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Originally Posted by Red Beetle  From The Blog:
If Cyprian and the Belgic Confession are correct, and “outside of the church there is no salvation” then these floating, nominal Christians are placing themselves in spiritual jeopardy."
First of all, let's be clear. The Belgic Confession of Faith does NOT teach that one has to be a member of a local particular church or they are in danger of going to hell. Justification is NOT based upon membership in a local church. This is Roman Catholicism, not Calvinism. |
Be careful what you accuse Prof. Clark of, RB. He did not claim that justification is by local church membership. Neither he, nor the Belgic, nor the Westminster Confession teaches those things. They all speak, however, with one voice - saying that it is EXTREMELY ABNORMAL for a person who is in Christ to be outside the membership of a local congregation and submitting (a la 1 Peter) to the eldership of that congregation for their spiritual edification and care. If you carefully read these documents, you'll see that they state merely that there is no "ORDINARY" possibility of salvation. Obviously there will be extreme cases, which these confessional documents allow for - but if one is a professing Christian, it is expected that membership in a local body will be sought out. To steadfastly refuse to join a church is problematic, and is a dangerous road to take.
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Justification is ONLY based upon the active and passive obedience of Christ imputed to the elect. The fact that we do not read about the necessity of local church membership in Article 23 of the Belgic Confession Of Faith only demonstrates that R. Scott Clark has misunderstood Articles 27-29.
You might hear the pope make such an absurd claim when he visits the U.S., but you will not find this view in Chapter 11 of the Westminster Confession of Faith. |
As has already been pointed out, the Westminster Confession and the Belgic are univocal on the issue of local membership.