Creeds & Confessions

I went to listen, to get a lay of the land. What I heard was, humanly speaking, both frightening and exasperating. Perhaps you have heard of my community in the news, which is just north of Pittsburgh in Western Pennsylvania. Recently, it appears that the Superintendent of the School District along...

In the late 1890’s B. B. Warfield, along with several other men, wrote against “the impatience . . . with the effort to define truth and to state with precision the doctrinal presuppositions and contents of Christianity.” [1] Such impatience was possessed by many who confessed to be Christians,...

When I was in seminary, our apologetics professor regularly reminded us that all of God’s relationships with humanity are covenant relationships. The covenant ungirds every facet of our existence as humans. Not only has the truth of this affected me since then, but also I remember it well because I...

Ministering in a small, rural town with over ten churches, all with relatively low attendance, I have often heard the question, “What makes your church different?” I have found this question difficult to answer, not because I couldn’t rattle off positions and practices that other churches in town...

Just as bottles of distilled water offer drink that is free of poisonous chemicals and clogging minerals, so the Church’s confessions provide boiled-down, condensed, purified orthodoxy for healthy Body life systems. For instance, a seminary student being examined on the floor of Presbytery with...

Many doctrinally solid evangelical churches would not self-identify as “confessional”. What is the value of historic confessions for this kind of typical evangelical church? If the church is already doctrinally orthodox, evangelical, and solid, why encourage such people to think more “...

This week on Theology on the Go, Dr. Jonathan Master is joined by Dr. David Garner, vice president for advancement and associate professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. Dr. Garner has a wide variety of theological interests including the doctrine of adoption, the...

In today’s church, there are a number of significant questions about the doctrine of assurance. Some argue that you cannot ever really know if you’re saved at all; others insist that if you made some kind of profession of faith, then you ought never to doubt the reality of your salvation. The...

The Westminster Confession of Faith begins with one of the most well articulated statements concerning the doctrine of Scripture. And incorporated right into the Confession is an ever so brief clause on how one might do theology. The clause was placed there to be an expression defending the...

There are those who claim that the Westminster Confession of Faith is a scholastic document lacking in pastoral sensitivity but abounding in the dust of theological tomes. But is it? I don't think so. In fact, I am convinced that the Westminster Confession is both heady and hearty! That is to say,...