RyanReeves

The Reformation was a struggle over the essentials of the faith. Protestants had to articulate their understanding of biblical teaching. In this sense, the Reformation confessions were a natural flowering of the Protestant commitment to the Bible.

THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS

The high mark of confessions, though, was the Westminster Standards, which comprises the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, the Directory of Public Worship, and the Form of Church Government. The confession served as a new expression of Reformed orthodoxy, while the two catechisms mimic Luther’s commitment to providing a manual for both clergy or adults (Larger Catechism) and children (Shorter Catechism). In terms of length and depth, no Reformation or post-Reformation confessional standard rivals that of the Westminster Assembly. Its history, though, comes out of the struggle over Puritanism within the English church.

     Since the time of Henry VIII (r. 1509–47), the English church had embraced only an essential confession—first the Forty-Two Articles (1552), later pared down to the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563). Though these articles were fully Protestant in theology, they did not clarify the church’s commitment to principles of worship and did not specify a position on controversial doctrines such as ecclesiological leadership structures or the presence of Christ in communion. Much of the failure in the English church to write a more comprehensive confession was not due to hesitation but to inability created by the violent swings between Protestant and Catholic allegiances under Henry’s two children, Edward VI and Mary I. For much of the sixteenth century, the Anglican Church did not have the luxury to write a lengthy, unified confession. By the time of Elizabeth I, not a few in England believed the earlier necessity of a limited confession to be a virtue. Shorter confessions might curtail the number of doctrinal squabbles that were emerging, for example, between Reformed and Lutheran leaders in Europe. Bishops such as Matthew Parker—though committed to the Reformed faith—began to express concern at the growing voice for the English church to alter its position on worship, vestments, doctrine, and other liturgical practices.      The result of this tension provoked the emergence of Puritanism, first under Elizabeth and then increasingly under James I. The label applied to the impulse to seek further reform rather than to a clearly defined movement. Yet all Puritans shared in the frustration at the hesitation of bishops and political leaders to reform the English church further.

By the time of Charles I, the situation was rather grim. Under Elizabeth and James, the plight of Puritans was often that they were ignored, though they were hardly persecuted. Charles, though, embodied a more aggressive stance against Puritans. In the end, strife between Parliament and king issued in the English Civil War (1642–51).

     The Puritans won the struggle, led by the heroic efforts of Oliver Cromwell—whose statue today still sits squarely in front of Parliament. During the war, Parliament ordered Puritan leaders (and a few Scottish consultants) to convene an assembly to expand the Thirty-Nine Articles into a full confession that matched other confessions in Europe. The Westminster Assembly made an honest effort to base their work on the Thirty-Nine Articles, but it soon found this model too constricting, and so started from scratch.

     This context of the struggles against Charles and the need for further reform explain the length and depth of the Westminster Standards. Rather than being seen as an attempt to summarize all doctrine, the Standards should be seen instead as an explosion of pent-up energies within Puritanism to define English Reformed doctrine and practice. Blood had been shed and voices silenced, and now that those voices were loosed from their confines, they felt it their duty to expound not only on their

doctrinal position but on worship, discipleship, and a bevy of other issues in the life of the church.                                                                  (to be continued)

Dr. Ryan Reeves is assistant professor of historical theology and assistant dean of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Jacksonville, Fla.

First published in Tabletalk Magazine, an outreach of Ligonier. Website: www.ligonier.org/tabletalk.  © Tabletalk magazine. Used with permission

The Reformation was a struggle over the essentials of the faith. Protestants had to articulate their understanding of biblical teaching. In this sense, the Reformation confessions were a natural flowering of the Protestant commitment to the Bible.

REFORMED CONFESSIONS PROLIFERATE

The Reformed tradition was equally committed to the cause of confessionalization. Depending on how wide a net we cast, there were roughly forty to fifty Reformed (or Reformed-influenced) confessions written between 1520 and 1650—by far the most of any Protestant tradition. In 1523, almost immediately as the Reformed tradition began, Huldrych Zwingli drew up the Sixty-Seven Articles in order to provide an articulation of the points at stake in Zurich. This was followed by the Ten Theses of Berne (1528), the First Confession of Basel (1534), and several others as cities began to adopt the Reformed perspective. Others would follow in other countries, with the French Confession of Faith (1559) and the Scots Confession (1560).

The reason for so many Reformed confessions comes as a result of their context. The Reformed faith was always led by a band of brothers (despite the modern impression that John Calvin alone created Reformed orthodoxy). But the Reformed tradition was born in several cities and countries almost at once. From 1520 onward, city after city embraced the Reformation, often piecemeal, and quite a few even before reform came to Geneva. Therefore, there was no singular voice like Luther’s to shape the foundational documents of Reformed confessions.

As a result, church after church, community after community spent a sizable portion of their energy codifying a confession for their local churches. This is why most Reformed confessions identify with the city of their origin: this was the confession for this city, this church, not for all Reformed churches to embrace as one.

Still, as historians and theologians point out, there is a harmonization of these Reformed confessions that unites their diverse voices into a singular Reformed voice. Their differences are not so great that we cannot see their unity on issues of salvation, worship, and practice. Today, many churches recognize a basic harmony of what is called the Three Forms of Unity—the Belgic Confession, the Canons of Dort, and the Heidelberg Catechism—a unity not of authorship but of witness to Reformed principles.

I This is not to say that all Reformed confessions are identical. As the

Reformed faith spread from the Swiss cantons to Germany, France, the Netherlands, and then to England and Scotland, there were noticeable differences of emphasis or application. These confessional identities formed the initial steps that would give rise to the diversity of Reformed denominations and communities as we know it today.

THE REMONSTRANTS AND DORT In the Netherlands, for example, the rise of Arminianism within Reformed churches provided the context of the Synod of Dort (1618–19), a unique application of Reformed principles to the challenges of Jacob Arminius. Having studied in Geneva under Calvin’s successor, Theodore Beza, Arminius returned to the Netherlands to serve as a pastor. (One great irony is that Beza wrote a letter of recommendation for Arminius as he returned home.) Arminius, though, increasingly had doubts about Reformed scholasticism and its teachings on predestination and grace. In time, his teachings became the rallying cry of several other leaders against the Calvinist establishment.

After the death of Arminius in 1609, the Arminian position—also known as the Remonstrant faith—soon codified five points that were submitted to leaders of the Dutch war to separate from Spanish-controlled Catholic regions of the Netherlands. The Synod of Dort met in response to this and rejected each of the five points. Thus were born the so-called five points of Calvinism, though the synod’s intention was not to reduce the faith to five points, but merely to give answers to the five points of Arminianism.

Moving ahead to the later seventeenth century, we see this same individual expression of Reformed principles in the London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689). As the creation of Puritan Baptists—or Primitive Baptists—this confession was written by those committed to Reformed doctrine who nevertheless differed with Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Dutch Calvinists in terms of their polity and rejection of paedobaptism. This confession was the culmination of generations of Baptists that emerged in England and would come to define Reformed Baptist views for centuries.  (to be continued)

Dr. Ryan Reeves is assistant professor of historical theology and assistant dean of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Jacksonville, Fla.

First published in Tabletalk Magazine, an outreach of Ligonier. Website: www.ligonier.org/tabletalk.  © Tabletalk magazine. Used with permission

Ryan Reeves

The Reformation was a struggle over the essentials of the faith. First with Luther, and then with other Protestant traditions, the Reformers set biblical faith over against that of Roman Catholic teachings and the papal magisterium. Pointing to the Bible as the exclusive source of doctrine, Protestants nevertheless had to articulate their understanding of biblical teaching. In this sense, the Reformation confessions were a natural flowering of the Protestant commitment to the Bible.

Protestants did not invent the need for confessions. Over the centuries, the church has always confessed the faith in the midst of confusion or crisis. The role of a creed or confession was never to replace Scripture, but rather to sum up the church’s witness to the truth in Scripture over against error.

The most famous examples of this impulse are the historic creeds—such as the Nicene and Chalcedonian creeds—written between the third and fifth centuries. These creeds sprang from the same need as later Protestant confessions—namely, the need to clarify what the church holds essential on doctrinal matters.

What is different about Protestant confessions, though, is the desire on the part of the Reformers for root-and-branch reform. The issues of the Reformation were not simply controversies over one doctrine—or one set of doctrines—but rested on the need to reform the church entirely. Some doctrines, such as the Trinity, were retained as biblical, while others, such as justification by faith alone, needed careful articulation. For the sake of the churches in their traditions, Protestant leaders strove to write down in everyday language the thinking behind the acceptance of doctrines such as justification by faith alone or the rejection of the papal magisterium.

So in this sense, Protestant confessions are the same as early creeds, except their depth of focus is more detailed. Like a creed, they do not replace Scripture, nor are they even set on par with Scripture. Instead, they are the articulation of what Protestants find in Scripture.

LUTHERAN CONFESSIONS

The first example of this trend in Protestantism is found during Luther’s early

Reformation. Having struggled for justification by faith alone from 1517 to

1519, and having been declared an outlaw and heretic at the Diet of Worms (1521), Luther worked immediately to write down the basics of his message in a set of confessional documents. Two were for the church and one was for the public defense of Luther’s message.

In the first two cases, Luther wrote the Large and Small Catechisms in 1529, the first for training adult disciples and clergy and the second for children or new converts. He also wrote an Exhortation to Confession that same year to justify the need for confession. Though the church rests on Scripture alone, Luther argued, the need for corporate confession is essential. These early catechisms also signal one of the defining characteristics of confessions: they are tools for discipleship, essential to the life of the church.      The third confession was the famous Augsburg Confession (1530), drawn up by Luther and Philip Melanchthon, not in a spirit of corporate confession for the church, but in order for it to be laid before Emperor Charles V and the princes of Europe. It was an apologetic of the Lutheran message, combative at times in its tone, or at least in its implications. It clarifies what Lutherans actually believed over against the charges leveled against them by German Catholics.

     The Lutheran catechisms and confessions, then, form a microcosm of the ways confessions were used in the Reformation era: one for church life, the other for public disputation against spurious claims about Protestant orthodoxy; one for every believer in the church, the other for its leaders to clarify what they hold to be orthodox teaching.                      (to be continued)

Dr. Ryan Reeves is assistant professor of historical theology and assistant dean of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Jacksonville, Fla.

First published in Tabletalk Magazine, an outreach of Ligonier. Website: www.ligonier.org/tabletalk.  © Tabletalk magazine. Used with permission

Stephen Nichols  

A single event on a single day changed the world. It was October 31, 1517. Brother Martin, a monk and a scholar, had struggled for years with his church, the church in Rome. He had been greatly disturbed by an unprecedented indulgence sale. The story has all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster. Let’s meet the cast.

First, there is the young bishop—too young by church laws—Albert of Mainz. Not only was he bishop over two bishoprics, he desired an additional archbishopric over Mainz. This too was against church laws. So Albert appealed to the Pope in Rome, Leo X. From the De Medici family, Leo X greedily allowed his tastes to exceed his financial resources. Enter the artists and sculptors, Raphael and Michelangelo.

When Albert of Mainz appealed for a papal dispensation, Leo X was ready to deal. Albert, with the papal blessing, would sell indulgences for past, present, and future sins. All of this sickened the monk, Martin Luther. Can we buy our way into heaven? Luther had to speak out.

But why October 31? November 1 held a special place in the church calendar as All Saints’ Day. On November 1, 1517, a massive exhibit of newly acquired relics would be on display at Wittenberg, Luther’s home city. Pilgrims would come from all over, genuflect before the relics, and take hundreds, if not thousands, of years off time in purgatory. Luther’s soul grew even more vexed. None of this seemed right.

Martin Luther, a scholar, took quill in hand, dipped it in his inkwell and penned his 95 Theses on October 31, 1517. These were intended to spark a debate, to stir some soul-searching among his fellow brothers in the church. The 95 Theses sparked far more than a debate. The 95 Theses also revealed the church was far beyond rehabilitation. It needed a reformation. The church, and the world, would never be the same.

One of Luther’s 95 Theses simply declares, “The Church’s true treasure is the gospel of Jesus Christ.” That alone is the meaning of Reformation Day. The church had lost sight of the gospel because it had long ago papered over the pages of God’s Word with layer upon layer of tradition. Tradition always brings about systems of works, of earning your way back to God. It was true of the Pharisees, and it was true of medieval Roman Catholicism. Didn’t Christ Himself say, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light?” Reformation Day celebrates the joyful beauty of the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ.

What is Reformation Day? It is the day the light of the gospel broke forth out of darkness. It was the day that began the Protestant Reformation. It was a day that led to Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and may other Reformers helping the church find its way back to God’s Word as the only authority for faith and life and leading the church back to the glorious doctrines of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. It kindled the fires of missionary endeavours, it led to hymn writing and congregational singing, and it led to the centrality of the sermon and preaching for the people of God. It is the celebration of a theological, ecclesiastical, and cultural transformation.

So we celebrate Reformation Day. This day reminds us to be thankful for our past and to the Monk turned Reformer. What’s more, this day reminds us of our duty, our obligation, to keep the light of the gospel at the centre of all we do.

Dr. Stephen J. Nichols is president of Reformation Bible College, chief academic officer for Ligonier Ministries, and a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow.

Taken from Ligonier Ministries website 25 October 2019 www.ligonier.org. All rights reserved. Used with permission

Burk Parsons

My theological journey to Reformed theology was not an easy one. For more than two years I fought against the doctrines of grace with all of the free will I could muster, until I came to my knees and admitted that God is God—that God is sovereign and I am not. Coming to grips with the sovereignty of God not only changed my understanding of salvation; it changed my understanding of everything. For two more years, armed with all my dispensational presuppositions, I continued to fight against confessional Reformed theology. I carefully examined Scripture, and with great scrutiny I studied our theological forefathers on every side of the debate about covenant theology. But it wasn’t until I came to grasp the newness and the nature of the new covenant and the relationship between the old and new covenants that I came to see God not only as sovereign over the salvation of His people, but also as covenantal in the way He relates to, sanctifies, and saves His people. In the end, I came to see that “Reformed theology,” as R.C. Sproul has said, is just a nickname for “covenant theology.”

The church has always confessed the newness of the new covenant, but Christian thinkers have differed on the nature of its newness. According to confessional Reformed theology, the new covenant is new in that the longawaited seed of the woman promised by God at the inauguration of the covenant of grace (Gen. 3:15) has come and has fulfilled the old covenant of Moses, thus making it obsolete (Heb. 8:13). Whereas the first Adam failed to keep the covenant of works (Gen. 3:1–6), the second and last Adam, Jesus Christ, kept it perfectly (1 Cor. 15:45). Under the old covenant, the people of God saw only shadows, but now we see the One who cast the shadow: Jesus Christ, who is the end—the goal—of the law (Rom. 10:4). Under the old covenant, God’s people desperately awaited the coming One; now we delightfully celebrate the risen, ascended, and interceding One who perfectly fulfilled all the righteous demands of the law and is coming again. At His first coming Jesus Christ inaugurated the new covenant, and at His second coming He will consummate the new covenant. Only then will we enjoy the fullness of the new covenant and its privileges promised by God through His prophet Jeremiah (31:31–34). The new covenant is new in that the long-awaited Messiah has come and has fulfilled the old, and the new covenant is superior in its scale, simplicity, and scope. Rather than narrowing the scope of the new covenant, covenant theology consistently portrays the broad and beautiful vista of the new covenant, leading us as God’s covenant people to worship our covenant-keeping God, coram Deo, before His face, both now and forever in Christ our covenant head.

Burk Parsons is editor of Tabletalk magazine and serves as copastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in

Sanford, Fla.                                                                    Taken from Tabletalk Magazine 01 May 2014   © Tabletalk magazine. Used with permission.