01.08. Scripture and Confession.

8. Scripture and Confession. In the time of the apostles and afterwards there was no lack of all kinds of differences concerning the nature of Christianity and its relationship to Judaism and paganism. But all the more surprising is the unanimity with which the Scriptures have been accepted as the Word of God throughout the Christian Church. This applies in the first place to the Old Testament. In the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, reference and appeal was made to it time and again. Imperceptibly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the authority of the Old Testament passed from the Jewish church to the Christian church with the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles. The Gospel brought the Old

Testament with it and could not be accepted and recognized without it. The Gospel is the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament, without which it hangs in the air, and the Old Testament is the pedestal upon which the Gospel rests, the root from which it has grown. As soon as the Gospel was accepted somewhere, the Scriptures of the Old Testament were accepted as the Word of God, at the same time and without any contradiction. The New Testament church’ therefore never existed without a Bible; from the beginning it was in possession of the Law, the Psalms and the Prophets. To these were soon added the apostolic writings. In part, these writings, like the Gospels and the general epistles, were intended for the whole church; in part, like the other epistles, they were addressed to a specific congregation at Rome, at Corinth, at Colossae, etc.

It is obvious that all these writings, as they came from apostles and apostolic men, were from the beginning held in great esteem by the Christian congregations, were read in the assembly and were also sent to other congregations for reading. Thus the apostle Paul himself requested that the epistle which he wrote to the congregation in Colossae, after being read there, should also be read in the congregation in Laodicea, and that the congregation in Colossae should also be acquainted with the letter which he wrote from Laodicea and by which is probably meant the letter to Ephesus, Colossians 4:16. And in 2 Peter 3:15-16 Peter not only mentions a letter which his readers have recently received from Paul, but he also mentions other letters of the apostle, which contain the same doctrine as the one Peter is presenting, but which are sometimes difficult to understand and are distorted by uneducated and unsteady people. It cannot be inferred from this place that a collection of Pauline letters already existed at that time; but it does clearly follow that the writings of Paul

Paul’s writings were known in a much wider circle than in the local congregations to which they were addressed in particular. Of course, in the early days the churches drew their knowledge of the Gospel largely from the oral preaching of the apostles and their teachers. But when these died out and their preaching ceased, the value of the apostles’ writings had to increase more and more. From testimonies around the middle of the second century, we know that the Gospels, and later the Epistles, were regularly read in the assembly of the faithful, were quoted as proof of one truth or another, and were placed on a par with the writings of the Old Testament. Towards the end of the second century the writings of the New Testament, together with those of the Old Testament, were regarded as ״the whole Scripture’, as foundation and pillar of our faith’, as the Scriptures which were regularly read in religious assemblies (Irenaeus, Clemens Alexan- drinus, Tertullianus). For a long time there was a difference of opinion as to whether certain writings (Hebrews, James, Judges, 2 Peter 2:1-22 and 3 John 1:1-14, Revelation of John, Barnabas’ Epistle, Hermas’ Shepherd, etc.) were to be counted among the Holy Scriptures or not. But also in this matter there came gradually more clarity and unanimity; the generally recognized writings were summarized under the name of canon (rule of truth or of faith) and at the synod at Laodicea in the year 360, at Hippo Regius in Numidia in the year 393, and at Carthage in 397 they were registered and established as such.

These scriptures of the Old and New Testaments form the foundation of prophets and apostles, on which all Christian churches in communion with one another place themselves or at least claim to place themselves. All churches have officially recognized the divine authority of these scriptures in their confessions and have accepted it as a reliable rule of faith and life. This dogma has never been the subject of difference or dispute among the Christian churches; the battle against Scripture as the Word of God used to come from outside, from such heathen philosophers as Celsus and Porphyrius in the second century, but only dates from the eighteenth century within Christendom. But the church has not received this Scripture from God in order to rest quietly on it, much less to bury this treasure in the ground. On the contrary, it is called upon to preserve, interpret, proclaim, apply, translate, disseminate, praise and defend this Word of God; in other words, to make the thoughts of God, as contained in the Scriptures, prevail over the thoughts of men everywhere and at all times. All the activity to which the congregation is called is a work on and a ministry of the Word of God. It is the ministry of the Word of God, when it is preached, declared and applied in the assembly of the faithful, when it is dispensed in the signs of the covenant and enforced in the discipline. But to the service of the Word in a broader sense also belongs that it is applied, worked out and brought to dominion in one’s own heart and life, in profession and business, in home and workplace, in science and art, in state and society, in works of mercy and mission, in all sides and in all directions of life. The church must be a pillar and a firm ground of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15), that is, a pillar and a foundation that carries the truth, not in itself, for then the truth rests in itself, that is in God, but that carries and maintains and confirms the truth here on earth before the world. If the Church omits and forgets this, it forfeits its calling and undermines its own existence. As soon as the church begins to fulfill its calling, however, a difference of opinion about the meaning of God’s Word usually soon arises. Even though the Holy Spirit has been promised and given to the church as a guide in all truth, the church, neither as a whole nor in its particular members, is not equipped with the gift of infallibility. Already in the apostolic congregations there were all kinds of errors, which had their origin either in Judaism or in Paganism. And throughout the centuries these have been the two pitfalls which the congregation has been continually threatened with running aground and which it must therefore avoid with the greatest vigilance and foresight. In the face of these errors on the right and on the left, the church of Christ is compelled to pronounce resolutely and clearly which is the truth entrusted to it by God in His Word. The Church does this by meeting in smaller and larger assemblies (synods) and there determining what, in one point or another, it is convinced is the divine truth and thus the doctrine of the Church. The truth which is laid down in Scripture thus leads of itself to a confession by everyone who believes and embraces it. Confession is the calling of all believers and also the impulse of their hearts; whoever truly believes, with all his heart and soul, cannot but confess, that is, testify to the truth that has set him free, and to the hope that has been planted in his heart by that truth. Every believer and every congregation therefore suffers, as truly as it carries the witness of the Holy Spirit within it, that God’s Word is the truth. And as error takes on a finer form, the congregation is forced to account with all the more care for the content of the truth it professes, and also to express in clear and unambiguous terms what it believes. Oral confession then, by necessity, passes into the described confession (symbol, confession).

There have been objections from various sides to the drafting and handing down of such an ecclesiastical confession. The Remonstrants in this country, for example, were of the opinion that a confession was contrary to the exclusive authority of the Holy Scriptures, deprived the conscience of freedom, and prevented the growth of knowledge. But these objections are based on misunderstanding; the confessions do not serve to reduce the Scriptures, but on the contrary to uphold them and to secure them against individual arbitrariness; they do not violate but support the freedom of conscience against all kinds of spirits of error, who try to seduce the weak and ignorant souls; and they do not hinder the development of knowledge, but keep and direct it on the right track, and can themselves always be legitimately checked and revised against the Scriptures as the only rule of faith. The Apostles’ Creed (the 12 Articles) is the oldest symbol. Although it was not drawn up by the apostles, it came into being at the beginning of the second century, and developed from the Trinitarian baptismal commandment given by Christ Himself, Matthew 28:19. Originally it was somewhat shorter than we know it today, but the basic type was the same; it was a brief enumeration of the great facts on which Christianity rests, and as such it is still the common basis and the indissoluble bond of all Christendom. To this apostolic symbol should be added four other confessions of an ecumenical (general) character, which are adopted by many churches, namely, the confession of the Council at Nicea in 325; the confession which, in Article 9 of our Dutch Confession of Faith, is the foundation of Christianity. Confession, which in article 9 of our Confession of Faith is called the Nicene Creed, but, although it incorporates the Nicene Creed, it expands it and only came into being some time later; next, the creed of the Council of Chalcedon in 451; and finally the creed of Athanasius, which is wrongly so called, and which is also accepted as a symbol in article 9 of the Confession of the Netherlands. In all these symbols the doctrine about Christ and the Trinity is explained. This was the subject of the great controversy in the first centuries. What do you think of the Christ? That was the all-important question which the congregation had to answer for itself and to the whole world, based on the Lord’s Word. On the Jewish side there were all those who were prepared to acknowledge Jesus as a man, sent by God, equipped with extraordinary gifts, animated by the prophetic spirit, powerful in words and works, but otherwise no more than a man. And on the Pagan side, one wanted to see in Jesus a son of the gods, a form of God, who had come from heaven and, like the angels in the Old Testament, had appeared on earth for a short time and had taken on a false body; but one refused to confess in Him the One-born of the Father, who had become flesh. In the face of these two heresies, the church had to maintain, in accordance with the Scriptures, both that

Christ was the true, one-born Son of God and that He had truly come in the flesh. She expressed this after a long struggle in the above-mentioned Confessional Scriptures, and with the Apostle John she rejected as anti-Christian all doctrines which deny that the Son of God came in the flesh, 1 John 2:18, 1 John 2:22; 1 John 4:2-3. In doing so, the Christian Church maintained the essence and the core, the very special nature of the Christian religion. And that is why the councils and synods in which this great work was accomplished have such great, fundamental significance for the whole of Christendom. In the facts of Christianity, which the Apostles’ Creed enumerates, and in the doctrine of the person of Christ and of the triune nature of God, there is among the Christian churches a harmony which unites them all against Judaism and Paganism, and which, in the sad difference which divides them, must not be forgotten or disregarded. But on the common ground all sorts of disagreements and schisms soon arose. The practice of discipline led to the separations of Montanism (2nd half of the 2nd century), Novatianism (mid 3rd century) and Donatism (4th century). Much more serious was the schism that gradually took place between the Church in the East and that in the West. Various causes contributed to this: in the first place, the aversion between Greeks and Latins, the envy between Constantinople and Rome, the conflict for supremacy between the Patriarchs and the Pope. In addition, there were many smaller differences in doctrine and worship, the most important of which was the confession of the Greek Church that the Holy Spirit did not emanate from the Father and the Son (filioque), as the West taught, but only from the Father. The separation, which had already come about occasionally for a time, came to a head in 1054. The Church in the East, which prefers to call itself Orthodox, because in its opinion it has remained faithful to the teachings of the ancient Church better than Rome, suffered great losses because of all kinds of sects (Armenian Christians; Nestorians in Syria; Thomas Christians in Persia, Monophysite Jacobites in Syria and Copts in Egypt; Maronites in Lebanon), which separated from it, and especially also because of Mohammedanism, which in 1453 even became master of Constantinople. On the other hand, it received an important gain through the conversion of the Slavs, and at present still exists as the Orthodox Church in Greece, Turkey, Russia and in some small countries such as Bulgaria, Serbia and Rumenia. In Russia, however, its existence is being undermined by the appearance of many numerous and very different sects. Like the state, the church is in a very serious crisis. In the West, the power of the Catholic Church, under the leadership of the bishops of Rome, expanded from century to century. After a long period of persecution and defamation, the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity was followed by a period of peace, privilege and prestige. Although secularization increased hand over hand, the church also acquired great merits in the period from the conversion of Constantine to the Reformation. Just as she resisted and conquered paganism in the first centuries, so she also later worked diligently for the conversion of the peoples and the civilization of Europe, upheld the great truths of Christianity and the independence of the church with commendable steadfastness, ’ and contributed greatly to the development of Christian art and science. But whatever may have been her merits, it can scarcely be denied that in her expansion and development of power she often moved in a direction which had not been indicated by the original, apostolic Christianity. This is especially evident in three respects.

First, the Catholic Church has more and more elevated tradition to an independent rule of faith next to, above, and even in opposition to Scripture. Many Roman doctrines and practices, such as Mass, celibacy for the clergy, the veneration of the saints, the immaculate conception of Mary, etc., cannot be proven in words from Scripture, but are nevertheless upheld on the basis of tradition. It is said of this tradition that it may only contain "what has been believed everywhere, always and by all", but in the end it is always the pope who decides whether something is tradition.

Thus the whole relationship of Scripture and Church is reversed in Rome. Scripture is not necessary, but only useful for the Church, but the Church is necessary for Scripture. For the Scriptures have no authority except through the Church, which declares them credible; they are obscure in themselves, and only become clear through the interpretation of the Church; they do not precede and are not the foundation of the Church, but the Church takes the first place, and also makes up the foundation upon which the Scriptures rest. Although the prophets and apostles were endowed with the gift of inspiration, the pope too, when he speaks ״ex cathedra’, in his papal capacity, enjoys a special support and guidance of the Spirit and is infallible. Thus, the Church is sufficient in itself, if necessary missing the Scriptures; it is the one, true, and perfect agent of salvation; it possesses and distributes in the sacraments all the benefits of grace; it is the agent of grace par excellence, the state and kingdom of God on earth.

Secondly, the Catholic Church has mixed up the core of the Gospel, that is, God’s free grace, the justification of sinners by faith alone, without the works of the law, if not entirely lost, at least with very impure elements, and thus confused the distinction between law and Gospel. This corruption of the original Gospel already occurred in the first centuries. But later it increased and was officially approved. In the struggle between Augustine and Pelagius, which in principle still continues, the Roman Church, especially after the Reformation, has more and more sided with the latter, not in name but in fact. God does give man, who hears the Gospel, the power to convert and to persevere in conversion. But the will and the accomplishment depend on man himself. He must gain entrance to the kingdom of God through good works.

These good works fall into two major categories with Rome: works to maintain the ordinary commandments applicable to all, and works to accomplish the counsels added by Christ to these commandments (celibacy, poverty and obedience). The first way is good, but the second way is better, more difficult but also shorter and safer; that one is for laymen, the other for monks and nuns. Whoever walks on this path of good works receives from the Church, by means of the sacraments, as much grace as he has made himself worthy of. Finally, if he perseveres to the end, he arrives in the kingdom of heaven not at the moment of rebirth or even at death, but after years of being in purgatory.

Third, the Catholic Church soon made a distinction between clergy and laity. Not the faithful in general, but the clergy alone are priests in the real sense. And in the clergy, too, all sorts of distinctions were gradually made. In the New Testament the names "elder" and "overseer" refer to the same ministers. But already in the second century this unity was lost from sight; the bishop (episcopus, bishop) was elevated high above the deacons and elders (or presbyters, priests) and was gradually regarded as a successor to the Apostles and as a guardian of tradition. These bishops have pastors, parish priests and chaplains under them and have archbishops, patriarchs and finally the pope above them. In the Pope, who was officially declared infallible at the Vatican Council in Rome in 1870, this entire, ramified ecclesiastical hierarchy closes itself off. He is the ״father" (papa, pope) of the entire Church, the ״superior priest", the successor of Peter, the ״deputy of Christ", the supreme legislative and judicial power, who, with the help of a large college of officials (curia: cardinals, prelates, procu- rators, notaries, etc.), rules the entire Church.

These errors, which began with minor deviations, have grown larger and larger over the centuries. They have developed and are still developing in the direction that the Christian, Catholic Church of old is passing more and more into the Ultramontane, into the Roman Church (inseparably bound up with the church in Rome), into the Papal Church, in which Mary, the mother of Christ, and the Pope, the vicar of Christ, are pushing the person and work of Christ further and further into the background. The three errors mentioned above are a reduction of and an infringement on the prophetic, priestly, and royal office of Christ. This corruption of the church did not proceed without vigorous resistance at every turn. Especially in the Middle Ages there was no lack of people and movements that wanted to make improvements. But all these movements have had little success; in part they have passed quietly without leaving much fruit; in part they have been violently suppressed and smothered in blood. These means of suppression and extermination were also used against the Reformation in the sixteenth century, but they did not succeed. That was because the times were ripe for a reformation. The church was in such deep religious and moral decay that her own sons no longer trusted her; everywhere there was a sense that things could not continue like they were, and a desire for something to be done; and not a few people, for example in Italy, ridiculed all religion and Christianity and fell into complete disbelief. - What would have become of the church without the Reformation, is impossible to say; the Reformation has also been a blessing for the Roman church, as it still is for her today.

Furthermore, the Reformation was not the only powerful movement that announced the new era. It was preceded, accompanied and followed by other movements, each in its field no less important. The invention of printing and gunpowder, the rise of the free citizenry, the discovery of America, the ״rebirth’ of literature and art, the new science and philosophy - all these important phenomena and events were signs of the awakening of the self-consciousness, of the transition from the Middle Ages to the new age. And by all these movements the Reformation, although starting from its own principle and pursuing its own goal, was carried and supported. And then - which is not the least important - the Reformation, in its opposition to the Roman church, attacked the evil at the root. She was not satisfied with an external improvement in the forms, but wanted the cause of the decay to be removed. For that, of course, she needed a fixed point of departure, a reliable yardstick, a positive principle. And this she found, in contrast to the traditions of the Roman church, in the word of Christ, which was credible in and of itself, necessary for the life and welfare of the church, but also perfectly sufficient and clear; in contrast to the good works, to which Rome bound salvation, in the work of Christ, which was perfect and needed no supplementation by men; and in contrast to the pope, who claimed to be the infallible substitute of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ, who is poured out in the church and leads all God’s children into the truth. The Reformation did not arrive at this positive principle through scientific research and reflection, but through the experience of the guilt-laden heart, which finally found reconciliation and forgiveness only in God’s free grace. The Reformation was not a scholarly or scientific movement, but a religious and moral one. Many joined it, as is the case with every division and rupture, for impure and unjust motives; but its core was formed by the weary and burdened, who sighed under Rome’s pressure and now found rest for their souls at the feet of the Holy One.

Luther stopped at this experience of forgiveness. It was enough for him that he had found ״a merciful God. It is true that from this point of view he had a much freer and broader view of the whole world than the Roman Christian, for whom the natural always has the character of the profane; but resting on the justification that he had obtained through faith alone, he left everything secular, art and science, state and society to their own devices. The Lutheran Reformation limited itself to the restoration of the preaching ministry. When they had found the answer from Scripture to the question: How does man become blessed? then they gave up further work. For Zwingli and Calvin, however, who initiated the reformation in Switzerland, that was the beginning of their work. They too came to reformation, not through rational reasoning, but through the experience of sin and grace, of guilt and reconciliation. But this experience was their starting point, but not their end or resting point. From there they penetrated deeper and went back further. Behind the grace of God, revealed in the forgiveness of guilt, lies the sovereignty of God, the infinite and adorable essence of God with all His virtues and perfections. If God was sovereign in the work of salvation, then He was sovereign always and everywhere, in creation as well as in re-creation. If He had become King in the heart, He also had to be so in the head and the hand, in the household and the workplace, in the state and society, in science and the arts. The question was not enough: How does man become blessed? but it had to be reduced to this other, higher, deeper, all-embracing question: How does God become worthy of His glory? And hence, for Zwingli and even more for Calvin, when they had found peace for their hearts in the blood of the cross, the work of reformation first began. So to speak, the whole world was open to them, not to leave them to their own devices, but to penetrate and sanctify them through the Word of God and prayer. They began in their immediate neighborhood, with the church and the city in which they lived; and they restored not only the preaching office, but also worship and discipline; not only religious life on Sunday, but also civil and social life on weekdays; not only the private life of the citizen, but also the public life of the state. And from there their reformation spread to other countries. The Lutheran Reformation was mainly limited to Germany and Denmark, Sweden and Norway. But Calvin’s Reformation found acceptance in Italy and Spain, Hungary and Poland, Switzerland and France, Belgium and the Netherlands, England and Scotland, in America and Canada. If it had not been for the "Counter-Reformation" of the Jesuits in many countries which opposed it, pushed it back and eradicated it, it would have put an end to Rome’s world domination for good.

It was not to be. The Reformation was opposed from the outset by the Church of Rome, which at the Council of Trent deliberately set itself against it and continued on its chosen path. She weakened herself by internal divisions and endless disputes. And next to her in the same sixteenth century appeared Socinianism and Anabaptism, which both started from the same basic idea, from the irreconcilable opposition between nature and grace, and therefore offered either grace to nature, or nature to grace. The same opposition, between creation and re-creation, between the human and the divine, between reason and revelation, between earth and heaven, between humanity and Christianity, or however one may further call the members of the opposition, the same opposition continued to exist until today. The divisions and ruptures that took place in the sixteenth century did not stop there. Each succeeding century increased its number. The seventeenth century gave birth to Remonstrantism in the Netherlands, to Independentism in England, to Pietism in Germany. In the eighteenth century, Herrnhuttism, Methodism, and Swedenborgianism were added, and the flood of Deism swept over all the churches. After the French Revolution, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a mighty religious awakening took place in Roman and Protestant churches. But nevertheless the divisions still increased: Darbysm and Irvingianism, Mormonism and Spiritism and all kinds of other sects crumble away the churches, which themselves are often weakened and consumed by a spirit of doubt and indifference. And outside the churches the power of monism in materialistic or pantheistic form is organizing itself into a final, deadly attack on the whole Christian faith.

All hope for the unity and universality of the church of Christ thus seems to be lost. Of the more than 1500 million people, who live on earth according to common estimates, there are about 10 million Jews, 175 million Mohammedans, 214 million Brahmins, 120 million Buddhists, 300 million Congfutseans, 140 million Shin-Toists, 173 million Polytheists. The Christians together form only a third part of the inhabitants of the earth, approximately 534 million, and among themselves are divided into 254 million Roman Catholics, 106 million Greek, 165 million Protestants, and many other groups and sects.

There is one consolation - Christ is gathering His own from all races and languages, from all peoples and nations; He will bring them all together and they will hear His voice. And they shall be one flock, one shepherd, John 10:16.