St. Boniface House

  Introduction: Why a Book of Confessions?

We are a confessional church. All this means is that we acknowledge the value and necessity of making systematic statements about what the Scripture teaches and what we believe. It is, of course, impossible not to have a confession. Those who claim “No book but the Bible, no creed but Christ” have painted themselves into an impossible corner. When asked what they believe the Bible teaches, or who Christ is, they must either speak only the words of Scripture uninterpreted (begging the question) or proclaim their creed. So everyone who would seek to explain their Christian faith necessarily has a creed or a confession. The problem is that those who eschew confessionalism end up with a confession held to by one church, or even one individual! The alternative is to confess the great creedal statements created and compiled by the church down through the ages—to acknowledge that our understanding of the Bible and the Christian faith did not happen in a vacuum but rather that we stand in a tradition. Therefore we commend this Book of Confessions to the saints of Trinity Covenant Church as the very best of those attempts by the church to clearly explain some of what the Bible teaches and what the church believes.

We are a catholic church. We believe the core doctrines that the church has always believed. Therefore we affirm and uphold the great creedal statements of the early church—the Apostle’s Creed, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, and the Symbol of the Council of Chalcedon, as well as the somewhat later Athanasian Creed, all of which arose out of the early church’s struggles to understand the central and crucial doctrines of the Trinity and the deity and humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We are a reformed church. This means, first and foremost, that although we affirm a certain understanding of the Scripture, together with a particular practice, we gladly proclaim the great Protestant motto Ecclesia reformata et semper reformanda “The church reformed, and always reforming”. We do not suppose that the church has got it all right yet, and we are prepared to see her doctrine be brought more and more fully into accord with the Scripture. Although we differ with other branches of the church catholic on particular (and very important) doctrines, our biggest complaint is that they have embraced an understanding of the church and doctrine that leaves the church not only irreformable, but also unable to build on what has gone before. This is part of the reason we have adopted a Book of Confessions rather than just the Westminster Confession of Faith or the Three Forms of Unity. There is a trend among the Reformed churches to go the way of Rome or Byzantium by acting as though these confessional documents were the last word that can be said on what the Scriptures mean or how the church should live. By adopting as our confessional standard all the ancient catholic creeds as well as five of the best documents produced by the Reformed churches we are affirming the reality of theological progress in history, denying that the church has “arrived”, theologically speaking, and insisting that no one statement is sufficient. To affirm confessions that do not agree with one another at every point does not leave us in a contradictory quandary, it frees us from the kind of confessionalism that makes the continued reform of the church impossible. In the great Reformed confessions we have a rich deposit of theological reflection upon which we may continue to build as we study the Scripture together as the body of Christ.

The statements contained in this Book of Confessions have contributed to who we are today, and are to be gratefully received as a help to the faith and practice of the church. For the historical context in which these creeds and confessions arose, please see Philip Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom.

Pastor Sean Brandt

Epiphany Season, 2007