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For me, I just didn’t get confessionalism. I thought, why care so much about a confession when there’s the Bible. Just read the Bible.
How would you explain confessionalism to someone that’s unfamiliar with it?
I would say the point of confessions is that the Bible is a large book, and a book that is structured as God’s revelation to his people over time, rather than by theological topic. Confessions summarise our understanding of what the Bible as a whole has to say about the main points of the faith. Confessionalism recognises the need for creeds and confessions for the above reason and because people will usually have a theological framework they are applying to understand the Bible, but not declaring it upfront (as in a confession) makes it harder to discuss properly.
I’ve found The Creedal Imperative by Carl Trueman to be a helpful book on this topic.
Those are good points.
I’ll also say that I think it was arrogant of me to just try to understand the Bible without the input of centuries of good scholars, especially when they are like-minded to me, building on the same foundational principles (eg. The Bible is innerant and God’s word)
I still struggle with 1. paedobaptism and 2. the Churches assumption of Israel’s promises. I was raised very dispensationalost, and I see some of the weaknesses of that theological framework, and yet I still find it to be very compelling.
I don’t struggle with paedobaptism, I just reject it. :-D
For me it took a while to come to terms with Reformed Soteriology. Understanding God’s sovereignty is particularly tricky at the best of times and it didn’t particularly help that most discussions of it I came across were presenting it as a short 5 points description (where one of the points is “limited atonement”, which sounds a bit discouraging). A fuller understanding of it woven into the rest of Reformed theology helped, and I found the description given in the Canons of Dort quite well thought out.
Yeah, I had trouble with limited atonement for a good while too. John Piper had a class that I watched on it and really helped me understand the fuller meaning of that point (along with calling it ‘Definite Atonement’ instead)
Definite atonement is certainly the better term for it
