In preparing to lead a man’s study this evening on reclaiming catholicity, I came across this paragraph from my former professor, John Frame:
There are those who think that the way to maintain unity in a church, denomination, or conference, is by having a written confession that specifies in detail what everybody must agree on. I do believe in creeds, and I treasure the great creeds, confessions, and catechisms of the church. But a common written confession is not the key to unity. For one thing, no confession can cover everything. For another, even the best confessions must be applied to current circumstances, and that is not always easy to do. But the most important problem with confessions is this: A written confession is a fallible human document, however much biblical truth it may contain. Unlike God’s inspired Word, the Bible, any human confession may contain errors. So we dare not make the fellowship of our churches depend on agreement to everything in a confession. If you have a rule that people agree to everything in the confession, then you make it impossible to correct the confession in the light of God’s Word. That means the confession becomes equal to the Bible. I think it’s good to have a confession, so that people both inside and outside the church can get an idea of what the church is about. But we dare not make the confession infallible. Our written rule of faith must be, as Luther and Calvin so clearly put it, Scripture and Scripture alone.