Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Consult God’s instruction and the testimony of warning. If anyone does not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn. Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness.

• Isaiah 8:20-22

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

• 2 Timothy 3:16-17

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll.
He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.

• Revelation 22:18-21

“In the first three centuries, the church found itself in a hostile environment. On the one hand, it grappled with the challenge of relating the language of the gospel, developed in a Hebraic and Jewish-Christian context, to a Graeco-Roman world. On the other hand, it was threatened not only by persecution, but also by ideas that were in conflict with the biblical witness.
In A.D. 312, Constantine won control of the Roman Empire in the battle of Milvian Bridge. Attributing his victory to the intervention of Jesus Christ, he elevated Christianity to favored status in the empire. “One God, one Lord, one faith, one church, one empire, one emperor” became his motto. …
To counter a widening rift within the church, Constantine convened a council in Nicaea in A.D. 325. A creed reflecting the position of Alexander and Athanasius was written and signed by a majority of the bishops. Nevertheless, the two parties continued to battle each other. In 381, a second council met in Constantinople. It adopted a revised and expanded form of the A.D. 325 creed, now known as the Nicene Creed.”

• The Book of Confessions (PCUSA)

Before I started the Vespers services on Wednesday afternoon (local time in the USA), I wrote a post entitled Creeds, Confession, and Catechisms.  This was 9 May 2022.

One of the big differences in Christian Denominations is the differences within their creeds, confessions, and catechisms.  Some denominations are shouting from the rooftops that they have no such things, and that they believe in the Bible alone.  Well, I hope from the past nearly eighty Wednesday evening posts, we have seen that the catechisms are based on biblical proofs.  Some confessions, for a denomination, also are printed with biblical proofs.

Of course, church polity, that being the church government, is not something that the Bible spends much time with.  There is biblical backing for rebuking people within the church.  There is a requirement, if someone is accused of being unrepentant in one area or another, there needs to be two or three witnesses.  But how one thing or another ties to those strange requirements is up to a denomination’s preferences.  But as a bit of trivia, the constitution of the United States of America is designed, in some part, like the church denomination organization of the Presbyterian church – obviously supplied by one of those founding fathers, according to our modern secular thinking, who “was not a Christian.”  Do not believe that.  The Presbyterian was probably a church pastor as well as a founding father, and letting the Bible guide his every decision.

But just looking at the catechisms that were reviewed, every question in the Spurgeon Catechism, all 82 questions, was covered.  But the Shorter Catechism has 107 questions, while the Larger Catechism has 196 questions.

Usually as I went through the questions that were covered, my description of the Larger Catechism is that the Larger Catechism gives a more detailed answer with more biblical proofs.  Of course, you introduce more detail, you should back up that detail with biblical proofs.

That reminded me of a comedian these days, Don McMillan, the Nerdy Comedian.  He explains why an engineer is the way he is.  They try to fix things.  They try to explain things that may go one way or another based on three or four small factors.  That way you get an explanation that goes like “This is the way it is, unless part “A” is leaning to the left, and if that is the case there is this unless way it might be, based on where part “C” is. …”  And on it goes.  That is the Larger Catechism answers.  I doubt if they had engineers back then, but it was an engineer-want-to-be that wrote the Larger Catechism.  It is not called the “Longer” because then no one would want to study it.  And truthfully, being the Larger, means a more detailed answer that those really wanting to know something would want to study.

Nerdy or not, the Shorter Catechism might be the one that most children memorize, but the Larger is useful for those industrious students that want to dig deeper.

But do we need Catechisms and Creeds and such at all?  The Creeds came from heresies that cropped up.  The church leaders would create a creed and have the bishops and pastors agree to not vary from those foundational statements, as in the Nicene or Apostle’s Creeds.  But then the heretics are already great at telling falsehood, so what difference does it make to them to swear on a stack of Bibles to preach according to this creed or that?

And that is really why we need those creeds, catechisms and such.  These days, people can make arguments that on the surface sound good until you realize their agenda.  With a good creed or a catechism, we can see something that is based on the Bible with biblical proofs.  We can then study those biblical proofs.  And then expand that study to see the context of each of those biblical proofs to find that there is a flaw in that new thinking that is contrary to the Bible.  We are not letting the creed or catechism or confession guide us as much as we are using those tools to construct a meaningful biblical argument that is based solely on Scripture.

As an engineer, I like using tools, but you have to know how to use those tools in the proper manner.

In the end, the Bible is our guide.  Of all those tools, the Bible is the inspired Word of God.  And we should never forget that.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.