In the Belgic Confession art. 29 we find listed the "marks" of a true church. These are the things one should look for in order to "easily recognize" whether an assembly of professing Christians actually constitutes an authentic church of God. They are: the pure preaching of the gospel, the pure administration of the sacraments, and the exercising of church discipline. That's it. This remarkably short list of qualifications is all that the Belgic Confession of Faith requires of churches to have in order to be properly considered a true church. But as short as this list is, many people today would like it to be shorter. What if, for example, a church has faithful preaching where the gospel is clearly heard, however it is a Baptist church, where the sacraments are not done the same way as in Reformed churches? Is it not a true church? Many people, perhaps yourself included, see this view as narrow-minded, if not outright divisive. How on earth can a church were the gospel is preached not be considered a "true church"?! Why can we not have just one mark, that is pure preaching? But perhaps if one begins to see the intimate relation between each of the marks, one can see how misguided it is to divorce one mark from the others.
Let me be clear, the pure preaching of the gospel (not "the word," in the general sense, which contains both law and gospel, but "gospel" in the specific sense) is the most important mark of a true church. That is why it is always listed first and that is why one is much better off in, say, a Reformed Baptist Church than in a Roman Catholic Church. The preaching of the gospel is the means by which the Holy Spirit creates faith in the hearts of the listeners and without it, no one would be saved. But, in highlighting the importance of gospel preaching, we also see the importance of the sacraments when we remember that they are rightly called "visible words." Reformed theology has always emphasized the fact that the sacraments are not meaningless, empty signs, but rather tangible expressions of gospel itself. Sacraments are the gospel. Read how the Belgic Confession speaks of the sacraments in art. 33:
[God] truly attached these to the word of the Gospel so that He would put forth before our external senses both the very thing itself that He proclaims to us in His word and also even that which He Himself internally works in our hearts, and finally, so that He would confirm in us, more and more, the salvation that He deemed worthy to communicate to us. For the sacraments are signs and visible symbols of internal and invisible things, through which, as through means, God Himself works in us by the power of the Holy Spirit.
In other words, the sacraments are supplements to the preaching of the gospel, adding an external and immanently practical confirmation to what is already heard. This is why Calvin, and the Reformed tradition with him, insisted that the sacraments always be accompanied by the preaching of the word. So, for a church to have robust gospel preaching and yet fail to properly administer the sacraments, it in effect undermines the full-orbed gospel presentation that Christ has ordained.
coming soon... the relationship between preaching and discipline.
4 comments:
Moersch,
Thanks brother, great post. This has been a difficult position for me to take. I guess it's just hard for me to say that our Calvinistic Baptist brothers and sister worship in false churches.
Yet, I must submit myself to the teaching and the language of the Confession. If they are going to deny the sign of baptism to their children, who rightly deserve it, then we should refer to them as false churches. I'm not sure I buy Dr. Godfrey's distinction which he draws from Westminster. This seems to read to much back into the BC.
Anyway, thanks for the great post!
I would not call Baptist churches "false churches." If you go on reading BC 29 de Bres clearly describes those and it seems that Rome and Anabaptists are in his sights. We need a third category to describe our current situation (which is not necessarily contradicting the Confession).
Is Rome not a 'False church?' What kind of third category would you propose?
It seems pretty black and white to me.
Rome is indeed a "false church." If you read the last paragraph in art 29, it's clear that de Bres has Rome in mind. Furthermore, it is easy to tell the difference between Rome and confessional Reformed churches (false and true churches, respectively). The only issue is the undeniable historical development of churches that are more or less pure. As far as I can tell my view differs from Godfrey in that he does not favor the use of a third category but still wants to place all churches in one or the other. I think that if a church has a semblance of having the three marks or at least is clear on some, it does not qualify as either a completely false church nor a true church... call it what you like, but there's no sense in denying their existence.
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