Episode 83: The Nicene Creed, Biblicism, and the Local Church

To the Ruled Church Podcast.

Christ Builds His Church, Not a Denomination

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus.

In a local miserable congregation.

Yeah, we got Mexico in June, and then a church camp in VBS in July. So all mine, I think, is kind of ministry-related. Not to say that we might not take a couple days at some point. My boys have really liked watching Major League Baseball, and it's like the one thing that you can go to with your family.

You can get tickets for like 15 bucks, you know? I could take my whole family to an NFL game or a basketball game, but Major League Baseball, we can, you know? So it's been a fun... Last year, we went to a Cardinals game, and so this year, we're talking about looking at that again.

So we might do that, but anyway.

Yeah, and when I said there was something not ministry-related, me and my son, we work for a... It's a Christian camp. It's not a church camp. I always tell people, growing up in Shirley, whenever I would watch TV and you would see, you know, people on TV shows or movies going to Camp Lake Wanamaka or whatever, I always thought, that's not real.

That's a TV thing. Nobody actually goes to a camp like that, but that really is real, and I found it out several years ago. I started working for this camp, running their horse program, and so I'm gonna be working for the camp for...

It'll take five or six weeks starting next week working for the camp, me and my son are, so that takes some time, too, so it kind of adds to the busyness, but we've also got, as I said, VBS, and then it's a youth thing that we're doing, and then we've got a mission trip to Utah as well, so busy time in June and July.

That's good, though. Busy is good, not busy for the sake of busy, but busy with those things that we're talking about is good.

But the one thing both of us are not doing is going to Indianapolis.

Yeah, and this is gonna come out after, so all the stuff we're gonna talk about today will actually be coming out after the meeting anyway, but I think there are some things important. What we're gonna talk about today is the Nicene Creed, and, of course, I don't know what will happen at Indianapolis, but apparently they're going to propose from the floor that this be added to the Baptist faith and message.

Am I understanding that right?

That's the way I heard it. Like I told you, I've been out of the loop a little bit on some of this, and so I did not even know this until I just overheard it yesterday and seen a little bit about it online, but I don't know any details.

The Nicene Creed and the SBC Floor Motion

Yeah, so I have a few thoughts about this. So first, how about you tell me what you're thinking about? So what's your thought? So I don't know where we wanna start. First, maybe what is the Nicene?

Yeah, I mean, maybe just think about what it is. The Nicene Creed is

About being new?

Yeah, it comes from a church council that met in Nicaea in 325, and

And then again, I think at 381, is that right?

Yeah, I think, is that the Constantinople in 381?

Yes.

Yeah.

So essentially, this happens, even in the scripture, we see this happening. A lot of things are answers to false teaching. You know, I was teaching yesterday through Paul's dealing with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

And you know, a lot of what Paul teaches us through 1 Corinthians is Paul responding to things that were going wrong. And throughout church history, we also see that a lot of doctrinal clarification comes about because things were being taught wrongly and they had to be responded to.

So my understanding of Nicaea is that they called this church council meeting, the bishops met, the pastors met, essentially to hammer out a statement, a creedal statement to answer false teachings, especially around the Trinity and who is Jesus Christ.

And so as they were clarifying that through this, what we would call today, the Nicene Creed against the Arians, if I'm correct. You know, they were seeking to state faithfully what is revealed in scripture about who the Lord is.

Yeah, let me just read it.

That's good.

So I believe that this was, I'll pull it up so we would be accurate. So it goes back to the Council of Nicaea in 325, like you said, additions by the Council of Constantinople in 381, accepted in its present form at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.

And the phrase about the sending of the Holy Spirit was added in 589. Anyway, a 1 ,500 year old, longer than that, but you know, 1 ,500 year old creed. So here it says, we believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same essence as the Father.

Through Him all things were made. For us and for our salvation, He came down from heaven. He became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered and was buried. The third day He rose again, according to the scriptures. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.

His kingdom will never end. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life. He proceeds from the Father and the Son. And with the Spirit and the Son is worshiped and glorified. He spoke through the prophets.

We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. By Catholic means universal. We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and to the life in the world to come.

Amen.

So one thing, Ed, is like every believer should be able to affirm that. I know that there is some debate about the eternal begottenness of Jesus, if we should speak of it that way or not. That's the way I speak, you know.

And I know that, so here's the thing. I'm gonna offer you some of my thoughts on it. I think that the Southern Baptist Convention in its meeting in Indianapolis, and I don't know what they're gonna, I actually think they should not do this.

And here's the reason why. I really smell something very fishy with this. I don't know what's, I don't know why. Like, so for example, if this is so important, why are you bringing this up, like two weeks before the meeting this comes out, and you're gonna do it from the floor?

Like, what's going on with, this seems very suspicious to me. And I don't disagree with the creed, but I'm actually gonna push back on some things. Like, I'm affirming, so let me just make this clear.

I'm affirming everything in this creed, okay?

Okay.

But here are some issues I have. One, I'm highly suspicious that this may be being introduced to maybe distract from the law amendment. And I don't know how all that plays out. I just know the politics in the SBC and the using the procedures in the SBC to push things through, it's just stomach churning.

So, you know

And we both know that the way that it goes at the annual meeting is there's so little time to deal with anything. And every time you add one more thing, that's gonna cut down the time that you have to really deal with more important stuff.

In Nashville?

In Nashville?

So it's gonna be so easy to crowd out the law amendment, any real discussion, because guys, we gotta move, we gotta move.

In Nashville in 2021, and you know, me and you, we're not Paige Patterson fans at all, but in Nashville in 2021, J .D. Greer moved to have a prayer meeting at the beginning. And that sounds very noble, but you know, that was to keep Paige Patterson off the stage.

That's hypocrisy, man. It felt so icky, if you will, to use a procedural, to keep something from happening and then call it in the name of prayer. So anyway, so that's red flag number one for me. Red flag number two is while we affirm this creed, it really scares me, and I hate to say his name because I'm not trying to publicly call out people per se on this podcast, but it really concerns me, the trajectory of Matthew Barrett, Dr. Barrett at Midwestern, that his trajectory with Roman Catholicism is concerning to me.

And anyone that's giving to Southern Baptist institutions should bring this up and ask for clarity and explanation, but you can't get that from the local church level. And that's one of the reasons, you know, we've backed off, but the point is Roman Catholics affirm this creed, which again, I'm affirming the creed.

I'm just saying like the creed is not doing enough for me. So you know where I stand, and we stand on a confessional statement, which this creed lies behind the Trinitarian formulation in the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith.

So it's like, yes, this is the context. But if you have a confession of faith, like the 1689, you don't also have to go back and affirm the Nicene Creed. It's implicit in that. I mean, like maybe you would even say explicit.

It's like, it's all together. But one of the issues of course is, and I don't have it up in front of me, is the Trinitarian language in the Baptist faith and message. You know what I'm talking about? I think there's a little bit of, it could be interpreted, it could be interpreted another way.

So if people are actually in good faith wanting to introduce this to strengthen the Trinitarian formulation of the Baptist faith and message, then I'm all for it. But it really just, it just doesn't sit right with me.

And I don't know what they're gonna do. This podcast is coming out afterwards. So everybody will already know what they ended up doing with this. I'm just saying before the meeting happens that I have some concerns with the way that this has come about.

What do you think?

Biblicism, Creeds, and Confessional Christianity

Well, like I said, I was first introduced that this was even a thing just yesterday. And what I said immediately was, and this is less sophisticated than the things that you just mentioned. But basically I see two things.

I see you're gonna have a group that's gonna say, okay, put it in there. That's fine. Everybody has to affirm this because it teaches Orthodox Christianity, right? I mean, it's just Orthodoxy. It's not Eastern Orthodoxy, but just small O Orthodox Christianity.

This is just the right doctrine of Christianity. So everybody's gotta agree with this. You can't not agree with it. And so I figured you'd have your one side saying, how can you oppose this? And you would have the other side essentially saying, well, we don't need to do this because it's already in the Baptist faith and message.

All the things taught here are already there and you're just gonna cause problems. You guys are just trying to cause problems wanting to put this in there. So I kind of seen it as it was gonna be, nobody's gonna say that they don't agree with the Dysencrete.

But I figured you were gonna have one side saying, we all agree with it. Just put it in there. Why not? And you're gonna have one side saying, you're just doing this because you're trying to cause problems and we shouldn't.

And I figured that that was how it was gonna break down. Not even thinking of, and I don't even know who is planning on putting it in there or anything. I don't know any details about it other than just that it was mentioned.

And I know that, like you said, there are a couple of things in the Dysencrete that throughout the centuries have been a little bit debated, but for the most part, the language of the Dysencrete has been influential, like you said, even in the way that our more modern confessions of faith are formulated around the things that the creed is discussing.

So I pulled up a blog post by Jeffrey Riddle. And so a couple of things, it talks about the Baptist faith and message. It says that it never uses the classical theological term Trinity in its definition of the doctrine of God.

He says, my guess is that it comes from a basic biblicist impulse in SBC life, which includes a tendency to use only explicitly biblical language. However, inconsistently, this might be applied. It likewise does not use classical creedal language of one God and three persons.

And then he says, one could see how a modalist might be able to affirm the line at the close of paragraph one, the eternal triune God reveals himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.

So you're not gonna hear me defending the Baptist faith and message. Here's what I've always said about the Baptist faith and message. The Baptist faith and message is a good document if you are interpreting it through the lens of say like the 1689 or something like that.

Like if you're interpreting through the right lens, then it's fine. But the problem is, and this comes with women pastors and all these other things, there's a lot of bad actors out there who are not interpreting it through faithful lens.

So I can understand the desire to strengthen the Baptist faith and message. But it would be my argument just by, why don't you go back to what y 'all started with? Why don't you go back to the 1689? Because that really, I mean, that's over the course of 150 years or whatever it's been, 180 years, that's we've just kind of dwindled down to affirm less and less stuff.

So obviously, that's where I'd find myself in agreement. We don't need to be affirming less stuff today. We don't need to make things easier, if you will. But on this whole biblicism debate, like I think as Baptists, we wanna be careful.

We absolutely affirm the Orthodox creeds. We are confessional. All these things are good, but I really don't like the just bashing or using the term biblicism as always negative. Does it make sense?

Yeah, let me play the dummy here because I am. But let me ask you a question because I've heard the term used a lot. I've heard Dr. James White talk about the term a lot, and I've read some blogs and articles by other people using it.

What is the definition? Because I think a lot of just your average, if I told people in my church that, hey, we're being called biblicists, they would be like, well, isn't that what we are? Yeah, we're Bible people.

They would, okay, that sounds good to us because we are Bible people. That is what we're wanna be. So can you explain maybe a little bit of the, I'm not saying technically the definition, but kind of the general idea that's being conveyed when people like Dr. Riddle or Matthew Barrett or people kind of in this Thomist movement use the word biblicist, what is meant by that?

Well, and I don't have anything pulled up, but.

Well, I'm just asking for Quattro's definition. What's Quattro think of when he hears them using that word?

Well, I think the, I'm gonna try to give it from their perspective. I think the worst definition you can give of a biblicist is the no creed but the Bible people, you know?

And that really

So your church of Christ or something.

That really gave rise to the, you're right, the Campbellite, you know?

Right.

So the idea of no creed but the Bible is dangerous because it ignores the reality of God has not given the Bible only to the individual Christian.

Right.

He's given it to the church. So the no creed, so you and I would disagree with the biblicist definition. If by biblicist someone means no creed but the Bible, I'm not a biblicist.

Right, agreed.

Because I believe that the creeds are absolutely helpful in even one sense. Even in one sense, you might say necessary because, so let me read you something that I wrote for founders. This is with a confession of faith.

But I wrote,.

So a confession of faith is meant to be a servant of the Bible. It is subservient to the Bible and seeks to point us to the Bible and say, essentially, we're not only saying the Bible is the highest authority here, but also that we're not ashamed to actually say in writing what we believe this book teaches.

So a confession of faith is simply man's attempt to say, here is what we confess the Bible teaches. The Bible ultimately needs no defender. It is, as they say, the anvil that has broken many hammers. But a confession of faith is saying to the world, when we guard ourselves with truth, this is what we mean by truth.

This is what we believe the Bible says. I'm gonna skip down a little bit. But truthfully, a confession of faith is not a necessity so much as it is just the reality. That is, everyone believes something about the Bible.

You can write down what you believe or you can choose not to write it down, but does it change the fact that you confess something about the Bible? So back to our illustration, no creed but the Bible.

That's a creedal statement, right? In one sense, it's a self-defeating statement because you've just given us a creed. Your creed is you don't need a creed, right? Right, right. And so to say you don't like creeds or confession of faith is to pretend that you don't already have a confession of faith.

You don't already have a creed. Everyone has a set of beliefs. It's also, there's historical snobbery there. It's saying in the 21st century, we're smarter than everyone else in history. In church history, we don't need them.

We don't need our brothers and sisters in church history. We can go from the closing of the New Testament and jump 2 ,000 years later to us and we don't need anything in between.

And I also think that to some degree, the bad definition of biblicism is pointing to the idea of the person that says, well, I've got my Bible. So me and my Bible, I can read the Bible and even if I come to conclusions that no other person in the last 2 ,000 years and that nobody else agrees with, they're wrong and I'm right because I read the Bible and I think it says this.

Like, honestly, there are a lot of unhealthy churches. We know that. But if you can't find any church that you can go to because every church is wrong about all this stuff because you've been reading your Bible alone at home, you're probably the one that's wrong.

You know what I mean? I'm like, there's gotta be some Christians who are believing the Bible. You know, especially if you're, I'm talking about in an area like where we're at, where there are a lot of churches.

There are a lot of unhealthy churches, but there are churches that are Christians believing the scriptures. And I'm not saying they're right about everything, but I think a lot of times the negative connotation of biblicism is the idea that, well, I'll just go read the Bible by myself and whatever conclusions I come to are right, no matter what anybody else thinks.

When the right way, the way I would think about the word biblicism if I didn't know that that was the idea is I would think, well, it's just a person who says, I want to understand how to rightly read and interpret the Bible.

And then the Bible is the final authority on everything. And I think the right way to think about the confessions or creeds is that, like you said, they're helpful. They're servants to the Bible. But the Bible is the thing that is that final authority.

It's the thing that is inherent and infallible. And so the most important thing for us as Christians is that we rightly interpret and understand what the Bible teaches. Because if we rightly understand and interpret what the Bible teaches, then that's the right thing.

That is God's mind. That is the mind of Christ on whatever subject. And so the problem that we end up with is the person who's not willing to engage with what Christians from the past or even Christians today are saying about a Bible passage because they've already gotten in their mind that they must be right, that I think must be correct.

So extreme example, biblicism, words that we use that aren't in the Bible, Trinity, local church, even the term, which I know Church of Christ folks have this, revival, okay? None of those words are actually in the scriptures, but the concepts clearly are, clearly they are.

And so if you, the extreme biblicist, for example, might not wanna use language that I use like covenant of works, covenant of grace. So anyway, yes, but then there's another side and I'll just read Jeff Johnson's quote here because Dr. Johnson, which is a friend of both of ours, wrote some serious critiques of Thomas Aquinas.

He's really been under the gun on some of these things, but he put, if biblicism is, and this is from his book, The Revealed God, if biblicism is the refusal to incorporate extra biblical and contra biblical concepts and ideas into Christianity, then let's make biblicism great again.

So I think what he's pushing back on, and I wouldn't consider myself a Thomist, but I think there are some things, there should be much more agreement on these things, but what frustrates me is, and I see it more from the Thomist side, in my opinion, and that is you're gonna have whatever Aquinas thinks about the metaphysical realities within the Trinitarian formulations, and you understand, like, add intra and add extra operations, and whatever he says and however he formulates it because of philosophy, that has to be it, and if you don't see it that way, you're basically gonna lead your people into heresy, but the argument I would wanna put is that you can try to formulate all these things rightly and be led into, well, not Pentecostal, one is, sorry, that was what came to my mind, Unitarianism.

So for example, in the Great Awakening, and we can look at this, I don't have it in front of me, but one of the guys going back and forth with Jonathan Edwards, do you remember his name? What was his name?

I don't remember, I'd have to look it up. Maybe I'll find it in a second, but one of the guys going back with Jonathan Edwards about Jonathan Edwards was defending the Great Awakening, and this guy was saying, no, it's not true.

Well, that guy ends up going off and at the end of his life, becoming a Unitarian, so there is a real, so don't say there's not a real danger of conflating the persons of the Trinity. So there is absolute danger of dividing the persons of the Trinity.

Sure.

And there's also danger of conflating the persons of the Trinity. And so I think that we need to be careful of saying, somehow we got into Aquinas today. I wasn't ready for all that, really. But the point that I'm trying to make is that really, and sometimes with both sides, there's a lot of bombs thrown at each other.

I'm not gonna say any names, but there's guys on both sides, really, that I think wind up finding themselves more harmful to the unity of the church than really helpful. I actually am in agreement with people on both sides of the debate.

I'm not trying to find a squishy middle or whatever, but so the worst definition of biblicism is no creed but the Bible. But you can't use that term then and just label everyone who disagrees with you about the metaphysical operations of the Trinity or whatever, and just say, well, you're a biblicist.

Well, hold on just a second. These brothers are not saying no creed but the Bible. They're just saying it's okay to take the scriptures seriously when not making everything anthropomorphism or whatever.

Well, and to some degree, everybody can claim that whoever disagrees with them is doing so because they're a biblicist to some degree. So the Catholics can say to all Protestants and Reformed believers, well, you guys are just biblicists or you never would have, the Reformation was just a biblicist.

They could claim it was just a biblicist Reformation anyway because what were they doing? They were getting back to the preaching of the Bible. So they could claim that. I heard recently, I was listening to an interview with R. Scott Clark, and essentially he was claiming all these Baptists, they're claiming to be Reformed, but they can't be Reformed because they're not Pato Baptists.

And essentially he was saying that, well, they're all biblicists. Their problem is that they're biblicists or they would be, or we would all be Presbyterians. That was essentially his argument. And so, yeah, every group can say the group that's went out from them or the group that's diverged from them at some point, well, the problem was that they were biblicists.

But I think that's not really what's going on. We're disagreeing over particular doctrinal points, not just, and then honestly, I'm not saying that any of these things aren't important. I think they are very important.

I think that the discussion, making sure that we understand God right is the most important thing. You know, what was it that Tozer said? What you think about when you think about God is the most important thing about you.

So that's, I don't want to sound like I'm saying that's unimportant. However, I will say for the average Christian who really loves the Lord and loves the scripture and loves the local church, honestly, some of these things are getting off into weeds, getting off into areas of speculation when it comes to some of the things you were mentioning earlier about thinking about divine simplicity and it gets to a point where the average person, I'm saying the average person with, who really does seek to understand the Lord as revealed in the scripture is gonna have trouble maintaining a simplicity of faith when thinking through a lot of these issues because they are complex and they're also in some ways very speculative instead of simply trusting the way that God has revealed himself in the scripture.

The Need for the Church, Creeds, and Historical Continuity

Yeah, yeah, I think that there's always tension. You can always err. I think it, was it Luther that used an analogy of the horse? You know, it's like, you can be like a drunk and try to climb up one side of the horse and fall off the other, you know?

That's right.

And so, but that's why we need the church.

That's right.

And not just, not only the local church, I'm saying, we do need to listen to those who've gone before us, but we can also always check them. With what? With the scripture.

That's right.

But if you find yourself reading the Bible and coming to conclusions that no one else has come to, well, you sure have a high view of yourself if you think you're right and everyone else is wrong.

Right.

Furthermore, the way that we articulate the faith has been tested and tried over 2 ,000 years now. And it'd be foolish, you know, like for example, someone's like, I'm gonna come up with a different word besides Trinity, you know?

Yeah.

And you're like, that's really not helpful, you know? In fact, and here's what happens too. And so one thing I was gonna say is the problem with like Biblicism or even another term, Christian nationalism, which is a whole different debate.

The problem with some of these terms is there's so many different definitions, right?

Well, and I also think we don't wanna run into a non-historic kind of Christianity that just is, well, you know, our non-denominational Bible church, community church was started by Brother Tim 10 years ago.

And that's as far back in church history as we go. Well, no, our churches need, like whether or not it's a part of your confession of faith, I would tell any pastor, look, take some Wednesday nights, go through the Apostolic Creed, or the Apostles' Creed, go through the Nicene Creed, go through the Chalcedonian Creed.

That's not gonna hurt your people, you know? I mean, that's gonna be good. That's gonna help them. Teach, do a church history class on Wednesday nights. Man, that's gonna help your people.

Amen, yeah, we, that's right. We need not think of the Christian faith as I'm going off in the corner with my Bible. And it's really individualistic because that's just like, basically it's like, people think, well, whatever I get out of the Bible, you know, like you go to the worst case scenario, again, the worst definition of biblicism is going to the Sunday school class and saying, well, what this passage means to me is, and it's like, no, that's not, you can't do it that way, right?

There is, and here's the thing too, a lot of people who would even claim, you know, well, I'm a biblicist, they actually have 2000 years of church history that are feeding into their understanding of the scriptures, whether they admit it or not.

And I'm saying that's a good thing, you know?

Yeah, I think it's a good thing.

Liberty of Conscience and the Limits of Confessional Documents

Now, on the other side is trying to use these things as a club to beat Christians overhead. So for example, with us, with the 16 and nine, this is practical in our church. You don't have to be a strict confessionalist to be a member of our church.

I actually think that's against the spirit of the confession itself. I think it's against liberty of conscience. So, you know, I think that to use manmade documents as a club, you know, goes against the spirit of Christian unity.

But, you know, going back to, do I think it would be good for Southern Baptist churches to affirm the Nicene Creed? Yes, of course. Do I smell something a bit fishy with how all this is coming out?

Yes.

Is there some sort of, could it be there's some sort of movement to like get rid of certain professors or something that are trying to push forth, so for example, there's lots of missing in the Nicene Creed.

You don't have the local church. You don't have repent and believe the gospel. You don't have justification by faith alone, you know? So there are, it should just be a baseline. Yes, we affirm this, that should be obvious.

And then, you know, like I've already stated my case, I'm just beating a dead horse. I think it's helpful to have just a better confessional statement, you know? But anyway, what do you think?

Well, and I would also, you know, as you said, it doesn't say enough. And I think part of the issue, and this goes back to what we were saying about the Baptist faith and message earlier, the Baptist faith and message is a document that was constructed to be vague.

It was constructed to be, you guys can disagree and still both affirm this document. That's how it was put together. They wanted it to be a big tent document, at least by the 2000 version. That was the goal, I think, was to make it a document that the broad swath of the SBC could all be okay with, could all agree with.

And so because it's constructed that way, it doesn't have specific enough language in some places that we really would want it to have more specific language. And then the other problem that you've already mentioned is even where it does have specific language, you have people wanting to redefine the words.

You know, so I would say the Baptist faith and message already has specific enough language on that pastors should only be men, right? It has specific enough language on that. And we're still having a problem with it.

The problem isn't the language. The problem is people are wanting to, you know, they're wanting to redefine what pastor means or something like that. And so you're never gonna be able to have a document that it's wording protects you from people wanting to redefine the word.

Yeah.

You know, like I said, we're gonna be going to Utah in July. And one of the issues you run into when you talk to a lot of people in the Mormon church is that they use the same words that we do, but they have completely different definition.

Words like atonement or testimony, Jesus Christ. They don't mean in there to them what the Bible teaches those things to mean.

And that's where the creedal statements and confessions are so helpful.

That's right. Because we need to be able to say, well, no, what do you mean by that word? Well, this is what we mean when we say that word.

That's where I would, and it's in that vein where I say the creeds and the confessions are necessary. Not that we're taken away from the Bible at all, but necessary to articulate and clearly say, this is what we believe about the Bible.

So, you know, for example, the Jehovah's Witnesses down the road from us, they'll, you know, like, what do you guys believe here? We believe the Bible. Okay, well, they believe the Bible. We believe the Bible.

So who's right? Well, here, we're articulating, this is specifically what we believe about the Bible. And we stand in 2000 years, a long line of faithful brothers and sisters who believe the same thing, you know?