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.
Perhaps useful, at least from those in favor of stronger confessional subscription than Frame, are the words of Samuel Miller…
“We may see from what has been said, that subscribing to a Church Creed, is not a mere formality; but a very solemn transaction, which means much, an dinners the most serious obligations. It is certainly a transaction which ought to be entered upon with much deep deliberation and humble prayer; and in which, if a man be bound to be sincere in any thing, he is bound to be honest to his God, honest to himself, and honest to the Church which he joins. For myself, I know of no transaction, in which insincerity is more justly chargeable with the dreadful sin of ‘lying to the Holy Ghost,’ than this. It is truly humiliating and distressing to know, that in some churches it has gradually become customary, to consider Articles of Faith as merely articles of peace; in other words, as articles which he who subscribes, is not considered as professing to believe; but as merely engaging not to oppose — at least in any public or offensive manner. Whether we bring this principle to the test of reason, of Scripture, of the original design of the Creeds, or of the ordinary import of language among honorable men; — it seems equally liable to the severest reprobation, as disreputable and criminal in a very high degree. Nor does it appear to me to be any alleviation, either of the disgrace or the sin, that many of the governors of the churches referred to, as well as those who subscribe. publicly avow their adoption of this principle; admit the correctness of it; keep each other in countenance; and thus escape, as they imagine, the charge of hypocrisy. What would be thought of a similar principle, if generally adopted and avowed, with respect to the administration of oaths in civil courts? Suppose both jurors and witnesses, feeling it a grievance to be bound by their oaths to speak the truth, were to agree among themselves, and openly to give out, that they did not mean, where they swore, to take on themselves any such obligation; that they did not so understand the import of their oaths, and did not intend to recognize any such meaning? And suppose the judges were freely to admit them to their oaths with a similar understanding? Would a witness or a juror, in such a case be exempt from the charge of perjury, or the judge from the guilt of subordination of perjury? I presume not, in the estimation of any sober minded man. If it were otherwise, then bad men, who form a majority of every community, might, by combining, violate all the principles of virtue and order, not only with impunity, but also without sin. Set it down, then, as a first principle of common honesty, as well as of Christian truth, that subscription to Articles of Faith, is a weighty transaction, which really means what it professes to mean; that no man is ever at liberty to subscribe articles which he does not truly and fully believe; and that, in subscribing, he brings himself under a solemn, covenant engagement to the church which he enters, to walk with it ‘in the unity of faith,’ and ‘in the bond of peace and love.’ If he cannot do this honestly, let him not profess to do it at all. I see not but that here, insincerity, concealment, double dealing, and mental reservations, are, to say the least, quite as mean and base as they can be in the transactions of social and civil life.”
-Samuel Miller: The utility and Importance of Creeds and Confessions