This longform highlights the way in which confessions of faith embody and thus express the vital elements of the Christian faith. At the genesis of the Christian life both mental consent and heart engagement are present—“Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord; believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead” (Rom. 10:9). In the final moment before a judgment executed by the Lord Jesus, confession will be on the lips of every person—“Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:11). These aspects of confession imply a fullness of submission to the entirety of biblical revelation. All of it is involved in the confession—the first and the last—that “Jesus is Lord.”
As a vital aspect of personal discipleship and responsible stewardship of the gospel mysteries, believing, expressing, and confessing revealed truth should be a joyful privilege of Christian faith. This is true for the individual, but it is also critical in the life of the church. And in what follows are four arguments for Southern Baptists to embrace their confession of faith.
To Be a Christian is to Confess the Truth
Where there is no confession of the truth, there is no Christianity. Confession is of the essence of Christianity—both from the standpoint of personal transformation and the belief of objective truth. Confession of sin is the most consistent evidence of continued reliance on the objective work of Christ. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Though this is an experiential aspect of Christian faith, still it must arise from an affirming sense of the verdict of Scripture against our sin. We agree with the Scripture about us. We agree that God justly holds us accountable for violation of his law, and we agree that he is right to condemn us. We sense the justice of the biblical outrage and onslaught against sin and confess, “I have sinned. Lord be merciful to me, the sinner.” The Bible has said it, the Spirit has confirmed the testimony of Scripture to our conscience, and we confess it. A personal confession and a corporate confession gives public expression that we agree with and desire to say the same thing (homolegeo) as the whole of Scripture.
The transformed conscience maintains a consistent awareness of sin, missing the mark, transgressing, and falling short of the perfectly righteous and lovely law of God. Freely, admission of the pervasive character of such moral corruption flows from mind to tongue in the regenerate person. At the same time, one sees the fullness of forgiveness and cleansing based on a truly righteous provision so that God, in forgiving and cleansing, remains faithful to his word and just in his character. Such conscientious confession is a result of “walking in the light” (1 John 1:7) and the divine faithfulness is seen in that “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.”
This confession of transformation flows from the confession of objective revealed truth. “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” (Rom. 10:9). “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God” (1 John 4:2, 3). Because of the work of the Spirit in revealing who Christ is and what he did, and the Spirit’s illumination of the mind (1 Cor. 2:10–16), one confesses the historical reality of the incarnation of the Son of God for the purpose of dying a substitutionary death. Thus, we see confession vitally connected to transformation of both soul and mind according to truth.
For that reason, the historical stance of Christians through the centuries has been one of confession. Confession of revealed truth gives glory to God and sanctifies the heart. The universal church’s commitment to this bold and clear announcement of truth is seen in the historic confessions of faith. By God’s grace, we may be led to purer worship through their witness. Beyond that, a deeply sensed perception of their witness to truth can aid in the development of Christian usefulness and maturity as well as the corporate witness of the church.
Confessions Give Clear and Tested Expression to Controverted Doctrines
At least through the first three centuries of Christian history, baptism was preceded by a statement of belief on the part of the person being baptized. Some confessions arose, therefore, as baptismal confessions, written for catechumens. The basic doctrines to be confessed are expressed in the writings of Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Novatian, and Gregory and identified by Tertullian and Novatian as the “rule of faith.” This rule was Trinitarian in form: beginning with God the Father and creation, continuing with God the Son and redemption, and then God the Holy Spirit, “the sanctifier of the faith of them who believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”[1]
1. Tertullian, Tertullian Against Praxeas, trans. Alexander Souter, ed. W.J. Sparrow-Simpson and W.K. Lowther Clarke, Series 2, Translations of Christian Literature (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920), 27.
As challenges to various parts of these confessions arose, more details were added. Christ’s resurrection and coming again, the person of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection and judgment of the righteous and the wicked, and the eternal state were given increasing prominence. When sophisticated and subtle divergence gave alternate understandings of the substance of these confessions, they were reasserted with explanatory language. Not only did these confessions reflect a maturing precision in biblical exegesis, but they also began to establish a particular diction of acceptable language. The Council of Nicea (325) confuted the subtleties of Arius. The confession developed in that context exposed his system as destructive of revealed truth and idolatrous in effect—insisting that it was appropriate to worship a creature. Arius’s view of Christ was alarmingly inadequate for a theology of redemption. Phrases were added that asserted the eternal paternity of God (“begotten, that is, of the essence of the Father”); the eternal generation of the Son (“begotten, not made”); the resultant sameness of essence between the Father and the Son (“of the same essence with the Father”); the true humanity of the Son including both true flesh and rationality (“came down and was made flesh and was made man”); and the necessity of these doctrines for salvation (“who for us men and for our salvation”).
By 381 at a council in Constantinople, an expanded statement on the Holy Spirit was given. Again, we find not only a maturing interpretive framework, but a careful construction of theological language. This statement assured Christians that, in light of scriptural affirmations concerning the Sprit and his essential relation to the Father and the Son, he was truly to be worshipped with Father and Son. It affirmed that his mode of eternal relation in the Trinity was procession, not generation. “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life; who proceeds from the Father, [and the Son]; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spake by the prophets.” The expansion of the confession came from an application of a more full range of biblical statements about the Spirit.
At Chalcedon in 451, additional and more tightly constructed phrases concerning both the humanity and the deity of the Son were given, expressing biblical necessities and developing theological language introducing the controversial words, “mother of God according to the manhood.” This was given in such a manner based on Luke 1:43 (“Mother of my Lord”) while clinching the necessity of the unity of Christ’s person (“the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons”).
This process of maturing exegesis leading to more precise theological language could be followed through the Reformation and into more contemporary confessions. The language, moreover, served a polemical purpose in addition to its being the matter of expression of personal faith. For example, brief confessions written in polemical situations would include the Articles of the Remonstrants compared to the Canons of the Synod of Dort. The important differences between Arminianism and Calvinism emerge in that conflict. This is a profitable use of confessions, for where substantive distinctions of viewpoint on the synthesis of biblical ideas exist, it is helpful that they are laid out succinctly and clearly.
As liberalism began to redefine virtually all of the orthodox doctrines of the Christian faith, the challenge for concerned observers was to find a distilled statement of Modernist thought on the major Christian doctrines. Shailer Mathews produced an “Affirmation of Faith” in his work The Faith of Modernism. He described modernism as the “de-theologizing of the Christian movement” with the glad result that “wide spread sectarianism will vanish and cooperation appear.” He looked upon positive formative doctrine as “ecclesiastical chauvinism” and saw modernism’s de-theologizing as constituting a “more intelligent attempt to put the attitudes and spirit of Jesus into the hearts of men.” As the doctrinal demands of Christianity decreased, “Christianity will grow more in its moral demands.” Mathews’ “Affirmation” is notable, not only because of its denials of historical orthodoxy, but because of its dismissal of any importance to theological persuasion and its consequent omission of the historic doctrinal formulations of orthodoxy. For example, on the Bible, Mathews wrote, “I believe in the Bible when interpreted historically, as the product and the trustworthy record of the progressive revelation of God through developing religious experience.” This makes every part of the Scripture malleable and open to correction by later experiences of the writers. It completely denudes the Bible of any propositional authority, changes the theological task from careful synthesis of an increasingly full body of truth into a literary testimony of religious experience. Instead of any robust affirmation of the Trinity, Mathews wrote, “I believe in God, immanent in the forces and processes of nature, revealed in Jesus Christ and human history as Love.” With no concern for a clear affirmation of the deity of Christ or the Chalcedonian formula of the person of Christ, Mathews was satisfied to state, “I believe in Jesus Christ, who by his teaching, life, death and resurrection, revealed God as Savior.” That is true, but deceitful because of its vitally important omissions. Though the confession is absolutely inadequate as a historic Christian confession of faith, it is good that such revisionism is stated unabashedly so that modernistic Christianity can be rejected as Christianity at all.
An example of a successful remedial confession was written in 1837 entitled The Auburn Declaration. This declaration led to a reunion of Old School and New School Presbyterianism in 1870. The “Declaration” stated succinctly and clearly the matured understanding of New School theologians on sixteen areas of doctrine that had been identified as departures from the Westminster standards. For example, some lack of clarity on regeneration on the part of earlier New School revivalists led to this clarification: “Regeneration is a radical change of heart, produced by the special operations of the Holy Spirit, ‘determining the sinner to that which is good,’ and is in all cases instantaneous.” Tensions on the issue of imputation led to the careful delineation of terms and eventually was deemed as an acceptable perception of imputation: “The sin of Adam is not imputed to his posterity in the sense of a literal transfer of personal qualities, acts, and demerit; but by reason of the sin of Adam, in his peculiar relation, the race are treated as if they had sinned. Nor is the righteousness of Christ imputed to his people in the sense of a literal transfer of personal qualities, acts, and merit; but by reason of his righteousness in his peculiar relation they are treated as if they were righteous.” Although every turn of phrase in the document might not have answered every concern of every person, the “Declaration” was so carefully stated that its doctrinal clarity and orthodoxy justified the 1870 reunion. Confessions can serve to give clarity to apparent polemical disparity.
Given this kind of variety of expressions and the way in which confessions can reveal fissures or heal divisions, their doctrinal formulations lead to more careful and expanded doctrinal exposition of the word of God. The development of confessions warns us against errors to avoid in our exposition and expands the way in which revealed truth set in a doctrinal framework can enhance our understanding of the significance of individual texts. So, when Jesus says, “Why do you call me good? There is none good but God” (Mark 10:18), do we conclude that Jesus was disclaiming deity? The confessional synthesis achieved in careful attention to the flow of biblical texts serves as a helpful guide in interpreting such a text. Jesus was, in fact, drawing attention to the reality that he alone was truly good, and thus God, and that true goodness was defined by revealed law. Perfect obedience to that would constitute his own righteousness as the Messiah and would be the only means by which the rich young ruler could inherit eternal life.
Confessions Give the Foundation of Witness to the World
A grasp of doctrinal connections informs and supports evangelism. Presentation of the gospel for the purpose of begetting true saving faith involves three elements each of which is dependent on positive truth and internal connections of these revealed propositions. The first is adequate cognition of one’s need for salvation and the means that God has provided. By the law comes the knowledge of sin, so cognition of the two tables and their requirements is necessary. The fall of man in Adam and the consequent condemnation and corruption constitutes part of what must be known for the radical solution in the gospel to make sense. How God has provided an adequate answer in the incarnation for the purpose of a substitutionary death cannot be omitted and genuine knowledge of this claim of divine revelation cannot be left in any state of ambiguity. That death has been conquered in the resurrection and salvation secured in Christ’s consequent intercession are saving realities—the knowledge of which must be a part of saving faith. How a confession can serve in giving the mind clarity on one aspect of cognition may be seen in this confessional statement from the New Hampshire Confession: “We believe that the law of God is the eternal and unchangeable rule of his moral government; that it is holy, just, and good; and that the inability which the Scriptures ascribe to fallen men to fulfill its precepts, arises entirely from their love to sin; to deliver them from which, and to restore them through a Mediator to unfeigned obedience to the holy law, is one great end of the gospel.” This clear biblical message of true moral perversity, desperate need, restorative grace, and consequent love of holiness forms an element of necessary cognition for saving faith.
The second and third elements of saving faith emerge in the process of evangelism based totally on the cognitive understanding of these truths. Following cognition, therefore, one must come to affirm that these things are true. This submission to truthfulness, from a human standpoint, depends on the coherent way in which the evangelist shows the consistency of the proposals of the gospel with themselves and then the agreement between those truths and what we observe in ourselves and in the world. This is a great step forward, but it is not yet saving faith, for devils can assert both this cognition and this belief of the certainty of its truth. The third is to be brought by the Spirit of God to faith, a full trust in and submission to the verdict of God against us and the exclusive competency of Christ in his person and work to give eternal relief to sinners. Again, help to the evangelist in setting this forth and in observing its presence can come from the synthesis provided by knowledge of a confession. An abbreviated version of the statement on “Saving Faith” in the Second London Confession affirms, “By this faith a Christian believes to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God himself; . . . But the principal acts of saving faith have immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, and resting upon him alone, for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace.”
A grasp of doctrinal connections supports the ministry of apologetics. This ministry must be based on true Christianity. We want to present reasons for the hope that is in us that are fully consonant with the whole of revealed truth. We will give reasons for all of the truth no matter how hard it might seem to some—our unity with Adam, our fall in him, the reality of eternal punishment for unbelievers, and the pure freeness of grace manifested in Christ. We will point with joy and certainty to the amazing mystery of the person of Christ, God and man in one person, and we will seek to demonstrate how this person and only this person can give the hope of eternal life. We will affirm all of these things to have been done in the arena of history, observable by human witnesses armed with the common means of testing whether a thing be true or not. Yes, the gospel really happened. Jesus came, Jesus died, Jesus rose again, Jesus taught, and Jesus ascended to heaven before the eyes of hundreds. All of these things could be falsified forever in that generation, but such falsification did not happen. Pentecost would have been a disaster if the resurrection had not actually occurred (Acts 2:23–36). Instead, the Spirit used the truth to bring conviction. On other occasions, the message did not bring refutation but stirred up enmity, hostility, and persecution at the hands of the haters of Jesus and the message of his manner of redemption. At the same time, we will have nothing to do with defending superstitions, false doctrines of divergent professions, or mere human speculation about things for which we do not have sufficient verification on the pages of divine revelation. This task of apologetics finds a ready friend in a well-ordered, comprehensively conceived, and clearly articulated confession of faith. We defend the truth, but nothing but the truth.
A grasp of doctrinal connections provides goals for maturity in Christian growth and discipleship. Often it is difficult for a minister who has lived in the rarefied air of biblical exposition and theology for some years and spends some hours each week in increasing the profundity of his grasp of these issue to understand that his people have not had that advantage. They might not be able to define justification beyond saying, “Just as if I had never sinned.” That this involves both remission of sins and imputation of righteousness might be only dimly resident in their doctrinal perceptions. The same kind of nebulosity could probably be uncovered on many more doctrines. What is adoption? What is sanctification? Why do we believe in the exclusive authority of the Bible? What is election? What does “from before the foundation of the world” mean? Why do we speak of the “means of grace,” and what are they? The minister should ask himself if he has sought earnestly to give his congregation the kind of knowledge that will be useful for growth in grace. This is a part of his task that will endure throughout his ministry, “building yourselves up in your most holy faith” (Jude 19). A judicious use of a confession as an aid to tracking the growth in accurate doctrinal perception of the congregation can inform a minister of emphases he needs to make clear.
A grasp of doctrinal connections and the public display of them gives witness to the worldview of a local congregation. In itself, a confession of faith adopted by a congregation and made available in public says,
This is what we believe. This is what we preach. This is the content of our witness to the world. By these truths a person comes to salvation, knowledge of God, and assurance of eternal life. We do not think like the world, but we think according to revealed truth given us by the Creator of the world and the one who will be the final judge of all the thoughts, words, and actions of all people.”
The confession constantly informs the visitor and the inquirer that these truths will always inform the church’s message and constitute a major part of the mental furniture for spiritual life and church witness.
Confessions Give Clarity about the Differences between Christians
In the pursuit of the whole truth and purity in worship, Christians have separated from one another on certain issues. It is not necessary that these differences be mysterious or hidden. For the sake of a clear conscience, the confessional stance of a church and a denomination should be stated with as much detail as is possible in light of the whole witness of Scripture. Confessions, therefore, not only put forth in a positive manner the beliefs of a church or denomination, they define with clarity the distinction between one Christian group and another. This kind of contest between texts can be seen as a sign of health for the church. Without doubt, some disagreements can become acerbic and combative and can tend toward unhealthy displays of a condemning and irascible spirit. If true heresy exists in a confession, it is good for it to be made clear so that the consequences of errors can be marked by others in the spirit of pursuing “one faith.” Differences also can have the effect of giving greater confidence in the clarity of Scripture on issues of eternal life or condemnation. If the confessions reveal a large number of agreements on the truths about Scripture, God, Trinity, sin, Christ, faith, repentance, justification, resurrection, judgment, heaven and hell, then the differences on some other issues highlight the importance and clarity of those doctrines in which there is common consent.
A church unwilling to fly its doctrinal colors is a church unconcerned about its witness to the truth. B. H. Carroll, the founder of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary said, “A church with a little creed is a church with a little life. The more doctrines a church can agree on, the greater its power, and the wider its usefulness.” He argued that definitive truth exposes and corrects heresy. A refusal to set forth a confession or adopt the early orthodox creeds of the church will allow the Christian world to “fill up with heresy unsuspected and uncorrected, but none the less deadly.”[2]
2. B.H. Carroll, Colossians, Ephesians, and Hebrews, An Interpretation of the English Bible (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1947), 15:140.
Not only do confessions give clarity about differences between churches, they help each individual live with a clear conscience before God. Confessions facilitate the accurate articulation of biblical revelation into its related areas of truth. Paul said, “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5). He told Timothy that the charge given him pointed him to wage warfare “holding faith and a good conscience.” Others having rejected this and made “shipwreck of their faith.” Within the context, Paul is using the word “faith” to mean the sincere and trusting belief of a definite body of revealed truth. A full an unhesitating reception of the doctrines of the Bible has a purifying effect on the conscience.
This is two-fold. First, the sincere believer has assurance that God is just and also full of mercy in forgiving sins and sustaining him to eternal life. From the guilt of broken law and rebellion against God the blood of Christ cleanses the conscience. Second, the conscience embraces a full confession of truth, rests from the lies and deceit of the world, and without fear or intimidation professes a knowledge of God as Creator, Sustainer, Revealer, Redeemer and Judge. A confession of faith unhesitatingly affirmed means that we do not hide behind ambivalent and unsustainable subtleties, but are clear on truth and are willing to take our stand on “true and rational words” (Acts 26:25) even in the face of accusations of unreasonable belief. Strength of commitment and clarity of conscience grip the mind when we find ourselves in line with millions who have gone before us, many of whom have borne witness to the truth even unto death.
Whither Southern Baptists?
While Southern Baptists gratefully and fraternally share the confessional witness of orthodoxy and Protestant evangelicalism, our separation from such fellow Christians was developed at the point of ecclesiology. It is a Christian and a fraternal obligation that we be as clear as Scripture warrants on our reasons for a distinct expression of ecclesiology. Biblical teachings on the church—baptism, the nature of membership, the independence of local congregations, the practice of church discipline, and the biblically mandated officers of the local church—should be stated unhesitatingly in a confessional format. Such is the way all Christan groups define themselves to others in the light of their comprehension of biblical revelation.
Even in the matter of who is biblically warranted to serve as the teacher of the church and exercise authority according to biblical truth should be given clear confessional formulation (e.g., 1 Timothy 2:9–15; 3:1, 2; 2 Timothy 2:1, 2; 3:24, 25; 4:1–3; Titus 1:5–9; Heb. 13:7, 17). It is a reasonable expectation and a matter of biblical fidelity that Baptists affirm by confessional synthesis and biblical clarity this matter so central to the ministry of the local church, “the household of God which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15 NASB). For without this confessional agreement, it becomes impossible for any association of Baptists to move forward together. For that reason, Southern Baptists should labor to embrace the fullness of their confession of faith, and not reduce it to a matter of personal expression or minimal agreement.
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Editor’s note: This longform originally appeared as a series of articles from Founders Ministries. It has been published here with permission.
