There is a deep need, especially among young men, for confidence that the things they are being taught are not fads, not just therapeutic self-help. There has grown up a strong desire to be part of a church that is rooted in an historic Christian tradition. And while there should be some warning that tradition isn’t everything, and must be weighed against Scripture, there is a reason men are moving towards churches that have that tradition. The reason is the ubiquitous faddishness of the world both outside and within the church.

Confessional subscription has long been a hallmark of Presbyterian and Reformed churches. For just as long, maybe, various topics surrounding confessional subscription have been debated. Of the several excellent Reformed confessions, which ought to be binding? Who should be required to subscribe to the confessions? To what degree? How ought examining committees to differentiate between substantial differences with the Confession and those that are merely semantic? If “exceptions” are allowed, which are the confessional doctrines that are the “vitals” of Christian religion?

The PCA has answered some of the questions above (e.g., the Westminster Confession, and not the Heidelberg, is the one ordained officers are required to submit to), but others remain. In particular, the degree to which elder candidates are required to subscribe is often debated, not only in theological blogs but also among credentialing committees as they do their work. The debate has long centered around the difference between “strict” and “system” subscription. This is an important question, but I believe a different, more problematic, issue lurks around the question of subscription. I’ll call the problem “nominal subscription.” Nominal subscription weakens the church wherever it may be found, and takes at least two forms.

The first might be exemplified by Pastor Smith. Pastor Smith fully subscribes to the Confession (in the PCA, the Westminster Confession), yet his teaching and preaching reveal little heart for the doctrines that it contains; in fact, confessional doctrines are defended by him in the most desultory and embarrassed way. His teaching seems to assume that these documents are technical whitepapers with little practical use; there is no sense that they might be serious spiritual food for hungry parishioners. In light of what Pastor Smith perceives to be the therapeutic needs of his congregation, confessional doctrine takes a back seat and is treated as if better left unarticulated to congregations. He fully upholds these doctrines, and when pressed acknowledges them to be important truths of the faith, yet they seem to him thin and ethereal, and therefore his parishioners get little of them, and what they do get is unsubstantial. We might call this “Low T Confessionalism.”

This type of nominal subscription plays out in PCA churches sometimes with regard to infant baptism. The long, consistent Reformed position is that children of believers ought to be baptized. This is clearly captured in WCF 28.4:

Not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one, or both, believing parents, are to be baptized.

No presbytery in the PCA would admit a man to ministry who did not hold to infant baptism. However, in the PCA the Session as a whole is directed by the BCO to plainly direct parents in the congregation that their children ought to be baptized. The Session, says BCO 12.5, “is charged with maintaining the spiritual government of the church, for which purpose it has power . . . to see that parents do not neglect to present their children for Baptism . . .”

So not only is it the practice of the PCA to baptize infants, but the ordained leadership is to actually direct their people to baptize their children. The Session and its members are not to be complacent about baptism among their members; they are to inquire into the baptismal status of the children and (in an appropriately pastoral way) direct parents to baptize their children. They are not to remain silent from fear of disapproval. Is this a common practice in the PCA? Do churches, Sessions, and individual elders actually go to their people and teach them that they ought to present their infant children for baptism?

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