Sometimes the saying “familiarity breeds contempt” is true. Some Christian schoolteachers struggle to help their students grow in Christ because the students have heard it all before. Likewise, long-term Presbyterians may take their secondary standards for granted because they are so familiar. While it may be a subconscious thought, many of us have heard it all before and thus undervalue our standards.

This article has two goals: to reintroduce some of us to a very old but dear friend and to help us introduce Presbyterianism to visitors.

It is sometimes easy to forget that, though many churches present a true gospel, Presbyterianism has a great product in our secondary standards. The words secondary standards mean that there are primary standards. Every evangelical church’s primary standard for worship and life is the Bible. An important question is why Presbyterians would have any type of secondary standard at all.

Many independent congregations say that they have no other standard than God’s holy Word, and they challenge Presbyterians for having human secondary standards.

One form of their argument sounds like this: “Our church has no creed but Christ and no authority other than the Bible. We are true Protestants and do not need to supplement God’s Word with human standards.” Such a challenge can be disconcerting—or even overwhelming. However, even if not formally written and adopted, every church has some type of a creed or confession.

Let’s take a closer look at a position that I will call “no creed”: “Our church has no creed but Christ and no authority other than the Bible.”

“No creed” begins with a doctrine of the church: “Our church…” Visitors might then ask what is meant by the word “church.” Perhaps it means the group of believers that meet in this building on Sunday. If so, visitors need to ask if, when our family visits and worships with you, are we automatically members (since by definition “church” is the group that meets in this building)? If they answer, “well actually no; first you have to meet with the leadership and explain your conversion,” then “no creed” actually begins: “Our church is a body of believers who have been converted and submit to the leadership of this body.”

The visitors may be interested enough to meet with the church leadership. The congregation’s leadership may be organized in a hierarchical structure with bishops, an egalitarian structure with no ordained leadership, or something in between. Each of these organizational structures represents a human secondary standard that the congregation has embraced. Furthermore, the independent congregation has also adopted a hermeneutic that is convinced of congregational autonomy rather than Presbyterian mutual accountability.

As the visitors talk with the leadership about conversion, they may find that the congregation has interpreted the Bible in a fashion that excludes infant baptism. They may be convinced that an adequate conversion absolutely requires believer’s baptism. Thus “no creed” now includes those “who have been converted, who do not recognize infant baptism as legitimate, who insist upon adult baptism.” The next set of questions for the visitor should include how the congregation defines the nature of conversion, including sin, God’s sovereignty, the role of the human will, and what mode for adult baptism is considered the most biblical. Passing by those complexities, let’s turn to the last phrase.

The last phrase in the “no creed” position was “…but Christ.” The phrase “Christ alone” sounds pious and even Reformation-like. At the Reformation, Luther’s cry of “Christ alone” was set against the Roman Catholic error of needing something more than Christ for salvation. The problem is that today’s world is vastly more complex than Luther’s. There are congregations that subscribe to sola scriptura as well as to biblical inerrancy that, by “but Christ,” mean that God is “Christ alone.” In fact, these congregations deny the Trinity, something that Luther never intended. Such a creed describes a group found under various names (generally Oneness Pentecostals) that is Unitarian and claims 24 million adherents in the United States!

Hopefully, these questions have demonstrated that even churches that claim they have no creed function as creedal churches. A publicly written creed for a visitor to study, compare with the Scriptures, and rightfully evaluate is in fact very “seeker friendly.” Thus, with a word of apology to English majors and to Shakespeare: “To confess or not to confess; that is not the question.” From its infancy the church has embraced creeds as useful summaries of doctrinal truths.

Benefits of a Creed

There are many benefits that come to the church from her creeds. The next section will focus on two of them: learning truth and combating heresy.

The Westminster standards are short summaries of the faith. They are didactic, or teaching tools. Since the Reformation, Scottish Presbyterianism has argued that every voting member of the congregation should understand all the points of their confession, and the Shorter Catechism was written in part to aid children to prepare for membership. While we have proven to be less strict than those of the Continental Reformed tradition, which requires full acceptance of their confession’s doctrine for all members, the benefits from knowing the catechism are crystal clear.

When I was teaching in Philadelphia, a retired colleague had suffered the loss of his wife and his only grandchild. Tragically, his only son had a massive brain aneurism and suddenly passed away. I was asked to go to my colleague’s home and break the very sad news. After lamenting his great loss, when the finality of the bitter situation became clear to him, with tears running down his ancient cheeks, he simply recited the first question and answer of his childhood catechism, the Heidelberg: “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” “That I am not my own, but belong, body and soul, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.” That was a powerful lesson to me of the beauty and benefit of catechism memory!

The second benefit is that the Westminster standards combat incorrect ideas and heresy. The standards confronted and answered many of the theological challenges of their day. This polemic or protective part was woven through the very fabric of the Confession.

Let me demonstrate by presenting some of the historical context of the Westminster standards. Mid-17th Century England was enveloped by a raging civil war over opposition to theological and liturgical innovations imposed by King Charles I’s Archbishop, William Laud. To counteract Laud’s Arminian innovations, among others, the Confession emphasized God’s eternal decree (Chap. 3), the depth of human sin (Chap. 6), and that there is no free will (Chap. 9). They had to counteract the king’s desire to view Sunday with less strictness than that required in a Christian Sabbath (Chap. 21) as well as incorrect views of the church and sacraments (chaps. 25–31). They also had to answer a growing antinomian challenge (chaps. 7, 10-16, 19-20).

The Westminster Assembly’s historical context also reveals some of the beauty of the documents and the men who penned them. In fact, some of England’s best theologians refused to attend an assembly called by a parliament that was at war with the nation’s king and church head. The king deemed assembly attendance an act of treason. The divines were no ivory-tower theologians but husbands and fathers who had left their families behind, fasted and prayed for parliamentary victories, and wept over their defeats. For them, the loss of the civil war would have meant a resurgence of Roman Catholicism as well as possible death. Even though Parliament won, when King Charles II came into power in 1660, his fingers of death wrapped around the throat of little-known Scottish commissioner Alexander Johnston, who was hanged in Edinburgh. Another Scottish commissioner, Samuel Rutherford, died of natural causes before the executioner was able to string him up.

These godly assemblymen held to theological presuppositions that were part of their era, some of which may sound strange to us. For example, all assumed that monarchy was either politically permissible or even the best form of government, all assumed that the civil government could call a synod, and all believed the pope was the antichrist.

Thus, the Westminster standards met the theological challenges of their day but also carried with them some of the cultural and theological presuppositions of 17th Century England. Undoubtedly, the Church still needs secondary standards that can effectively confront theological attacks, and, since all confessions are fallible, there is a concomitant need to edit places where the Holy Spirit has helped the Church see things more clearly in the present than the Church noted in the past. The RPCNA wisely saw the need to supplement the Confession and Catechisms since the Synod was constituted in the opening years of the 19th Century. Their rather brilliant notion was eventually to adopt a “Testimony.” This testimony helps the church to combat heresy that has arisen since the 17th Century and will correct any errors in the Confession. Nonetheless, the Westminster Confession is nothing short of magnificent, even if it is time-bound. Its summary of the Bible’s teaching (the didactic function) has never been matched.

In conclusion, catechisms and confessions are of inestimable value to the life and growth of Christ’s church. Nevertheless, every manmade confession will eventually need some form of modification and the RPCNA has met those needs with the Westminster standards supplemented by our Testimony. These standards are of true value to visitors who want to get to know more about us. They are also helpful for long-time members.

If you have not read through the Testimony in the last year (or perhaps last decade!) why not set aside some time and read through it again. It is a beautiful document, and its loveliness should regularly be admired. Embracing our confession like a dear old friend is not a sterile academic exercise. It is of great benefit as we all try to apply God’s truth to all of life!

—Dr. Richard Gamble is professor of systematic theology at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pa. He is also author of The Whole Counsel of God (P&R).

Quotations on Learning the Confessions & Catechisms

Confessions

Those who argue that they have no creed but Christ and no book but the Bible are usually trying to protect something important and biblical: the supreme authority of Scripture in all matters of Christian faith and practice. They rightly fear allowing unbiblical traditions or ideas to impact the substance of what the church believes. Yet for all of the good intentions that they may have, I believe that that which they want to protect—the unique status of Scripture—is actually best protected through explicit confessional documents, connected to a carefully thought-out form of church government.

“In fact, and somewhat ironically, it is those who do not express their confession in the form of a written document who are in danger of elevating their tradition above Scripture in such a way that it can never be controlled by the latter. If a church has a document that says it is dispensational in eschatology, then we all know where such a church stands on the issue of the end times, and we can do the Berean thing and test the position by Scripture to see if it is so. The church that tells you simply that its position on the end times is the same one as that taught in the Bible appears to be telling you everything, but is actually telling you nothing at all.

“In short, creeds and confessions, connected to a biblical church polity, are a vital part of maintaining a healthy New Testament church life.”

—Carl R. Trueman, OPC minister and church history professor at Westminster Seminary (Philadelphia). He has written The Creedal Imperative*. Quotation from New Horizons.

Catechisms

“Although our times are bad enough, it will not do for Christians to moan and wring their hands. History is full of bad times when God called up men and women of strong faith and glorious deeds, and we must prepare our children for that call.…

“For today as always, history is the tale of two cities, the city of man and the city of God, Babylon and Jerusalem, the world and the church. The battle between the two continues, but the outcome is never in doubt.

“While we live in the worst of times, let us embrace what is best. Let us take the invincible truths of almighty God, pour them into the minds and hearts of our children, and send them forth into the field of battle.

“Let us join the Calvin of the Reformation and say, ‘We who aim at the restitution of the Church, are everywhere faithfully exerting ourselves, in order that, at least, the use of the Catechism may now resume its lost rights.’”

—Donald Van Dyken, Rediscovering Catechism (P&R)