creeds

Guarding the Good Deposit and Ministering Sound Doctrine

/ Matt Emerson / 1 Comment

As a Baptist, I am staunchly in favor of religious liberty for all and the individual freedom of conscience required for that collective liberty. I’m also in favor of congregational rule in local churches. And more generally as a Protestant, I definitely confess sola scriptura. This does not mean, however, that I’m against confessions and creeds or their derivative authority.

I’ve written elsewhere about what it means for confessions and creeds to have derivative authority – that is, authority that is derived from its faithfulness to Scripture, the ultimate authority – and how that relates to the Protestant commitment to sola scriptura. Here I only wish to highlight the fact that Scripture itself suggests that Christ’s ministers are to disciple believers via passing on sound doctrine. In other words, confessing sola scriptura does not negate the (derivative, secondary) authority of tradition, but rather it is in these supremely authoritative scriptures that we find an analogy to tradition’s authority in Jesus and the apostles commanding Christians to disciple believers precisely by carefully passing down a summary of their teachings.

1. Christ Passes on Sound Doctrine

I could go all the way back to the OT and Deuteronomy 34 here, but I’ll stick with the NT for now. Jesus conveys the importance of tradition and its role in discipling his followers in many places; here, I’ll highlight two. First, on the Emmaus Road in Luke 24, Jesus schools his followers on how to read the Old Testament. We are not given the details of this discussion, but instead Jesus gives his apostles a “rule” to follow regarding how to read God’s Word. What we have in the NT is the administration of that rule via the apostolic deposit, i.e. the NT itself. The rule’s application has been inscripturated and thus serves as the rule itself – to be in accordance with Jesus’ rule is to be in accordance with the NT. Nevertheless, Jesus’ instructions here can serve as an analogy to the authority of doctrine. Doctrine is derivatively authoritative insofar as it is faithful to the inscripturation of Jesus’ rule – the Bible.

We also see Jesus commanding his disciples not only to baptize new believers but to teach all of Christ’s followers to obey “everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19). This summary statement includes what the apostles later write under the inspiration of the Spirit in the NT. He was telling them to pass on what he had taught them, which I would venture to say included how to read the OT Christologically, what to believe about Jesus, and how to follow him. Of course, now that Christ’s teaching is inscripturated, Matthew 28 just is referring to the NT. There is no outside equally authoritative tradition. My only point here is that Jesus’ command gives analogous credence to the idea of holding believers accountable to a summary of Christian teaching.

This is a direct command from Jesus to pass on something that is not Scripture itself but rather a faithful summary – Jesus’ faithful summary! – of Scripture. We do not have the Luke 24 conversation recorded. Arguably, we do not have everything that Jesus commanded (John 20). These instructions are passed down via the NT, and our subsequent administration of it must find itself in accordance with this inscripturated application of the rule. In other words, Jesus’ rule, in both Luke 24 and Matthew 28, is administered in his inspired Word. Our job now is to make sure what we pass down is in accordance with this supreme authority, the inspired Word of God in the Prophets and Apostles.

2. Paul Commands Timothy and Titus to Pass On Sound Doctrine

In the Pastoral Epistles, we find numerous instructions by Paul to both Timothy and Titus to pass on what they have learned to others. For example:

…remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine (1 Tim. 1:3).

…the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient…and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted (1 Tim. 1:9-11).

If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed (1 Tim. 4:6).

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching (1 Tim. 4:16).

Teach and urge these things. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing (1 Tim. 6:2-4).

O Timothy, guard the good deposit entrusted to you (1 Tim. 6:20).

Follow the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 1:13).

By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you (2 Tim. 1:14).

…what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also (2 Tim. 2:2).

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Tim 3:14-15).

[An overseer] must hold firmly to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it (Titus 1:9).

But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine (Titus 2:1).

We could add to this references to “the faith” and either guarding it or departing from it, as well as the hymns (e.g. 1 Tim. 3:16) and references to trustworthy sayings. In any case, from the list above it is apparent that Paul had trained Timothy and Titus in sound doctrine and expected them to pass it on to those they were discipling, and so on (2 Tim. 2:2). He seems to be referring to a summary statement about who Jesus is, what he’s done, and how to know him. There also may be some hermeneutical guidelines (e.g. a rule of faith) a la Luke 24 in mind in these passages, especially when Paul references speculation and Jewish genealogies and myths. Of course, what Paul is referring to as “the good deposit,” “the faith,” “sound doctrine,” “the teaching,” etc. is what then became inscripturated in the NT. Once again, there is no inspired authority outside of Scripture. But our point here is that these instructions by Jesus and Paul give us analogies to the ministerial role of tradition subsequent to the writing of the NT.

3. Ministers Pass on Sound Doctrine

These examples demonstrate that both Jesus and Paul (and I’d argue we could include the other apostles) commanded Christians to pass on sound doctrine. There’s no time to expand on this here, but, to clarify briefly, they also are clear that this “deposit” is faithful to the Word God has already given to his people in the OT and to the Word he was giving at the time to the apostles. In other words, this “deposit” was only authoritative insofar as it was faithful to God’s inspired and inerrant Word, both as it already existed in the OT and was being written in what we now call the NT. Of course, that sound doctrine and teaching was subsequently inscripturated in the NT. We do not have any source of inspired authority outside of Scripture. But, by way of analogy, ministers are still called to pass on sound doctrine that is in accordance with Scripture.

Tradition, then, is not at odds with Scripture per se, but is rather the God-ordained means of stewarding the faithful summary of Scripture. Tradition is a steward, or minister, of Scripture’s main point. It is a minister of how to read Scripture. It does not stand over Scripture, but like any good minister is used to pass on what has been entrusted to it. In this sense, it is authoritative, but only secondarily and derivatively. We could say the same thing about pastors and congregations; the authority that God has entrusted them is ministerial, and only effective insofar as they are faithful to the ultimate authority, God’s Word.

Trinity Sunday

/ Matt Emerson / 1 Comment

Today is Trinity Sunday, the day the Church celebrates the triunity of God. It’s also the day that begins Ordinary Time, the time between Pentecost and Advent. In the cycle of the church year, we now await Advent. In terms of the church calendar, we wait for the celebration of the first advent, Christ’s incarnation, but this also reminds us that we are expectantly waiting for the second advent, his arrival on the clouds and return in salvation and judgment.

Below are the three ecumenical creeds, each of which is at pains to assert the triunity of God and the second person of God’s, the Son’s, incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ, who came for us and for our salvation.

Christian, this is what we believe. This is the foundation of our faith. Celebrate today!

The Apostles’ Creed

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic* Church, the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.

* catholic means “universal” and is not a reference to the Roman Catholic Church.

The Nicene Creed

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spake by the Prophets. And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

The Athanasian Creed

Written against the Arians.

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.

And the catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three Eternals, but one Eternal. As there are not three Uncreated nor three Incomprehensibles, but one Uncreated and one Incomprehensible. So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Ghost almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties, but one Almighty. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords, but one Lord. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord, So are we forbidden by the catholic religion to say, There be three Gods, or three Lords.

The Father is made of none: neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son: neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is before or after other; none is greater or less than another; But the whole three Persons are coeternal together, and coequal: so that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshiped. He, therefore, that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.

Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe faithfully the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right faith is, that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man of the substance of His mother, born in the world; Perfect God and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood; Who, although He be God and Man, yet He is not two, but one Christ: One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking the manhood into God; One altogether; not by confusion of Substance, but by unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and Man is one Christ; Who suffered for our salvation; descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead; He ascended into heaven; He sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty; from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give an account of their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil, into everlasting fire.

This is the catholic faith; which except a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.

Baptists Accessing Catholicity

/ Luke Stamps / Leave a comment

As Matt mentioned the other day, the ETS Baptist Studies Group is addressing the notae ecclesiae (marks of the church) at this year’s annual meeting.  Matt and I are presenting the paper on Baptists and the catholicity of the church.  When I linked to this topic the other day on Facebook, a good friend of mine issued a fair warning about how Baptists ought to access the church’s catholicity.  He suggested that Baptists should seek their catholicity via the Reformed tradition in order to avoid repeating the errors that necessitated the Reformation in the first place and in order to avoid theological confusion (especially on the doctrine of salvation) that could complicate our evangelistic efforts.

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As I said, I think this is a fair warning. That’s why I think it’s hugely important that we retrieve the 17th-century Baptist reflections on the catholicity of the church. The General and Particular Baptist confessions of faith that emerged during this period either explicitly affirmed the ecumenical creeds (e.g., the Orthodox Creed) or else included clearly creedal language in their expositions of the Trinity and the person of Christ (e.g., the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith). Seventeenth-century Baptists also tended to have a more robust understanding of the sacraments, a greater willingness to engage Patristic thought, and a greater sense of spiritual connectionalism both within their own associations and in their broader evangelical context.  Baptists trended away from these catholic emphases in the next three centuries (for a host of interesting and disputed reasons), but their 17th-century beginnings were a far cry from the no-creed-but-the-Bible naiveté that would come to characterize the Baptist movement in some quarters.

Still, retrieval is not repristination. There may be some ways in which 21st-century Baptists can foster an even more open-minded and open-hearted approach to the whole church–both historic and contemporary. But clearly any efforts toward ecumenism among evangelical Baptists would need to be tethered to our Reformational commitments.  Rediscovering our 17th-century roots would go a long way in helping us strike this balance.

Steve Harmon and Baptist Catholicity

/ Matt Emerson / 3 Comments

I recently read Steve Harmon’s Toward Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision. I’m beginning some sustained work with my friend and colleague Luke Stamps on Baptist life and its relationship to the larger Christian tradition, and Harmon’s collection of essays is one of the most prominent works on the subject. In this post I hope to affirm much in Harmon’s book, but also offer some pointed questions and critiques from a different perspective (i.e. conservative Southern Baptist evangelical) than his own.

First, the affirmations. I cannot say strongly enough how much I agree with Harmon on the need to position Baptist life within the larger body of Christ. Further, as Harmon argues, this happens not only on a theological level (e.g. the doctrine of the unity of the church) but on a liturgical level as well. In my opinion, Baptist life, and particularly Southern Baptist life, would be greatly helped by a more consciously traditional approach to belief and practice, as it roots our local churches not in the shifting tides of culture but in the historic faith and practice of God’s church. By “traditional” I do not mean “what we’ve always done” but what has been passed on to us by faithful believers throughout the church’s history. For me this means particularly affirming the three ecumenical creeds, as well as fitting worship practices that shape and form God’s people. I want to again affirm Harmon here, as he calls Baptists to more critically and consciously engage with the church’s tradition while still holding firmly to a Baptist understanding of religious liberty and the corollary rejection of using creeds to coerce someone’s conscience.

Part of Harmon’s call to embrace the church’s traditional faith and practice is a related call to reject modernist influences on Baptist thought, and I wholeheartedly agree here as well. Harmon ably demonstrates that statements such as “no creed but the Bible,” along with a rejection of many of the historic practices of the church, are not the result of biblical study but rather primarily an embrace of modernity and its axiomatic beliefs in autonomous reason and in jettisoning the past.

I, too, would like to see (Southern) Baptists more critically and consciously embrace the church’s traditional beliefs and practices, and I especially would like to see this in our understanding of patristic hermeneutics and in our worship. Harmon’s call for these is admirable and needed. Still, I had a number of questions and concerns about both his reasons for embracing traditional faith and practice and his articulation of the relationship between tradition and Scripture.

So, second, a question. Why is a more robust liturgical practice in Baptist worship a good thing? For Harmon, it appeared to me that, while eschewing antiquarian appropriations, he gave no more reason for adopting some liturgical practices than “this is the way that the church has always seen fit to shape its people.” That’s an important reason, but in my view it doesn’t go far enough. I would have liked to see more engagement with Augustine’s view of formation, where it is not only our cognitive faculties but also and sometimes primarily our repetitive bodily habits that transform us. Yes, praying the Lord’s Prayer, celebrating the Supper weekly, and reciting a creed or confession weekly are all good things, and yes, they are part of the church’s historic practice, but I think there is even more to it than that, namely that repeated practices shape the church’s beliefs and habits. To be fair, Jamie Smith’s works on liturgy and formation had not yet appeared at the time of Harmon’s book, so that is why I leave this as a question and not as a critique. Perhaps Harmon will adjust some of his language in his forthcoming work.

And lastly, a few critiques – I do not leave these until the end because I think they are unimportant; quite the opposite, actually. Rather, I want to make sure I affirm Harmon’s general purpose first, because I think this is a needed conversation in Baptist life. Still, as a Southern Baptist, I had more than a few issues with Harmon’s articulation of epistemology and Baptists’ relationship with other branches of the Christian faith. First, in terms of epistemology, there were a number of problems. At the beginning of the book Harmon seems to promote a problematic dichotomy between God’s authority and the authority of Scripture (27-29; I’d point to Vanhoozer here to link the two intricately via speech act theory), and throughout the book I sensed that, for Harmon, the Bible is the traditioned collection of writings for God’s people more than it is the direct revelation from God to his people. This is evidenced especially in his discussion on canon (43-46), where he argues that the canon is primarily a product of the church’s decision in the fourth century; Harmon uses this assertion to argue that even the Bible is a product of tradition, and so Baptists already use tradition in their faith in practice by accepting the canon as normative. There are a number of issues here, not least of which is an outdated view of the development of the NT canon – contemporary scholarship increasingly recognizes that what we know today as the NT was circulating in fairly uniform codices by the end of the second century – but the primary issue is that this view prioritizes tradition in the canonical process rather than the Spirit-led recognition of God’s special revelation in the biblical books.

Also in terms of epistemology, Harmon continually refers to Alisdair MacIntyre and George Lindbeck, as well as to a more general “postmodern” approach, and seems to root the church’s beliefs about the Trinity, Christology, and Scripture in a communitarian practice rather than in revelation. Harmon does want to affirm that the Nicene-Chalcedonian doctrinal affirmations have their “raw material” (44) in the NT, but in my opinion this is not enough. As David Yeago argues in his essay “The New Testament and the Nicene Dogma,” it is not enough to say that the church’s doctrines are derived from Scripture; we must also say that they are found in the text of Scripture. The doctrinal statements of the fourth and fifth centuries use conceptual terms to render accurate judgments about the language patterns of Scripture. In any case, Harmon consistently refers to a communitarian authority without moving behind it to a supra-communitarian norm, namely God’s revelation of himself in Christ as he is seen in the Spirit-inspired Scriptures. Harmon is right that we cannot humanly achieve a modernistic fantasy of supra-cultural objectivity, but this does not mean that one has not been provided for us outside of ourselves – indeed it has, in Christ who is known through the Bible.

A second issue is found in Harmon’s last chapter, and one that I believe he shares with Peter Leithart. It seems to me that both of these men slide over doctrinal differences with Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, particularly in that they do not give attention to texts like Galatians 1 and 1 Timothy 1. In these passages it is doctrinal error that results in church discipline to the point of “casting out,” not just behavior. Harmon calls differences with Rome on justification, Mary, and Petrine primacy “negligible” (198-201), and suggests that a more careful reading of Rome’s statements on them would render them negligible to other Protestants. I am simply not convinced this is the case based on my own understanding of Roman Catholic dogma.

I’ll conclude this by saying again that I am appreciative of Harmon’s willingness to engage this important topic, for his call to recover in Baptist life many of the church’s traditions in both faith and practice, and for his ecumenical spirit. Still, I think from a conservative, evangelical, Southern Baptist perspective, there is more to be said on the subject and much that needs to be said differently.