Do We Really Need Another One?

The Presbyterian Church has ten confessions which are essentially commentaries on the Bible.  I have been reading an article in Theology Matters by Richard Burnett who states, “Confessions arise as a result of a crisis in the church that requires a decision to be made.”  One of our Confessions is The Second Helvetic Confession.  Did you ever wonder what happened to the first?  I learned that there never was a confession called “First”, but the first confession in the 1500’s was The Heidelberg Confession.  This confession was considered by Lutherans to be too reformed in spirit and demanded that the writer be convicted of heresy.  Heinrich Bullinger wrote The Second Helvetic Confession in 1561 as a defense of the Heidelberg and it exonerated the author.

Of course, confessions go back the creation of the Apostle’s and Nicene Creeds.  These were written by the early church fathers in 2nd and 4th centuries respectively, to combat heretical views that were arising the early church.  Burnett goes on to say that the Creed came about because the history of dogma suggests that every line of these Creeds have been contested at one time or another.   

Writers of The Confessions confessed not because they wanted to say more than what the Bible says, but because they did not want to say less.  Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon wrote only seven confessions for the Lutheran Church while other reformers like Ulrich Zwingli, Jean Calvin and others wrote nearly one hundred in the first one hundred years of the reformation.  These reformers believed that the work of Biblical interpretation was not finished and they, I believe, gave us permission to continue writing to address issues of our day.

This year is the 500th anniversary of Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church.  He did not do this to protest against the Catholic church, but the Latin word, protesari, means to publicly declare, testify, profess, or confess.  He was trying to save his beloved church from deviating from the true meaning of Scripture.  

Many believe the PCUSA is deviating from Biblical principles therefore our Session compiled the statistics and articles in the booklet, Being a Biblical Church to address what we see as inconsistencies and inaccuracies. It’s a document written by humans and therefore fallible and open to correction but in the spirit of the reformers, we desperately want Hebron to be aligned with Scripture rather than the prevailing views of culture.

Burnett concludes his article, “Why can’t we just keep everything simple?  Why can’t we just have the Bible?  You can.  So long as you don’t ask too many questions about the Bible.  So long as you are not really interested in talking with people who do.  So long as you think your church has never gone wrong and you believe everything that comes out of the mouths of preachers or other leaders….you can.  Yet, tell me, where do you think we would be today, where would the church be today, if Martin Luther and his friends had not confessed their faith 500 years ago?”

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12