Given this kind of variety of expressions and the way in which confessions can reveal fissures or heal divisions, their doctrinal formulations lead to more careful and expanded doctrinal exposition of the word of God. The development of confessions warns us against errors to avoid in our exposition and expands the way in which revealed truth set in a doctrinal framework can enhance our understanding of the significance of individual texts. So, when Jesus says, “Why do you call me good? There is none good but God” (Mark 10:18), do we conclude that Jesus was disclaiming deity? The confessional synthesis achieved in careful attention to the flow of biblical texts serves as a helpful guide in interpreting such a text. 

At least through the first three centuries of Christian history, baptism was preceded by a statement of belief on the part of the person being baptized. Some confessions arose, therefore, as baptismal confessions, written for catechumens. The basic doctrines to be confessed are expressed in the writings of Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Novatian, and Gregory and identified by Tertullian and Novatian as the “rule of faith.” This rule was Trinitarian in form beginning with God the Father and creation, continuing with God the Son and redemption, and God the Holy Spirit, “the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost” (Tertullian, Against Praxeas).

As challenges to various parts of these confessions arose, more details were added. Christ’s resurrection and coming again, the person of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection and judgment of the righteous and the wicked, and the eternal state were given increasing prominence. When divergence became more sophisticated and subtle giving alternate understandings of the substance of these confessions, they were reasserted with explanatory language. Not only did these confessions reflect a maturing precision in biblical exegesis, but also began to establish a particular diction of acceptable language. As mentioned in a previous post, the Council of Nicea (325) confuted the subtleties of Arius. The confession developed in that context exposed his system as destructive of revealed truth, idolatrous in effect insisting that it was appropriate to worship a creature, and inadequate for a theology of redemption. Phrases were added that asserted the eternal paternity of God (“begotten, that is, of the essence of the Father”); the eternal generation of the Son (“begotten, not made”); the resultant sameness of essence between the Father and the Son (“of the same essence with the Father”); the true humanity of the Son including both true flesh and rationality (“came down and was made flesh and was made man”); and the necessity of these doctrines for salvation (“who for us men and for our salvation).

By 381 at a council in Constantinople, an expanded statement on the Holy Spirit was given. Again, we find not only a maturing interpretive framework but a careful construction of theological language. This statement assured Christians that, in light of scriptural affirmations concerning the Sprit and his essential relation to the Father and the Son, he was truly to be worshipped with Father and Son and that his mode of eternal relation in the Trinity was procession, not generation. “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life; who proceeds from the Father,[and the Son]; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spake by the prophets.”

At Chalcedon in 451, additional and more tightly constructed phrases concerning both the humanity and the deity of the Son were given, expressing biblical necessities and developing theological language introducing the controversial words, “mother of God according to the manhood.” This was given in such a manner based on Luke 1:43 (“Mother of my Lord”) while clinching the necessity of the unity of Christ’s person (“the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons”).

This process of maturing exegesis leading to more precise theological language could be followed through the Reformation and into more contemporary confessions. The language, moreover, begins to serve a polemical purpose in addition to its being the matter of expression of personal faith. For example, brief confessions written in polemical situations would include the Articles of the Remonstrants compared to the Canons of the Synod of Dort. The important differences between Arminianism and Calvinism emerge in that conflict. This is a profitable use of confessions, for where substantive distinctions of viewpoint on the synthesis of biblical ideas exist, it is helpful that they are laid out succinctly.

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