The Belgic Confession: Testimony of an Oppressed Church
From The Forum Magazine, Winter 2013 - view the full issue here
What does a suffering, persecuted church say to the world? The answer may surprise some Reformed folk because it is right before us in one of our doctrinal standards, the Belgic Confession.
This confession of faith is called the Belgic Confession (full French title: La Confession de foi des Églises Réformées Wallonnes et Flamandes) because it was written on behalf of persecuted Reformed Christians around the town of Doornik (Tournai) in the southwestern part of the united Netherlands, now Belgium. When these Reformed Christians gathered peaceably in the streets of Doornik in September 1561 to testify publicly to their faith by singing psalms, the civil authorities, encouraged by the Roman Catholic Inquisition, quickly suppressed the demonstration. In response, the Reformed threw “a closed and sealed package” into the outside enclosure of the Doornik castle. It was addressed to King Philip II and included a copy of the Confession with an open letter to the authorities that God’s work would not be stopped: “If you try [stopping us] by killing, for everyone who dies, a hundred will rise in his place. If you will not forsake your hardness and your murder, then we appeal to God to give us grace patiently to endure for the glory of his name … and heaven and earth will bear us witness that you have put us unjustly to death.” Commissioners sent to investigate matters reported finding similar letters of protest (with the Confession) in the homes of Doornik’s citizens. From the outset, the Belgic Confession was a political testimony. And, lest we forget, its author, Guido de Brès, became a martyr for his faith.
Knowing this, today’s reader of the Belgic Confession might find its content surprising, perhaps even disappointing. At first reading, its appears quite apolitical, removed from the concrete and bloody struggles for religious freedom. For, above everything else, the Belgic Confession is an effort to summarize the purity of the gospel and defend the orthodox Christian faith. Its opening article confesses God as “a single and simple divine essence, spiritual,” a statement no inquisitor could fault. Similarly, articles 8 and 9 on the Trinity use the classic language of the Ancient Church Councils— “one in essence and substance, but three in persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” This does not sound like a call to arms or a public rebuke of one’s oppressors.
Yet de Brès knew well what he was up against, facing the double-barreled onslaught of the Roman Inquisition and the civil power of Imperial Spain. In an earlier work (1555), Baston de la foi chrestienne (late 16th century English translation: “The staffe of Christian faith, profitable to all Christians, for to arme themselves agaiynst the enimies of the Gospell; and also for to know the antiquitie of our holy faith, and of the true church”), de Brès marshaled quotations from the church fathers to show that the Reformed were not heretics. He wrote:
… that if I intend to present this book (in which there is nothing of mine, but all things are from the ancients) as a confession of my faith to these enemies of the fathers, I do not doubt that at the same time I am not like an evil heretic, condemned to be burned alive to ashes.
In this work, as in the later Confession, de Brès’ first concern was to prove that the Reformed church stood in continuity with the church of all ages. If one can speak of a strategy here, it is to disarm the foe of his most potent weapon, the accusation of heresy.
This is not to suggest that the Belgic Confession contains no polemic, but rather that the disagreements with Rome are framed by the longer narrative of Christian orthodoxy going back to antiquity. The large majority of the articles in the first half of the Confession—God (1), general and special revelation (2 & 3), the Trinity (8 & 9), the deity of Christ (10) and of the Holy Spirit (11), creation (12) and providence (13), human creation and the Fall (14), original sin (15), election (16) and God’s plan to save (17), the Incarnation (18), two natures of Christ (19), atonement (20 & 21)—are affirmations of the universal, apostolic Christian faith held in common with Roman Catholics.
We may also find it easy to forget the controversy that surrounded the writing of the Belgic Confession because when the confession does introduce its differences with Rome, it does so rather gently. The list of Holy Scripture’s canonical books (art. 4) does not include the Apocryphal Books. However, when article 6 notes the difference between the canonical and apocryphal books, even listing them by name, it also notes that “the church may certainly read these books and learn from them as far as they agree with the canonical books.” The significant point of dispute about Scripture has to do with its authority (art. 5) and sufficiency (art. 7). Reformed people “believe without a doubt all things contained in [Holy Scripture] not so much because the church receives and approves them as such but above all because the Holy Spirit testifies in our hearts that they are from God, and also because they prove themselves to be from God” (art. 5). Furthermore, Rome’s reliance on church tradition is clearly in focus in article 7 (key terms emphasized):
Therefore we must not consider human writings— no matter how holy their authors may have been— equal to the divine writings; nor may we put custom, nor the majority, nor age, nor the passage of times or persons, nor councils, decrees, or official decisions above the truth of God, for truth is above everything else.
Many articles later, the Confession distances itself from Roman Catholic doctrines of salvation and the church. Articles 22, 23, and 24 repudiate all notions of merit and works with respect to our justification, and declare that “to say that Christ is not enough but that something else is needed as well is a most enormous blasphemy against God … . “We are justified ‘by faith alone’ or by faith ‘apart from works.’” This is underscored by the intercessory work of “Jesus Christ the Righteous” who is “the one and only Mediator and Intercessor.” Prayer to saints, by contrast, is the fruit of “sheer unbelief” and “dishonors saints instead of honoring them” (art. 26).
The Reformed understanding of the church distances itself not only from Rome, but also from the Anabaptist tradition, which was yet another controversy in the church at that time. The true church is marked by sound preaching of the Word, proper administration of sacraments, and practice of church discipline to correct faults (art. 29). It accepts only two sacraments and not Rome’s seven, but it also “detests the error of the Anabaptists who are not content with a single baptism once received and also condemn the baptism of the children of believers” (art. 33 & 34).
The historical context of de Brès’ writing of the Belgic Confession as a time of suffering and persecution for the evangelical churches of the Low Countries is especially important for understanding the last two articles, including controversial article 36 on Civil Government, and especially those parts that the Christian Reformed synods of 1910, 1938, 1958, and 1985 either revised or relegated to a footnote. The important point: civil government is legitimate as God’s servant to govern the world, permit and enhance freedom for the church to preach the gospel and worship, “while function ing in the sphere entrusted to them.” Our views about whether the civil authorities should “remove and destroy all idolatry and false worship of the Antichrist” have clearly changed since the sixteenth century, but the principle of rejecting civil authority and subverting social and moral order (as the radical Anabaptists of the sixteenth century did) still deserves the repudiation it did then. In protesting the abuse of civil power by the Inquisition and Imperial Spain, de Brès wanted it to be clear that he was not promoting civil and social anarchy.
The concluding article is moving in its understated submission to let God’s just and mighty hand exact vengeance against enemies and oppressors. Our Lord Jesus Christ “will come from heaven … with great glory and majesty to declare himself the judge of the living and the dead.” While the wicked “with good reason” tremble at the prospect, “it is very pleasant and a great comfort to the righteous and elect, since their total redemption will then be accomplished. They will receive the fruits of their labor and of the trouble they have suffered; their innocence will be openly recognized by all; and they will see the terrible vengeance that God will bring on the evil ones who tyrannized, oppressed, and tormented them in this world” (art. 37).
As a theologian, I am instructed and guided by the thoroughness and clarity of this centuries-old confession. It is theologically the most rich and rewarding of our standards. More importantly, the conviction of its adherents that they would “yield our backs to the stripes, our tongues to the knives, our mouths to gags, and our bodies to the flames” before forsaking their testimony in Christ, awes me, moves me to tears, and challenges me as a disciple of Jesus Christ.
(John Bolt, Professor of Systematic Theology, Emeritus)
