Note: I have a book in process which consists of my notes on the Westminster Confession. What follows, Lord willing, will be part of the introduction to that book. The Westminster is basically the systematics course for Greyfriars Hall. In case you were curious.
Some of you have had occasion to look at the Constitution for the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. In the Preamble to that document, there is a section that is perhaps a little bit unusual . . .
“With patterns of church order and confessional standards, one of the fundamental requirements of Scripture is honesty (Ex. 20:16). Consequently, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we charge you, the generations who will follow us in this confederation, to submit to the Scriptures with sincere and honest hearts, and to the standards of this confederation as consistent with the teaching of Scripture. When a portion of our order and confession is found to be out of conformity to Scripture, we charge you to amend it honestly, openly, and constitutionally, as men who must give an account to the God who searches the hearts of men. We charge you in the name of the Lord to abhor all forms of ignoring our intentions in what we have set down through dissembling, reinterpretation, dishonesty, relativism, pretended explanations, presumed spiritual maturity, assumed scholarly sophistication, or outright lying, so that the living God will not strike you and your children with a curse. We charge you to serve Him in all diligence and honesty, so that the blessings of the covenant may extend to your children for a thousand generations” (CREC Constitution, Preamble).
Now was that quite necessary? Actually yes, and here are some of the reasons. As Isaiah was a man of unclean lips, and dwelt among a people of unclean lips, so also for more than a century, Americans have been a people of dishonest subscription, and we dwell among a people of dishonest subscription. We evidence this in many ways, our treatment of the U.S. Consitution being a prime example. But the Church always leads the way, whether for good or ill. Christians were messing around with the Bible and with their respective confessions and statements of faith well in advance of the major distortions of jurisprudence.
Here’s how it works. We have confounded a high view of a document in theory and a high view of it in practice. We have confounded praise and obedience. David Bayly makes a wonderful point related to all this here. What good is an affirmation of the inerrancy of Scripture if we can always slip off the point of obedience by claiming that we are operating with a “fill-in-the-blank” hermeneutic?
Suppose Mom tells Billy that he is under no circumstances to play with matches, but one day while she is out, he accidentally burns down the garage. While he is explaining himself, it will do no good for him to say that he heard her say “don’t play with matches,” but that he has been experimenting lately with a post-structural hermeneutic. This won’t fly, even if the garage was indisputably a structure at one time.
An authoritative document requires all those under its authority to have, by definition, the same basic hermeneutic in their approach to that document. Otherwise, the authoritative document in question is just the Queen Mum on her 92nd birthday, waving from the balcony. Without a shared hermeneutic, authority is meaningless. And since authority is the whole point, a shared hermeneutic is necessary.
I will go further. If you want to find out who really runs the joint, find out who you are not allowed to apply a creative hermeneutic to. Nobody gets to read Supreme Court decisions the way they read the Constitution. If, for example, our august justices decide that the right to keep and bear arms means that we don’t really have the right to keep and bear arms, after a quick experiment you will readily ascertain that you don’t get to read their decision taking away your right to keep and bear arms as meaning, actually, that you do get to keep and bear arms. And since you have come crashing up to the place where a simple grammatical/historical hermeneutic is required, no funny business, you have identified your rulers.
This same truth about the necessity of a shared hermeneutic applies to subordinate authorities, and not just to Scripture. Subscription to a confession is like getting married. First, you take your vows, and then you keep them. I don’t just have a responsibility to “subscribe,” I have a responsibility to obey after I have subscribed. First you promise, and then you keep the promise. Many evangelical inerrantists think that all we have to do is make the promise. Many pastors in confessional traditions think the only hurdle they have to clear is the presbytery exam at the start.
Above I used the phrase, “the same basic hermeneutic,” which recognizes that the use of human language at all opens the door to reasonable differences of interpretation. Let everyone be convinced in his own mind. But that elasticity, while always present to some degree, is not the fundamental principle. Different interpretations of authoritative documents are to be expected, and we should work charitably with our brothers and sisters to work through and resolve them. But cockamamie interpretations are also to be expected, and when that happens, somebody should say out loud that this is what has in fact happened.
In his post, David Bayly points to the fact that Evangelical Theological Society has two simple requirements — a belief in the Trinity and a commitment to inerrancy. If the world were an honest place, this would be enough. But lest that inerrancy thing pinch all of us sinners too tightly, we can wiggle ourselves free by means of a “law/gospel hermeneutic,” “a feminist hermenuetic,” “a postmodern hermeneutic,” “a post-garage hermeneutic,” and so down the chute we all go.
Words are not infinitely elastic. The fact that there is always some room for honest discussion does not mean that there is all the room in the world. The closet is three by six, true enough, but the grand piano still can’t go in there. Unless, of course, you have a post-structural hermeneutic, and come from a tradition where “closet” can refer to a pocket, and “piano” can mean harmonica.
I have argued before that liberals are sometimes more to be trusted with what Scripture actually says than are evangelicals. Because of the inerrancy thing, evangelicals are stuck with the results of their exegesis. Liberals can say Paul required women to refrain from teaching men, and that the husband is the head of the wife, ho, ho, ho, but the evangelical has to put on a magic hat that turns kephale into something more acceptable to the Academy, something like “trusted advisor.” Frankly, it would be better if we evangelicals quit putting on the magic respectability hat and started putting on our big boy pants.
The same kind of thing can happen with subordinate standards, where Wesleyans might do a better job telling us what Westminster teaches than do the folks who don’t want to be stuck with trying explain how they have to agree with what they don’t agree with. It doesn’t matter what party or faction is being pinched by the words on the page — this is a human frailty, and not a failing of “those” other people over there. “Exhibit and confer” does not mean that nothing is conferred. “Effectual call” does not mean ineffectual call. “Keep and bear arms” means I can have a gun, and not that I can’t.
So this is why those words are in the preamble to the CREC Constitution. We were talking to our sons and grandsons in a generation that is much given to this particular sin. “As evangelicals, we desire to confess the saving gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in both love and doctrinal integrity” (CREC Constitution, Preamble). Words like this are always in season.