Thread: Subscription

A quote of interest from Jakob Van Bruggen, The Church Says Amen: An Exposition of the Belgic Confession, p. 17:

The Synod of Dort drew up a form for subscription to the confession by the ministers, in which they declared that they felt and believed from the heart that the doctrine contained in the Confessions was in full agreement with God's Word and that they "consequently" promised to preach this doctrine and not to oppose it.

This Form of Subscription was used until King William established his State Church in 1816. From then on ministers had to declare that they would "accept in good faith the doctrine which, in conformity to God's Word, is contained in the accepted forms of the Church of The Netherlands..." This change opened the way for the view that one had to teach the doctrine of the Confessions not because, but insofar as it conformed to Scripture. In this way Liberalism was given a legal place in the Church.

Yes, that was a bad move. The church should revise anything in a confession which it believes to be unbiblical, but it must not make subscription meaningless by adopting ambiguous phrases like the one above.