Objections Answered on the Use of Confessions

Sometimes  Apostolic creeds and confessions and Standards such as those developed at Westminster are given a whole barage of  reasons as to why they are not Biblical or warranted.  Here’s a few short refutations against some of those objections,  and a few reasons why  Creeds and Confessions are  warranted by the Word of God:
1 Tim 3:14-15;  2 Tim 1:12

The Mission of the church:

A creed  should be  adhered to out of the God given commandment to guard  the word which has been entrusted to the church.

Deut 26:17  (jesus will be ashamed of us if we don’t confess Him)

Matt 16:15  Jesus asked: “But who do you say that I am?”

Thou shalt confess with thy mouth and  in your heart know that  Jesus is Lord.

The standards or creeds of the church  are Subordinate to the Scriptures, and  not binding on us,  only in so far as,  and no further than, they are  a faithful  summary of the word of God.  They help us  understand and apply the Scriptures they derive from,  but are subordinate to,  and are dependant on the Bible.
1st Objection:

“We have no creed but life, and no law but love.”
2nd Objection:

“Its nothing but a paper pope.” (Wrong!)

The standards are always open to interpretation  of if they agree with the word of God.
3rd Objection:

“Human creeds add to the Word of God.”  (wrong!)

They are simple declarations of  Biblical truths.  And not adding to anything  in the Word of God.  No more than a sermon or commentary would be.
4th Objection:

“When you impose  creeds on a church you restrict the  liberty of the church to believe what they believe.”  (wrong!)

We are not at liberty to believe what we want to believe.   Otherwise we  are at liberty to  take in and believe every new heresy that gets churned out.

If the creeds are a faithful representation of the Word of God,  then they are not  restricting  liberty,  they are protecting that liberty.
Question:

What doctrine does it teach?

Answer:

Calvinism,  Reformed Faith,  covenant Theology.
Calvinism =  Biblical Doctrine.   He didn’t invent the doctrines of Calvinism,  but he unearthed the true Biblical  truths and true theology of the Bible,  which was buried for a 1,000 years,  under the tryranny and apostasy  of  Catholicism.     It was given his name, because of his writings,  but anyone who calls themselves a Calvinist is not declaring they are following John Calvin,  they are declaring they are following the Biblical truths of the Bible,  which was bought to the forefront and  unearthed  for the first time since the early church  by John Calvin.  If you accept Calvinism,  you accept the Word of God.

Question:

What do we  mean by Calvinism or Reformed Faith.

Answer:

Either terms is Christianity in its purest expression.   A Calvinist is someone who is God intoxicated. Calvinism is pure, True Religion,  and Religion in its purest form,  It means utter dependance on God. Its not an icy cold intellectualism.  It affects the mind and the heart and  every aspect of man’s being.

“In proportion as our own religious life flows in a deep and broad stream,  in that proportion will we find spiritual delight  in the Westminster Confession of Fath.”  (J.A. Wylie)

And again:

Was the Confession of Augsburg to come in the room of the Bible to the Protestants? Far from it. Let us not mistake the end for which it was framed, and the place it was intended to occupy. The Confession did not create the faith; it simply confessed it. The doctrines it contained were in the Confession because they were first of all in the Bible. A terrestrial chart has authority and is to be followed only when for ever island and continent marked on it there is a corresponding island and continent on the surface of the globe; a manual of botany has authority only when for every term on its page there is a living flower or tree in the actual landscape; and a map of the heavens is true only for ever star named in it there is an actual star shining in the sky. So of the Augsburg Confession, and all Confessions, they are true, and of authority, and safe guides only when every statement they contain has its corresponding doctrine in the Scriptures. Their authority is not in themselves, but in the Word of God. Therefore they do not fetter the conscience, or tyrranize over it, except when perverted; they but guard its liberty, by shielding the understanding from the usurpation of error, and leaving the conscience free [J.A. Wylie]

And as Benajamin B. Warfield, very ably put it:

The Calvinist is the man who has seen God, and who, having seen God in His glory, is filled on the one hand with a sense of his own unworthiness to stand in God’s sight as a creature, and much more as a sinner, and on the other hand, with adoring wonder that nevertheless this God is a God who receives sinners. He who believes in God without reserve and is determined that God shall be God to him in all his thinking, feeling and willing – in the entire compass of his life activities, intellectual, moral and spiritual – throughout all his individual social and religious relations, is, by force of that strictest of all logic which presides over the outworking of principles into thought and life, by the very necessity of the case, a Calvinist.The Calvinist is the man who sees God behind all phenomena,and in all that occurs recognizes the hand of God, working out His will; who makes the attitude of the soul to God in prayer the permanent attitude in all its life activities; and who casts himself on the grace of God alone, excluding every trace of dependence on self from the whole work of his salvation.

Do you see God?