Connecting all of the dots

(This is my final post dealing with Dr. R. Scott Clark's On Churchless Evangelicals )

So let’s put these pieces together.

First we are told that if you do not practice infant baptism, you are not in a valid church.

This rejection of the status of Christian children as such introduced (and continues to perpetuate) a principle of radical discontinuity between Abraham and the Christian, i.e. a radical principle of discontinuity in the history of redemption and in the covenant of grace. This principle of radical discontinuity, this denial of the fundamental unity of the covenant of grace as symbolized in the administration of the sign and seal of the covenant of grace to covenant children, is serious enough to warrant saying that any congregation that will not practice infant initiation (baptism) into the administration of the covenant of grace is not a church. The Protestants criticized the Anabaptists on these very grounds. Denial of infant initiation is a denial of the catholicity of the church stretching back to Abraham and it is too much like the Gnostic denial of the unity of the covenant of grace in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

As such, wouldn’t your “membership” in a non-infant baptizing church be an invalid church membership (assuming for a second that “membership” per se is valid at all)? How can you have a valid church membership in an invalid church? That would be no different than being a member of the mormon church in good standing. It is a valid church membership, just not in a valid church.

Then we are told that if you are not in membership in a church congregation, you are not part of the visible body and therefore not part of the church invisible.

By analogy, the church invisible is composed of those who are, have been, or shall be, members of a visible church. if you’ve never sworn membership vows and confessed a common faith with a congregation, you are not a member of the visible church and if you’re not a member of the church visible, by definition, you are not a member of the church invisible. The former is a prerequisite for the latter.

If you are not part of the invisible church, well then you might be in trouble. Let’s look at Dr. Clark’s definition of the invisible church:

“When we speak of the church invisible, we’re speaking of that great congregation of the elect considered across time and space. It’s a way of speaking of the holy catholic church, that church in all times and places... It transcends congregations and denominations but is composed of elect who are members of congregations. It includes people from every tongue, tribe, and nation.”

I happen to agree in substance with that definition. The invisible church is comprised of all of the elect in all time, and all of the elect by nature will be regenerate and come to faith in Christ as part of the body of Christ. No one who is a Christian is not also elect, and no one who is elect fails to be a Christian. So let’s stop and very carefully put these two pieces together. If you aren’t in the visible church (defined by sworn membership vows in a congregation), you are not in the invisible church and you cannot be in the valid, visible church with a valid “sworn membership” in a church that doesn’t baptize infants. So it is logical to assume that since Dr. Clark considers non-paedobaptist churches to be invalid churches, we can assume that membership in those invalid churches is invalid as well. Therefore if you don't baptize infants you are not part of a legitimate visible church, and not part of the invisible church and therefore not part of the Body of Christ.

So is Dr. Clark stating in a roundabout fashion that if you are not a member in a paedobaptist church, you are not a Christian? That seems to be the argument taken to its logical extreme. All Christians are part of the elect. All of the elect are part of the invisible church. Only members of the visible church are also members of the invisible….

I really can’t believe that is what Dr. Clark is suggesting. I would assume that he considers people like Ken Jones, one of the hosts of the White Horse Inn and a Baptist, people like Al Mohler, people like John Piper to all be Christians. But when you lay out an argument you need to think through the implications, especially when you are teaching in a Christian seminary, and the implications here are troubling when you connect the dots. If you aren’t in an infant baptizing church, you are not in a real church and if you aren’t a member of a real church, you aren’t counted by Dr. Clark among the elect throughout the ages.

Fortunately I rely on the Word of God in matters like these. What matters is having your name in the Book of Life (Revelation 20: 12-15; Revelation 21:27; Philippians 4:3), and not whether you have your name on the membership rolls of a Presbyterian church.

The sum of his argument is taking church traditions of the Reformed flavor and trying to cram Scripture into those traditions. Not all church traditions are terrible things and many of them are not found in Scripture explicitly or even implicitly. But to imply that this particular brand of church tradition is the only possible expression of the church and that this claim is supported by Scripture, when often it is not, is arrogant and damaging to the Body of Christ. To paraphrase Dr. Clark, he can have his church traditions as he desires, and I don’t want them, but he shouldn’t declare himself free to state that only those who subscribe to his traditions are legitimately Reformed or even taken to an extreme that only those who follow his church traditions are even in the Body of Christ.

I have issues with much of evangelicalism, but to assume that the problems we see are limited to those “evangelicals” that Dr. Clark scoffs at and that by being more “Reformed” in church practice those problems are mitigated is both foolish and has in practice not been borne out. The problems that have decimated “real” churches like the Christian Reformed Church and the various Presbyterian groups like the PC-USA had less to do with not affirming the Belgic or Westminster Confessions strongly enough, but instead stems from the church becoming more and more institutionalized, more of an organization and less of a church. In fact, I would and have argued in the past that the reason that the PC-USA and the CRC have gone down the path of liberalism irreversibly and the Southern Baptist Convention recovered is precisely because the PC-USA and the CRC are highly organized, hierarchical organizations. While the Southern Baptist have a myriad of problems and are primarily “evangelical” instead of “confessional” Christians, at least they are not ordaining women and homosexuals and the Bible is still sort of preached in most of their churches.

So let’s see who this sounds like: Highly liturgical. Focus is on the institution. Stringently authoritarian and hierarchical. Formal membership in the visible church a requisite for being an in the invisible church. Infant baptism a prerequisite for being a “real” church. Appeals to traditional confessions.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Roman Catholicism!

Funny that the guy who claims to be the true blue Reformed guy (and arbiter of who is allowed in the Reformed club) espouses a series of beliefs that sound a lot more like institutionalized Roman Catholicism than like New Testament ecclesiology. Kind of makes you wonder what they Reformed themselves from? In essence we have Roman ecclesiology coupled with New Testament soteriology (maybe not really, but since we are making grand, sweeping generalizations I wanted to get in on the action).

Now I don’t really think that what Dr. Clark is espousing is tantamount to Roman Catholicism. I don’t think we would see Dr. Clark declaring himself to be Cardinal Clark and wearing a mitre. But the slavish adherence to confessions and institutional Christianity, and rigid self-imposed definitions on who is or is not Reformed, from a group that has failed to reform it’s ecclesiology, hardly makes one the champion of being Reformed or reformational. If you buy into the narrow definition of Dr. Clark’s hyperconfessionalism, I guess I don’t qualify as “Reformed” nor would I want to. But since being Reformed is defined by more than Dr. Clark’s checklist, I will gladly claim and retain the title of “Reformed”, a “Reformed” theology that is Biblical and not traditional, a theology grounded in Scripture and not in empty formalism.

Members only?

Moving forward with Dr. Clark’s case…

Where the argument from Dr. Clark strays into really dangerous territory is the application of his beliefs on the requirement and validity of church membership in the right sort of church.

Basically this comes down to submission, not to Christ, but to those who have gone thought some sort of ordaining process which varies from church to church (although no doubt Dr. Clark would assure you that his denomination is the one that does it right and all others are in error) who administer and oversee the membership process. According to Dr. Clark, that apparently only occurs in rightly structured institutional churches. Never mind that the modern ordination process does not appear anywhere in the Bible. We are given qualities to seek in men who are called to be elders, but we see nothing about seminary education, ordination interviews, etc.

What are the marks of a legitimate church? Correct teaching and preaching the Word of God. Observing the sacraments properly. Fellowship among the saints. Prayer. Praising God through hymn signing perhaps? Church discipline.

Do any of these require an institutionalized organization? Does any of this require a seminary degree? Does any of this require that the individual has gone through an ordination ceremony?

Dr. Clark seems to think so…

“If Jesus did institute the Holy Sacraments, however, if he really said, “This is my body…take, eat….do this in remembrance of me” and if he commanded the visible, institutional church to administer baptism to converts and to their children (Acts 2:39), then these are not mere options or second blessings but essential to the life of the Christian and to the life of the Christian Church.”

When it comes to theology, Dr. Clark has in basketball parlance “mad hops” because he makes pretty impressive leaps of logic. Acts 2:39 commands THE INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH to BAPTIZE INFANTS? He just slips in stuff like that, stuff that is completely unwarranted by the text assuming perhaps that people will not check into it.

Before I fly off the handle, what does Acts 2:39 say?

For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." (Act 2:39)

So where do we get from that a) an institutional church or b) infant baptism? The people Peter is preaching to are not an orderly assembled Reformed/Presbyterian congregation. They are the people Peter preached to on the day on Pentecost. Indeed in verse 38, which paedobaptist conveniently leave out normally, we read…

And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Act 2:38)

Repent and be baptized. Not join a local Reformed congregation and baptize your infants and catechize them (although I am in favor of catechizing children). Repent and be baptized. Peter commanded them to do this after they “were cut to the heart” (Acts 2:37) and convicted of their sins, a necessary condition that is impossible for an infant or even a very small child. The promise is not just a present promise, but a promise for future generations as well but it is not guaranteed to infants just because their parents are Christians.

So what we have from Dr. Clark is simple prooftexting, plucking a verse out of its natural context and applying his own theological bent to it. When you start to look before and after verse 39, you see a far different picture than the one that Dr. Clark is portraying to defend his church traditions. But that doesn’t dissuade Dr. Clark in his quest to prove that not only do you have to be a member, on the membership rolls of a church, it must be membership in the right kind of church, i.e. one that baptizes babies.

Likewise the Lord’s Supper. Where is the Scriptural evidence that the Lord’s Supper can only be rightly administered in an institutional church? If Christians gather in my home and we break bread and drink wine in observance of the Supper and in declaration of the Lord’s death until He comes (1 Corinthians 11:26), is that somehow less legitimate if it doesn’t happen in an institutional church, by a guy who has gone through an ordination ceremony, with a table and white tablecloth? All Paul says is that we should observe the Lord’s Supper when we come together as the church, and from that we have created a system where that means in an institutional church, a leap of logic unsupported by the text.

The really disturbing part of this whole argument pops up in this quote….

By analogy, the church invisible is composed of those who are, have been, or shall be, members of a visible church. if you’ve never sworn membership vows and confessed a common faith with a congregation, you are not a member of the visible church and if you’re not a member of the church visible, by definition, you are not a member of the church invisible. The former is a prerequisite for the latter.

Read that again slowly. If you are not a member of a congregation, by necessity you are also not a member of the invisible church. You will see in my final post that Dr. Clark defined the invisible church as: When we speak of the church invisible, we’re speaking of that great congregation of the elect considered across time and space. So in essence, failing to be in a local congregation is tantamount to being outside of the Body of Christ, His elect.

Now I agree that we are commended as believers to not forsake gathering together, to be in fellowship and communion with other believers for teaching, fellowship, prayer and breaking bread. But the assumption that we have to be formal members (a concept absent in Scripture) in an institutional church (also absent) is taking enormous liberties with the text.

The radical implications of this view are the topic for my final post on Dr. R. Scott Clark’s “On Churchless Evangelicals”

Membership matters

I wrestled a little before I started to write this response to Dr. R. Scott Clark. I consider Dr. Clark a brother in Christ despite our disagreements over doctrinal issues. After thinking it through, I decided that his three posts on “churchless evangelicals” demanded an answer. Dr. Clark is one of the loudest and most widely read advocates of what I consider to be an extreme and overly narrow definition of “Reformed” as well as the church. Dr. Clark’s arguments carry some weight in Christian circles and in my humble opinion as one without any letters designating academic achievement after my name, I find much of what Dr. Clark has written to be incorrect and quite frankly slandering the witness of millions of Christians who don’t subscribe to his theories on ecclesiology. I also recognize that in the big picture, I am kind of a small fish and not many people care what I think about what someone with academic credentials and published books and papers has written. But I felt that a response was still warranted. Trying to engage via comments on his blog was not feasible. It is hard to carry on a conversation in a blog comment format, I hate it when people go to blogs and post enormous comments, the comment section is for comments not for comprehensive responses, and quite frankly Dr. Clark has some followers who tend to respond to comments with vitriol that is unhelpful and often they obscure the argument with lengthy diatribes. So here is the next part of my response to Dr. R. Scott Clark and his post “On Churchless Evangelicals”.

In my first post, The fruits of hyper-confessionalism, I dealt with Dr. Clark’s assertion that churches that don’t baptize infants are not valid churches. Now that I have dealt with that assertion, I want to move on to the rest of Dr. Clark’s arguments in “On churchless evangelicals”. The next area to examine has to do with the requirements for and the necessity of church membership that Dr. Clark lays out.

The glaring issue in Dr. Clark’s argument is a matter of definition: Who or what is the church?

Is the church an organization? Is church “membership”, formalized in lists, a Biblical precedent and command? Was it intended that we have a hierarchy in the church, with professionalized clergy, membership lists and all of the accompanying issues that go along with those features? Is that what we see in the New Testament?

The problem boils down to this. Dr. Clark is linking a visible expression of the church with the institutionalized Christianity of 2009, or at least the nascent institutional Christianity of the 16th and 17th century when the Reformed confessions were written. In other words, a highly liturgical and organized church that has requirements for “membership” and follows the Reformed confessions is the purest form of the visible church we see. But is that what we see in the Word? The Bible speaks of the church in several ways, both in terms of a local, visible gathering of believers (and there is a big difference between that and the formalized, institutionalized flavor of church we see today) as well as the more broad, general use of the term which indicates the Bride of Christ, all of the elect in every place, at every time. But to Dr. Clark, these two aspects of the church are for all intents and purposed inseparable and to try to view them separately is foolishness.

“It’s easy to show the foolishness of speaking about the church invisible in the way that so many do, as if it’s possible to be an “invisible” Christian, as if it’s possible to be a part of the church catholic without being part of the church visible and militant.”

Let’s examine some of Dr. Clark’s arguments in favor of the preeminence of the visible expression of the church.

“The evidence is overwhelming that the apostolic and early post-apostolic church was highly organized. For example, there is positive evidence of record keeping (membership lists) in the NT church. The problem in the daily distribution of bread in Acts 6:1 assumes some sort of record keeping of eligible widows. In 1 Timothy 5.9-16 Paul speaks explicitly about a list of names of Christian widows who were eligible for financial assistance from the Church. He even lays out the qualifications to be on the list. If the Church kept such lists for financial aid, can we reasonably assume that these widows were not on a membership roll? Moreover we cannot help but notice that again Paul’s instructions regarding widows presupposes some sort of organized visible body of Christ who administered this aid to its members.”

Talk about an enormous leap. Being aware of local Christian widows in need, perhaps even writing their names down to ensure they are not forgotten, equates to church membership with a formal admission process, new member classes, etc.? Dr. Clark appeals to Scripture to support his claim, so let’s look in turn at the Scripture Dr. Clark cites. First Acts 6:1…

Acts 6:1
Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

OK, so from this we are supposed to see formal church membership? We don’t see anything about lists, about membership, about new member classes, anything at all that indicates membership. Hmm, maybe the next Scripture he quoted will shed more light on the issue…

1 Timothy 5: 9-16
9 Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, 10 and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work. 11 But refuse to enroll younger widows, for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry 12 and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. 13 Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not. 14 So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. 15 For some have already strayed after Satan. 16 If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are truly widows.

Is it just me or do we still not see membership lists anywhere but in Dr. Clark’s parenthetical comment? What of those who are not widows? Where is the evidence that those who are not widows are on any lists? Dr. Clark asks the question: “If the Church kept such lists for financial aid, can we reasonably assume that these widows were not on a membership roll?” . Let me turn that around and ask a more realistic question: Just because we see a list of widows, in a unique situation because of their need for support, so that they are not forgotten in the daily distribution can we assume that anyone else is on a list when the Bible makes no mention of it? In fact, we see that we should NOT record younger widows, “enroll” them on the lists (v. 11). So were young widows not members of the church? Of course not. In an age without email and blackberrys or telephones, it makes sense for the church to write down a list of widows who receive daily food distributions to make sure no one got missed and perhaps to ensure that only those who have a legitimate need get fed. But to take that and make the leap that we are required to have a “membership” in a local body is extremist and inaccurate. When Dr. Clark breathlessly asserts that : “The evidence is overwhelming that the apostolic and early post-apostolic church was highly organized.” , I have to raise my hand and ask where the overwhelming evidence is? Is that the overwhelming evidence, lists of widows older than 60 who are eligible to receive aid=a mandate and requirement for Christians to be on the membership rolls of a local church?

Reading further into his argument…

“When Jesus instituted the keys of the kingdom (Matt 16) he gave them to officers (apostles) to whom he gave spiritual authority to bind and loose. When he instituted church discipline he authorized particular congregations to confront sin, and to take steps to correct it (Matt 18). It is not possible to “tell it to the church” if, in this instance, “church” means “the church considered in its invisible aspect. The background to the word “church” there is the OT term for the visible covenant assembly gathered in formal session.”

That sounds dangerously like mormonism, with authority and keys passed on through apostolic succession. I thought we had done away with a professional priesthood in the church. More…

“To whom were the gospels written? They were written to local congregations in particular places. To whom were the epistles written? They were written to particular congregations in particular places. How does one write an epistle directly to the church of all times and places? They are God’s inspired, infallible, inerrant Word, but that Word was given by the Spirit, through human authors, in a particular time and place. The Word speaks to the church of all times and places but it does so from a a particular time and place. The only way to hear that Word, in its original setting, was to be in a congregation.”

Even that is foolishness. Were the Gospels written to local congregations? Luke is addressed to Theophilus, an individual. I am not Theophilus, so does that mean Luke (and Acts) don't apply to me? Mark and Matthew are not written to any particular audience. John was written, according to John 20: 30-31, that we might believe. Does that make sense if it was written to the believers in a local church? I suppose there are some historical evidences or early church traditions that support that idea that I an unaware of , but looking at what the text says, I can't see that the Gospels were written specifically for a local church body.

It is true that the epistles were written to particular local bodies, often local bodies with particular issues that needed to be addressed like the Judaizer issue in the church in Galatia. Paul didn’t have a blog where he could jot down his teaching and get comments and questions from the church throughout the world. But the teaching, while mailed to a local body and addressing particular problems, has universal implication and application. As far as this question: “How does one write an epistle directly to the church of all times and places?”, well this is how you do that:

1 Corinthians 1: 1-3
1:1 Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, 2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul writes 1 Corinthians to the church in Corinth as the recipient of the letter but also to all Christians everywhere, “together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”. I assume that Dr. Clark is familiar with 1 Corinthians 1, so I can only assume that he either intentionally ignored that intro when he stated dogmatically that it is unthinkable that the epistles were written to the church everywhere for all time or he is so wedded to his church traditions that he cannot see what Paul plainly wrote here.

In my zeal to show where this sort of thinking is wrongheaded, it may be taken to mean that I see no place at all for a visible gathering of the Body. Is there a visible church? Or course there is. Is that where much of the teaching takes place, where the body gathers for prayer, for the breaking of bread and for fellowship? Of course, and praise God for that gathering! Does that fact, taken in light of the Scriptural evidence in places like Acts 2:42, lead one inexorably to assert that only in a highly structured, organized church with membership lists, paid clergy and adherence to a 17th century confession do we see a valid expression of a 1st century church? Hardly. I would argue the opposite, the more formalized, the more institutionalized, the more centralized and hierarchical the church has become now and throughout the ages, the more mischief we see and the less the church looks like the gathering of the Body and more like a civic organization with church trappings. That is where Dr. Clark and many other champions of institutional Christianity stumble, they cannot get past their own church traditions and because of that they assume that their model of the local church is the only valid church expression, and indeed is the properly assembled New Testament form despite any evidence to support it and plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Unfortunately, that bit of misapplication has even greater implications in Dr. Clark’s overall thesis regarding the value of church membership. That is where I want to look next now that I have set the table with Dr. Clark’s “overwhelming evidence” of highly organized church membership.

The fruits of hyper-confessionalism

I have been reading through a particularly painful series of blog posts this morning by Dr. R. Scott Clark at the Heidelblog. His series "On Churchless Evangelicals" is full of unwarranted assumptions and false equivalencies. The sort of equivalence that assumes that any mention of "church", "congregation", "fellowship" must by implication mean the institutionalized church. I am slowly picking apart what he has written because it is a great example of the prevailing thought in some circles that the early church had services that resembled modern, confessional, Reformed, institutional church services. It is taking me some time because there is so much that is wrong to unpack.

But then I ran across this little blurb and had to interrupt what I was doing to point it out...

On the Christological and soteriological issues alone the Reformed were warranted in describing the 16th-century Anabaptists as “sects.” There was, however, another issue which the Reformed mentioned consistently as providing grounds for such a label, i.e. the Anabaptist denial of infant baptism.

However orthodox modern Baptists are on the other issues, they continue to share with the Anabaptists this fundamental conviction that however valid infant circumcision was prior to the incarnation, the New Covenant is such that there is no place for infant baptism as a proper recognition that the children of believers are members of the covenant of grace just as much today as they were in Abraham’s day.

This rejection of the status of Christian children as such introduced (and continues to perpetuate) a principle of radical discontinuity between Abraham and the Christian, i.e. a radical principle of discontinuity in the history of redemption and in the covenant of grace. This principle of radical discontinuity, this denial of the fundamental unity of the covenant of grace as symbolized in the administration of the sign and seal of the covenant of grace to covenant children, is serious enough to warrant saying that any congregation that will not practice infant initiation (baptism) into the administration of the covenant of grace is not a church. The Protestants criticized the Anabaptists on these very grounds. Denial of infant initiation is a denial of the catholicity of the church stretching back to Abraham and it is too much like the Gnostic denial of the unity of the covenant of grace in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

Did you catch that? If you won't baptize infants, you are not only not "Reformed" in the eyes of the self-appointed arbiter of all things "Reformed", you are not even a real church. I knew that Dr. Clark would be unable to avoid taking potshots about baptism. So now not only are you unworthy in Dr. Clark's eyes to carry the label "Reformed" if you don't baptize infants, now if you are in a church and it doesn't baptize infants, it isn't even really a church at all. That takes his flawed premise to it's logical conclusion. I made the opposite argument some time ago in this post Maybe Landmarkism has some of it right? and I stand by that today. The Scripture is plain in both example and command that baptism is reserved for professing believers. What is old (infant circumcision, the Old Covenant, temple sacrifice) is fading away, replaced by what is new. Infant baptism is a misapplication of an Old Covenant sign in a New Covenant church, and is unwarranted.

That is only one place where Dr. Clark's premise is flawed. There are so many places where I disagree with him, which is why I am working on a separate post to deal with it. I would agree however in part with his assessment here:

What happened to me in 1961 was, for them, nothing than mere magic or sentiment but it was not baptism. Therefore, I and all such persons are, in their view, unbaptized. For most of Christian history to say that someone was unbaptized was to unchurch them. In other words, to call me unbaptized is to say that I am not really a Christian.

On the one hand, I would agree with part of his statement above. Whatever the ceremony he went through in 1961, I assume as an infant, it was not baptism which can only rightly by Scriptural command and example follow profession of faith. So in that he is "unbaptized". I would say that at worst he is a Christian who, in this very vital area, is being disobedient to the plain commands of Scripture. He needs to repent and submit to baptism. But does that mean he isn't a Christian? Does any rational Baptist suggest that he is not a Christian? I have doubts about the validity of a church that holds to infant baptism, but I have never suggested that those baptized as infants are not Christians. He is being a bit hysterical here and indulging in more than a little hyperbole. I don't equate church membership with being a Christian, so I can recognize Dr. Clark as a brother in Christ even if he is a member of a church that engages in a unBiblical practice.

This is what happens when you become hyper-confessional (not sure if that is a word, or if I just made it up but it fits). The confession becomes the end in and of itself, practically speaking. I love the great confessions, the Westminster and the London Baptist Confession. They are great tools and can help lead to greater understanding of the Word, but they are just tools. I have the confessions on my shelf, and I have expositions of the confessions. All great stuff. But you can know the confessions forward and backward and not know Christ. It is in His Word, and His Word alone, that He is found. The Word is more than a series of footnotes in the Reformed confessions, it is the lifeblood of the church.

(I am working through the rest of his three post series, but that comment required an immediate response.)