125. Baptists Maybe (BCO 55)

Hello and welcome to Polly Matters, my name's Dan Radlev, and I'm joined by my friends

and yours, Jared Nelson, and Scott Edberg, and we are glad to be back with you again.

We feel like we just recorded our previous episode, it's so good to be back, we've missed

each other so much.

We're in BCO 55 today, but I did want to check in with the guys and see how everybody's

doing.

Over the last couple, I mean, it's probably been a couple weeks now since the episode

dropped, but I mean, your infatuation with Rick Warren was just so prominent in our previous

BCO episode.

We got over it.

Purpose driven devotionals, and yeah, it's been great.

I think at this point, there's a purpose driven, a whole purpose driven book for every

day of the year.

So as long as you can read, you know, 200 pages every day, you can do a whole book

every time.

We're actually publishing a purpose driven polity, and so we will...

Quality driven life.

Quality driven life.

That'll be our devotional.

That's the title.

There's a spoiler alert.

Oh man.

Oh man.

We are in a very brief, it's not the only chapter in the directory with one section,

but it is the first of a couple with one section, BCO 55-1.

It is proper for the congregation of God's people publicly to confess their faith, using

creeds or confessions that are true to the Word, such as the Apostles Creed, the Nicene

Creed, or the Westminster Standards.

BCO 51, confessing the faith.

As so-and-so would say, thank you for...

No.

But we'll try to do a little bit of an episode on these phrases.

It is proper for the congregation to confess their faith publicly.

Let's just say it.

When we get together, it is good to be reminded of what is true, and we're doing that in

the whole worship service.

But these kinds of confessions, like our listed here, are broad summaries of our faith

and our good encouragement to us as we get together, and can remind us of the true things

when we've been in the midst of a week that has so false in many ways, right, in the

world and are struggling with our own sin still, and so it's a good reminder when we gather

as we recite these things and say them out loud alongside the rest of the church.

And so there's some recommendations here, right, to make use of these things.

Well, well, first, yes, it's one, Jared.

Is it proper to confess the faith?

Have you guys ever been in an RP worship service before?

It's been a while, but yeah.

Yeah.

We haven't been in a Baptist worship service before.

They don't like confessing the faith either.

No.

Yeah, I guess preached at a RP church, and they do not confess the faith.

And from my understanding, our piece would not like recite the Apostles Creed or a man

made confession within their worship service.

So this is a bit different than say some of this covenant or more strict Scottish Presbyterian

people.

What would your justification be to them for confessing the faith?

Is it biblical deduce?

It's hard questions.

It's certainly not unbiblical to do so.

It makes me think of the line of, well, man, I can certainly assure you our paper is

not more flammable than anybody else's.

Well, I think of Hebrews 10, 23, right?

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promises faithful.

That would be a place that I would go to to say we're told to confess our faith.

I think it's appropriate within the worship service to do so.

And so that'd probably be the place that I would go to to say, I think it's proper for

us to do that.

I think they're going to be an argument about what you used to confess your faith, right?

Because there are obvious confessions in scripture, right, that Paul uses probably some

stuff that they were making use of that have been inscripturated.

And so is it that or is it a written document?

Is it constitutional or is it something like a apostles or a nice scene that's outside

of our proper tradition in terms of the PCA?

Those questions, I think, are for debate, certainly.

Confessing the faith is pretty Pauline.

I mean, Paul confesses the faith regularly and has epistles which would have been preached

and embraced by the churches that they were sent to.

I mean, it is just so pervasive throughout the New Testament that the faith that is gathered

is a faith that is confessed and there's unity.

What Paul is dealing with in the various churches that he's writing to is trying to help maintain

the faith within those churches, trying to correct Arunia's doctrine within those churches.

And so he is trying to correct teaching.

And one way you correct teaching is through confession.

How do we commonly believe as a church?

And if we are confessing these things together, we are confessing one faith.

And I think that helps us, it helps orient us to this idea that we are confessing a

faith that is not just bound in our local time, but the documents that we are confessing

or using to help confess within our historic documents.

Some may be only going back 400 years, but others going back the greater part of 2000

years. And so we are joining the church historic in confessing the faith that the apostles

knew personally and intimately.

Yeah, we've used scriptural confessions of faith before.

So the Shema would be a good example of that.

Basically, any time that Paul says this saying is trustworthy and true, I've used those

as confessions of faith within our worship service before.

So first up, I read through this.

I was actually a little surprised.

I didn't say using scripture or some of these other ones, but since it says such as,

and I don't think you can make a case that just confessing the scripture together isn't

true to the word.

So that's a practice that we have is sometimes we'll just confess something from the

scripture, the Shema or one of the trustworthy sayings.

Do you guys do the Shema on Hebrew?

When you do it, do you sing it?

No, that would be good.

I did have a guy one time visit.

This was a previous church.

He visited our church.

She was dating a girl that was a member of our church and he would come.

And after several, you know, visits, he and I wound up having a meal together.

And he said, can I ask you about the the weird thing that y'all do?

Well, he said it like I should know what he was talking about.

I was like, I, we're pretty standard like vanilla Presbyterian.

I mean, like even even an evangelical, you know, church attend or somewhere would

come to our service and not feel out of place.

I don't think, you know, like what are you talking about?

He said, well, you guys do this thing where you all say out loud in unison,

the same paragraph of words every once in a while.

He was talking about the Apostles Creed and I was like, I didn't really

occur to me how strange that would seem to somebody who's never seen something

like that done.

Like it probably, and the way he described it was that it felt cultish for all of

us to be standing up in this room and like 200 voices to just read the same words.

Like, and you know how the Apostles Creed goes, right?

Like it's hard to have inflection when there's that many people reading something

out loud.

And so it just sounds very kind of like rhythmic and methodical and and wrote.

And he said it was the strangest enough.

I've never thought about it before, but it is, it's a little weird.

It's a good practice, but it can come off a little strange to some people.

That's my confession of faith anecdote.

That's all I got.

In my last call, they had a church that they had the like a school that was once

a colloquial school that was spun off, but still had very close ties with the church.

And they started introducing the Apostles Creed in their chapel services.

And those who are not Presbyterian, I'm just about lost it.

And they thought that the school is going Catholic or some other tradition.

And they're like, we don't know, you know, Creed, but Christ kind of stuff.

And so yeah, there's pushback even within the Christian community on confessing the faith

and what that means.

Yeah, do you guys, what do you typically use for your confession of faith?

The Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, do you have other things you guys use?

It's got a spreadsheet for this.

A very large spreadsheet.

I have 1500 confessions of faith in my spreadsheet.

And that includes all of the common ecumenical councils plus the Apostles Creed.

It has the Westminster standards.

And then this are the other three forms of unity found in the Heidelberg,

Canon's Adort, and so forth.

And so it's pretty expansive.

My bread and butter is mostly the confessional standards with the Apostles Creed.

Yeah, it's excellent.

We presently were using the Apostles Creed regularly.

And systematically working through the confession of faith,

the Westminster confession in our evening worship service.

Just a paragraph or two every week.

Set it up a little bit for folks.

Remind them where we're at and read all out loud together.

Yeah, we use the Trinity Salter hymnal

and in there it has printed Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, as well as the Athenation.

We have not tried the Athenation Creed yet.

Apparently the Lutheran Lord.

There's like this, we're not church calendar people,

but there's apparently a Trinity Sunday where once a year they have to do the entire

Athenation Creed.

But yeah, we alternate between the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed for the Lord's Supper.

I do have a preference for the Nicene Creed in that it's more truly ecumenical.

But I sometimes are remind people, you know, when we're confessing this,

maybe a billion Christians have said something like this in the past month,

you know, as a confession of faith.

This is the truly ecumenical confession of our faith.

That bridges, you know, if you go into a Lutheran church,

they're going to know the Nicene Creed, the Anglican Church.

You're going to know the Nicene Creed, a Baptist maybe.

Some of them will know the Nicene Creed, and I think that's important.

You guys ever use the calcidonian definition?

No, those are some very long.

They're hard.

Yeah.

We don't like dictionaries in our church.

There are no definitions allowed.

I did ask our session permission once because we've done the Westminster standards,

and you know, this says Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed, but does say such as.

And so, one Sunday, I really just wanted to use the Heidelberg question number one,

and they were all fine with it.

But yeah, I don't think it necessarily limits you to just those that are listed there,

but there's a few other ones that could be good creeds for the church to use.

Yeah, often when, for like, Reformation Sunday, I try to like ground every element

in Reformation themes and ideas, and so we use the French confession, you know,

Calvin's confession and Catechism's, and we'll pretty much sing just songs from that era.

And so, yeah, once a year, so we draw you in the little further net out to, you know,

just keep the people acclimated.

And I mean, there's some really good stuff in Calvin's confession that I think my session

thought, why are we doing this?

And then they read it, and they're like, this is actually pretty fruitful.

And because some of the clarifications that Calvin gives on the Lord's

supper in that confession are very helpful for the people even today.

Very high view of the real presence.

A Patrick Curls last time that we talked to him,

said there was a difference between catechizing the congregation and confessing the faith.

Do we accept or reject that?

I agree with Scott, whenever Scott says,

I don't know if Scott has to say.

Here's a great point on this.

It's really good.

It's very good.

I've used, we're using the Westminster shorter catechism for confession and faith right now,

so we don't make a distinction in that.

And it also, it makes it easier for the leader because usually our ruling older

is prompting that.

And so instead of just saying Christian, what do you believe?

He can actually ask the question and then the congregation responds.

It's a great dialogical format to that element.

Yeah, we use the larger and shorter catechism all the time in our worship.

I think it's fine.

I mean, that is confessing the faith.

You know, those are written for children.

But hey, you know, we are in the 21st century.

And I don't know if most of our adults are familiar with the larger catechism as they ought to be.

That was written for them.

And so yeah, I try to err more on the larger catechism because it's a little beefier

than the shorter catechism, but that's just more personal preference.

Our people could do well to know both a little better.

I'll add one more little anecdote since Ben head one.

I was listening to an interview once with Yaroslav Pelikan.

If you know who that is, he wrote a history of doctrine, which is the greatest.

I think it's five volumes set of history of doctrine.

And he also wrote a book on the creeds and a point that he made.

And he had a somewhat hostile kind of liberal interviewer of him.

And said, you know, why are you confessing this all the time?

And he said, it's great to come into church and say,

I believe or we believe, not I feel.

You know, I'm asked, Christian, what do you believe rather than how do you feel?

Because I can feel a lot of different ways.

That's going to change week to week.

But this grounds me in something that says, this is true, whether I feel it or not.

I think that's such a great reminder of our confession of faith is this is true.

No matter whether I came in here, really feeling it or not,

whether I came in here with sorrows or I came in here with praises,

it is true that Christ has died for my sins, whether or not.

I'm really feeling it right now.

Well, I'm hesitant to even call this a podcast today,

because we've been going for as my count is 15 minutes and 25 seconds.

So I don't think I'm going to end the normal way I would.

I'm just going to say thanks for joining us for this sampling of

polity matters on this one little section.

We've been glad to have you.

You guys know where to find all our stuff.

You know, where to support us.

And keep in touch.

If you have questions or comments, reach out to us.

Never thought about it before, guys.

But we could do like a listener questions episode.

We'd get people to send us, you know, stuff they want to talk about.

And we could just record answering questions.

Could be fun.

Maybe not.

Take good bye, gentlemen.

Howdy, yes.

You all take care.