she told me. Right.
And so there's, there's obviously like a diversity here, like a wide diversity on sometimes important things. You know, the Lutheran Church, for example, I'm gonna pick on the Lutheran for a minute. But like, Lutheran Church wouldn't even let me take communion because I wasn't, I wasn't a member of their, of their denomination. Where you guys will. The Lutheran Church does it every Sunday. You guys do it like once a year.
[00:30:45] Speaker A: So.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: But you both believe the Bible.
[00:30:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: And so something's missing.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: So Protestants acknowledge that there's gonna, your mileage is gonna vary on these things. Yeah, we acknowledge that from the get go. But, but we would, it would behoove us, therefore, to, to have to be clear about what it is we believe the Bible teaches to constitute our fellowship.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I got you. Yeah, that's cool. That's very helpful. So you kind of. As you're making that journey in, can you take a look back and think about what was the thing that really pushed the domino over for you as far as, like, I'm a confessional guy now.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: This is who I am.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: Well, so I have to say, after reading the Westminster Confession of Faith, I was already halfway there because after reading, I was like, well, I believe this. There's. There's really not much in here.
[00:31:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: That I object to at that point. Probably, like, except for that chapter on baptism. Didn't like that.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: Didn't like that so much, that Sabbatarian stuff.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: But. But, well, well, but that's interesting that. So the Sabbath issues are not addressed in the confession. They're addressed in the catechism.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: This is.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: Oh, same thing with images in the Second Commandment, stuff like that. Really, all that gets worked out in the catechism. Yeah.
So.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Holy smokes.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
So.
But then, I mean, honestly. And so I would. I would encourage all of our viewers, listeners, whatever, if you've never read the Westminster Confession. Confession of Faith.
[00:32:16] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: Give it a read. You're gonna find in there a lot of what you already believe.
[00:32:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: Especially the first chapter on Holy Scripture. Right.
[00:32:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: If you can't get behind that, I don't. I don't know what to say to you. That is not distinctly Presbyterian at all. If you can't get behind that, you're a Roman Catholic, probably. I mean, just.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: Yeah, we are in South Louisiana.
[00:32:36] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, fair enough.
But. But, but otherwise. Well, if you're a Roman Catholic, then proceed to chapter two on God and the Holy Trinity and you'll be fine.
But so. So making my way through Westminster, honestly, my reaction to a lot of it was, that's what I believe, but I never knew how to say it before. So really, I was like, yes, I see.
That is my faith.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: It's like putting something on the bones. Right, I see.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: I see. I see. So for you, it was not necessarily, I'm confessional now. It was more like, you already were. You just couldn't articulate it exactly.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: And there were areas you couldn't confess it.
Exactly.
But the beneficial part about it, Stuart, was that once I was able to. To as it. I mean, to kind of list more or less where I was out of accord with the confession, it then pushed me to go study those matters further.
And then it was like, well, the more I studied them, okay.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: All right, you guys win.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:42] Speaker B: Right.
I see why you guys said that. I see why you came to that conclusion.
[00:33:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: So, so yeah, that's. And then what, that's done then? For my, for my preaching has been wanting to explain a theological concept to my people in, in the course of a sermon and then saying, wait, like that's, that's already been done really well.
[00:34:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: And so I can use that again and offer that to my people as a way to say, this is what we believe and this is what we believe the Bible teaches.
[00:34:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:34:19] Speaker B: And again, if you've got a Bible and you've got Westminster confession and they contradict, the Bible wins every day and twice on Sunday. Right.
And so that's, I mean, fundamentally, that's where we are.
And it might interest you to know that within, as far as I'm aware, within every Presbyterian denomination, there is a constitutional process for changing the confession.
So, so, so again, from the get go, we're saying a day could come where we come to the conviction that the Bible and, and this part of, this part of the confession are at odds. And at which point the Bible has to win. And so, I mean, it, it takes a lot. It takes like a, like some, you know, a huge majority of the presbyteries have to approve it. A huge majority of the general assembly has to approve it. More than just a 50, 50 vote.
It's like a 3/4 majority. You know, you have to have a significant majority. And it takes a long time, takes like two or three years to, for the whole process to happen.
[00:35:20] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: And the process can be halted at any, at any point.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: Right.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: So. So it's hard to do, but it's doable. So we're saying, again, these documents are not infallible.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Right?
[00:35:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:33] Speaker A: But they have a, they have a certain air of authority about them. Necessarily.
[00:35:37] Speaker B: So, yeah. We refer to them as subordinate standards. So they are our standards, but they remain subordinate to the Scripture.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: So somebody who's thinking about becoming confessional.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: What would you tell them to do? Just sit down, read it. Start by reading it.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: Absolutely, start by reading it. And if there's something you don't understand, check the proof text. Because the confession, when it makes a statement, is going to footnote a verse or a passage from Scripture.
[00:36:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: Saying. And so if you, if you come to something where that confuses you and you're like, well, where did they get that? You then follow the proof text and.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: It'Ll take you there and it'll take you there. So. And you have a really interesting story about how the confession saved your butt at one point during COVID stuff. Do you remember that?
[00:36:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that's.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: I still remember this story. Like, we can edit this out later if we can't say this in the show, but if we can, I think it would be cool.
COVID lockdowns are happening.
Restrictions on church are starting.
There's all kinds of requirements put on assemblies.
And you guys were like, are we going to have to do this in our church or what?
[00:36:46] Speaker B: Right, yeah, I'm sorry.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: No, you take it.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: So the question that came before us, as it came before every church at one point or another, was what are we going to do about the, the question about masks?
And we were already aware, or at least I was already aware of, of churches.
I mean, I mean, solid Bible believing, gospel preaching churches. I'm not talking about fringe, whatever.
[00:37:16] Speaker A: Yeah, you weren't talking about the squishy ones.
[00:37:18] Speaker B: No, no. Who, who perhaps for one reason or another, said, we're going to require that all, basically, if you're going to be an attendee in our worship services, you are going to wear a mask. Right.
And so as, as we, as a session of elders are working through that question, I admittedly, I brought the whole conversation to a screeching halt because I said our catechism, in interpreting the second commandment, says that we are forbidden from putting a requirement on worship that the Bible does not. And the conversation was over.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:37:56] Speaker B: And so again, so because we are a confessional people and because you knew it. Right. There's the other side that is also important.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: Not just you have one, but you know what it says.
[00:38:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. And that's.
Unfortunately, there are more than a few streams within the reformed tradition where they've just forgotten what it says.
[00:38:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:38:19] Speaker B: Or stopped caring.
[00:38:20] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: But and that's. And maybe, maybe that can come apart from that fence mentality. As long as I'm within the fence.
[00:38:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Well, then the less I know about the fence, the better.
But if you're like, this is. This is the well from which I can draw a lot of treasure and a lot of riches from my forefathers on whose shoulders I stand. You know, I'm receiving blessings from them.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: Then I'm going to use it to the fullest. I mean, so, I mean, a great example of this at our, at our general assembly this past year, there was a fellow who gave a talk on how the chapter in the Westminster Confession of Faith on marriage can shape marriage counseling. It was great. And like, the point that he Made was basically like, it's not wrong to go buy a bunch of books on how to do marriage counseling, Pastor. But you already have a wealth here, like in this chapter that you could work through with a married couple and probably, you know, make a lot of progress with them, get a lot of traction with them on what marriage is and working through them and with those kinds of statements and questions.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: Well, and I think we're seeing a revival of confessionalism.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: In the American church, specifically in the American church, because there's a lot of people looking for that. They're looking for the wisdom of their fathers and the generations that came before him. Like you talked about it before, I'm standing on the shoulders of all these people who went before me.
[00:39:40] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: And there is this reignited hunger not just to be instructed necessarily by them, but to be taught to a point so that you can go out farther.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: Right.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: You know, there's this dominion, reawakening, there's this trajectory reawakening that's happening in the country. And I think it's directly or it is causing, I'll say, a direct correlation to a reawakening of. Reawakening of confessionalism inside of the church.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: I think. I mean, not, not in precisely the same way, but I think in a very similar way, this is what the author of Hebrews is getting at when he talks about the great cloud of witnesses. So. And then he lists, you know, all of our, you know, our, Our spiritual.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: Fathers and the Holy hall of Fame.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: Right. Who have left behind these examples for us to follow. Right. That's why they're there. These are examples for us to follow. So, yeah, you're not David, but David still leaves behind some good examples and some bad examples. Examples for you.
[00:40:39] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: To follow and not follow.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:40:42] Speaker B: And so when, you know, so when we talk about a confession of faith, again, which is not scripture, and we're not saying it's equal to scripture, when we talk about things like, you know, wearing a clerical collar, I understand the evangelical, the American evangelical uneasiness to say, well, isn't that just traditions of man? Right. So aren't you elevating tradition, say, above the Bible or even making tradition equal to the Bible?
[00:41:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: And I would say, no, I'm not, But I do think the Bible says, show honor to whom honor is due.
[00:41:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:41:14] Speaker B: Right. And so I'm going to show honor to my fathers by respecting these traditions. And does that mean a tradition can never be overturned? No, but it does mean that if I'm Going to overturn it. The burden of proof is on me.
[00:41:30] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:41:31] Speaker B: To demonstrate from the Scripture why it has to be overturned. So this is my. This is my issue. Whenever somebody might use, say, Martin Luther or John Calvin. Right. Well, they overturn traditions, you know, in their own day, so shouldn't we do the same? They understood the burden of proof was on them.
[00:41:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: That's why they wrote so much.
[00:41:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: Just like that's exactly why. Go look at the amount of books that Martin Luther's written. Go look at just the volume of the Institutes.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: Yes. The institutes alone. Never mind their commentaries on. On most of the Bible.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: On all of it.
Right.
[00:42:03] Speaker B: Except for Revelation. Calvin got to Revelation. He was like, yeah, I don't.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: Hey, you know what? I appreciate that.
[00:42:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's good.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: I don't know what this is, guys.
[00:42:13] Speaker B: Right. But so. So that's where I am on the matter of tradition. I'm not saying it's right because tradition says so, but I am saying it's right until we demonstrate why it's not. That's. That's showing honor to whom honor is due.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: Amen. Amen. Well, guys, if y'all are looking at getting into confessions, go find them. You can go look up the Westminster Larger Catechism and the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Westminster Shorter Catechism I got at that time. Anywhere you can find apps for those things to put on your phone, you can use them as resources inside of your current theological library. Check them out and grow and continue to grow. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Swimming the Rhone, and we'll see you all next time.
