Miscellanies 16: On the Unity of the Church

From the PCA Position Paper "Report of the Ad-Interim Committee to Study the Biblical Basis of Church Union":

The basic principle that must be agreed to in the arrangements of any meaningful union will be the wholehearted submission to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the Word of God, with the understanding that the directives of that Word will be over-riding criterion guiding all of the actions of the body. There must be agreement as to the functions of the body. The primary function of the church is to worship. Worship involves the acknowledging of "the true God as God and worshipping and glorifying Him accordingly". This means worshipping only by such exercises as He has revealed in His Word.

The second criterion of the true unity of the body then, will manifest itself in confession. One of the blessed fruits of the Protestant Reformation is the profusion of confessions. Those who had come to understand the truth of the gospel wanted the world to understand what the Bible had to say. To that end they formulated concise statements of what they believed the Bible taught. Do we confess the same teaching? Do we witness to the same truth? "Can two walk together except they be agreed?" (Amos 3:3). We include those who by their history have demonstrated a genuine interest in and devotion to that understanding of the Scriptures that we call the Reformed Faith.

Here we have the teaching that visible church unity is ultimately based on our confession of the truth of the Word of God and whole-hearted submission to it, both of which God causes among his people by his Spirit. Thus the first criterion for measuring church unity is our "worshipping only by such exercises as He has revealed in His Word" (i.e. the Regulative Principle of Worship). The second is our confession of faith. Both are vitally connected.

Also, notice the perspective of this paper on why the Reformed Confessions were written. "Those who had come to understand the truth of the gospel wanted the world to understand what the Bible had to say." In other words, one reason for the existence of the confessions was that the truth of the gospel might be spread to the world. A robust confessionalism does not impede evangelism but rather serves it. Indeed to confess the faith once for all handed down is to evangelize.