A confession of faith reflects the New Testament attestation of a “faithful saying” (1 Tim. 1:15; 2 Tim. 2:11) and seeks to reflect the apostolic confidence of the thoroughness and absoluteness of revealed truth in their ministries: “Therefore, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle” (2 Thess. 2:15 NKJV). A faithful synthesis of apostolic teaching will seek clear expression in at least these four areas of Christian truth: historic biblical orthodoxy, soteriology, the necessity of confessing, and ecclesiology. In this article, I will walk through these distinctives and make brief application to the current debate on female pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention.
1. Historical Biblical Orthodoxy
We depend on revelation for our knowledge of God. A good confession will leave no doubt that all of its teachings and affirmations depend on an accurate interpretation and synthesis of biblical propositions. Paul admonished Timothy to pay attention to Paul’s doctrine as well as the “Holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:10, 15). The early creeds of the church from the Apostles’ Creed to the Formula of Chalcedon will figure prominently in a clearly constructed biblical confession. For example, in the Second London Confession, one paragraph on the doctrine of the Trinity draws from this early language in a clear and powerful way:
In this divine and infinite Being there are three subsistences, the Father, the Word (or Son), and Holy Spirit, of one substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole Divine essence, yet the essence undivided, the Father is of none neither begotten nor proceeding, the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, all infinite, without beginning, therefore but one God, who is not to be divided in nature and being; but distinguished by several peculiar relative properties, and personal relations; which doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God, and comfortable dependence on him.
Commensurate with trinitarian theology is an unambiguous statement of orthodox Christology. With no loss of the divine nature, the Son of God took on himself our nature through conception, birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and session (Christ being seated at the right hand of God). He thus combines the “tenderest sympathies with divine perfections” and in this way is “qualified to be a suitable, a compassionate, and an all-sufficient Saviour” (New Hampshire Confession, IV).No matter what differences lie in other doctrinal areas, it is impossible to be Christian without this orthodoxy. It is indeed the “foundation of all our communion with God.”
2. Soteriology
A rightly developed confession that is indeed a “faithful saying” will express clearly the evangelical doctrines of the Reformation. The affirmation that Christ alone is Savior and the only Mediator between God and man who gave his life as a ransom (1 Timothy 2:5, 6) dying the “just for the unjust” (1 Pet. 3:18) gives a foundation to all evangelical doctrines. A confession must leave no ambiguity concerning this central issue that Jesus “bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, having died to sin, might live for righteousness” (1 Pet. 2:24). Such a confession will give clear voice to the fulness of Christ’s work of redemption, to the efficacious operation of the Holy Spirit in regeneration, and to the consequent and necessary human responses of repentance and faith. For Baptists, of course, church membership depends on a personal confession of these truths and clear evidence that the Spirit has indeed done his work of regeneration in the heart.
3. The Necessity of Confessing
A mature confession that is indeed a “faithful saying” will affirm the necessity of both corporate and personal confession. We confess that we are bound to confess the truth (1 John 2:22); we are bound to confess that Jesus is Lord and has come in the flesh (Phil. 2:11; 1 John 4:2, 3); we are bound to confess that God raised him from the dead (Rom. 10:10, 11); we are bound to confess our sins—knowing that he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (Psalm 32:5; 1 John 1:9); we are bound to confess him before men—knowing that he will confess us before the Father in heaven (Matthew 10:32; Luke 12:8). Thus, in our personal lives, we make our confession of Christ as Savior according to revealed truth and its transforming effect on the heart. In our corporate witness to the gospel, we make sure that we have a clear confession of the truth that expresses our unity in Christ and in the faith (“one faith” Ephesians 4:5, 6).
4. Ecclesiology
A confession that is indeed a “faithful saying” will affirm an ecclesiology that expresses all these other areas of truth in a consistent way. Baptists will claim that their understanding of the church more fully expresses each of these areas of truth than any other kind of doctrine of the church. A practice of believers’ baptism and regenerate church membership assumes that Paul’s condensed statement of Christian profession should be the unifying factor among all the members of the body: “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart . . . because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” When this truth finds its manifestation in perfect fulfillment, then the church and the confession are one. That is the Baptist goal and that demonstrates the powerful fruit of a confession of faith.
Believer’s Baptism
The doctrines of ecclesiology that in one sense in broadly-conceived Christianity are “secondary” are, nevertheless, of primary importance for Baptist distinctives. Unity in these distinctives of ecclesiology defines the unified witness of Baptist Christianity vis-à-vis other expressions of evangelicalism. Baptists unite confessionally in the biblical nature of baptism as for believers only and by immersion, simulating death, burial, and resurrection. A refusal to confess this is an admission that a person is not a Baptist. Church membership consists only of those who have confessed Christ’s person and work for the salvation of sinners, trusted in him, and expressed that trust in him publicly through baptism. Rejection of regenerate church membership compromises and relativizes a Baptist standard. Baptists believe in the independency of congregations and that each congregation is given authority under Christ’s revelation and present Lordship for self-governance. Adoption of episcopal or presbyterian systems of inter-church relations negates a defining Baptist distinctive.
Church Leadership
Benevolent ministries of the church, both internal and external, are led by deacons, one of the two offices of the church. The teaching ministry is given to elders, also called bishops, and pastors (see 1 Peter 5:1–4; Acts 20:18-35). Qualifications for this office are detailed in 1 Timothy 2:11–3:7 and Titus 1:5–16. In the texts, women are specifically and clearly excluded from the teaching office in the church (1 Tim. 2:11-15) which is then described in 1 Tim. 3:1–7 as a “faithful saying.” The texts describe qualifications of a man (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:6) related to personal character, hospitality, self-possession, benevolent and consistent authority in the home, maturity, doctrinal soundness, teaching ability, humility, public character, and courage necessary for the office. This is not an office to be designed by each local church, but one that has significant descriptive details for qualifications, a departure from which amounts to a confessional error.
Female Preachers?
The Philadelphia Association, therefore, was not wrong in stating as a matter for associational unity that “Hence the silence, with subjection, enjoined on all women in the church of God [1 Tim. 2:12], is such a silence as excludes all women whomsoever from all degrees of teaching, ruling, governing, dictating, and leading in the church of God.”[1] “In the church of God” means in the public assembly for worship of the whole body, the time for congregational instruction and exhortation. This same association, the first Baptist association in America explained that one of the powers of an association was to withdraw “from a defective or disorderly church.” Though the association has no power over the autonomy and the internal operations of the church, yet the very structure of an association that depends on their “agreeing in doctrine and practice … before they can enter into a confederation,” authorizes the confederation, or association, to “exclude the delegates of a defective or disorderly church from an Association and to refuse their presence at their consultations” (Minutes, 61, 62).
1. Minutes of the Philadelphia Baptist Association from A. D. 1707 to A. D. 1807, ed. A. D. Gillette (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1851) 53.
The Baptist Faith and Message article, therefore, that reads, “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture” is a biblical and historically Baptist position. It is, indeed, a “faithful saying.” Consequently, exclusion of a confessionally disorderly church and its messengers from participation in the privileges, responsibilities, missional purpose, and benevolent actions of the denomination is a matter of biblical obedience.
Conclusion
If an article of a confession is biblically justified and denominationally confirmed by its inclusion in the confession, and if it is elemental to the distinctive doctrine of the denomination, then relativizing its importance and its defining character is simply wrong. Either dismiss the article entirely by discussion and vote of the denomination or allow its authority as a biblically-derived affirmation to have its proper influence. The Baptist Faith and Message was adopted under the assumption that churches desiring such a confederation considered themselves of like faith and order. Arguments that unity is built on sameness of mission, not sameness of doctrine, miss the point that mission is defined by doctrine. A church-planting mission, in addition to clear Christological and soteriological doctrinal unity, must be particularly careful to maintain unity in commitment as to who will be the qualified teachers of these churches. This is seen as warranted by the plain meaning of Scripture and comparison with several biblical texts listed in the proof text apparatus of the Baptist Faith and Message.
The comment of B. H. Carroll on the passage in 1 Timothy 2:9 and following (where he also considers 1 Corinthians 14:34, 35) summarizes the clarity and the seriousness of these Pauline injunctions:
The custom in some congregations of having a woman as pastor is in flat contradiction to this apostolic teaching and is open rebellion against Christ our king, and high treason against his sovereignty, and against nature as well as grace. It unsexes both the woman who usurps this authority and the men who submit to it. Under no circumstance conceivable is it justifiable.[2]
2. B. H. Carroll, The Pastoral Epistles of Paul and I and II Peter, Jude, and I, II and III John (New York; Chicago; Toronto; London; Edinburgh: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1915), 40.
In writing about the phrase, “the pattern of sound words,” Carroll added, “Modern people say, ‘Don’t have much creed, and when you state it, don’t let it take any particular form. Somebody might object.’”[3] He then sealed his point in saying, “No man is true to the faith who departs from the pattern.”[4]
3. Carroll, Pastoral Epistles of Paul and I and II Peter, Jude, and I, II and III John, 40.
4. Carroll, Pastoral Epistles of Paul and I and II Peter, Jude, and I, II and III John, 40.
Those who object to the Baptist Faith and Message confessional article limiting the office of Pastor/Teacher to qualified men—or those who think that it is unworthy of strict conformity—should consider seriously both parts of Carroll’s pungent observations. To hold lightly and with flexible conviction a confessional article and argue that a church is free to ignore and contradict it relativizes a plain ecclesiological proposition of Scripture. It violates the terms on which the confederation of churches was established. It says, “Paul’s instructions can be followed by those so disposed, but others may choose their own way.” The creed, so goes the objection, must submit to varieties of opinion and the personal sense of mission of individual Christians. We must beware, however, that we do not engage in “flat contradiction to this apostolic teaching,” and set ourselves “in open rebellion against Christ our king.”
