Confessionalism is an Act of Hospitality

Written by Nick Monsma

Does signing the Covenant for Officebearers sound restrictive, stifling, and authoritarian? Ministers, elders, and deacons promise to “be formed and governed” by the Three Forms of Unity. They promise to “believe,”  “promote,” “defend,” and “conform” to them in “preaching, teaching, writing, serving, and living.” Why would any of us sign a document like this? We do it because, far from being oppressive, absolute confessional subscription is a blessing. It’s a blessing to those who sign it and especially to the congregations they serve by helping us show hospitality like our covenant-making God.

Absolute confessional subscription means that office-bearers must conform their teaching to all the doctrines in our confessions. Other Reformed denominations only ask their office bearers to acknowledge the confessions. Some require them to conform to a “system of doctrine” contained in the confessions, and many allow “scrupling,” where office bearers describe any exceptions they have to the confession to see if taking exceptions will be allowed. However, in the CRC, we have historically practiced absolute confessional subscription. This means that those in leadership must exercise a heightened level of self-discipline, sacrificing their freedom to exercise the power inherent in their leadership roles. Additionally, the church must be willing to hold the leadership accountable to that subscription, disciplining office-bearers who violate their vows. One payoff of this discipline is an environment of hospitality for the ordinary families who sit in our pews, not unlike the hospitality that God shows to us.

“I’d never before been to a church where they told you exactly what they believed. If you had any questions about what the pastor might claim was the Bible’s teaching, you could just look it up in the booklet.” So said a mother explaining one of the reasons her family joined a CRC years ago. Being upfront and clear about what will and will not be taught from the pulpit is an act of hospitality.

It’s the kind of hospitality that God shows to us. At creation, God created limits—limits for the light and darkness, the water and the land. These decreed limits are an essential feature of our creator-creature relationship with God (Job 38:10). In the covenant with Noah, God makes it clear that the decreed limits which make creation hospitable for us are not only limits on what creation may do. They are limits on what he, God himself, will do: “I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth” (Genesis 9:15-16). God’s covenantal self-limiting is an essential feature of the covenant of grace. He places a limit on himself: for those who believe in him, he will not judge them as their sins deserve. “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24).

What does God’s self-limiting do? It gives us assurance as we live in his creation and his presence. This is one of the themes of our Heidelberg Catechism.

Q 28. How does the knowledge of God's creation and providence help us?

A. We can be patient when things go against us, thankful when things go well, and for the future we can have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that nothing will separate us from his love. All creatures are so completely in his hand that without his will they can neither move nor be moved.

Q 52. How does Christ's return "to judge the living and the dead" comfort you?

A. In all my distress and persecution I turn my eyes to the heavens and confidently await as judge the very One who has already stood trial in my place before God and so has removed the whole curse from me. All his enemies and mine he will condemn to everlasting punishment: but me and all his chosen ones he will take along with him into the joy and the glory of heaven.

Q 120. Why did Christ command us to call God "our Father"?

A. At the very beginning of our prayer Christ wants to kindle in us what is basic to our prayer--the childlike awe and trust that God through Christ has become our Father. Our fathers do not refuse us the things of this life; God our Father will even less refuse to give us what we ask in faith.

We can feel at home in a dangerous creation, on judgment day, and in the presence of an almighty God (the situations envisioned in these Q&As) because God has assured us of limits. The things he certainly has the power to do—separate us from his love by the powers of this world, cast us into hell, deny us what we need for this life and the next—he has said he will not do. So, we can be patient, thankful, confident, and childlike. By limiting himself, God shows us hospitality in his creation and presence.

Absolute confessional subscription is one way we can seek to imitate God's self-limiting in order to show hospitality to the ordinary people who sit in our pews. We tell them what we will teach and how we will minister to them. We tell them what we won’t teach and the ways we won’t minister to them. We tell them in detail. And then we discipline ourselves so that we are faithful to that promise. (And, because we are fallible, of course, we make clear the process that will be followed if we come to believe the content or meaning of those confessions needs to change.)

If you know many church-going families, you know at least one that has been burned by inhospitality of this kind: they became part of a church community. They lived, served, and integrated their family into it, all on the belief that the church would continue to teach and minister in a certain way. Then, the leadership began to violate those implicit promises and cross boundaries this family assumed the church wouldn’t cross. For some of these families, it takes quite some time for them to trust another church.

Absolute confessional subscription helps us to avoid that inhospitality. We can point to our Three Forms of Unity and tell the families in our churches: This is our promise. Yes, absolute confessional subscription requires a sacrifice of freedom by those in leadership and sometimes painful discipline of erring leaders. The pain has a payoff, however. By committing to this, we imitate the hospitality of our self-limiting, covenant-making God.