The question may come as a surprise, but it is being seriously raised by the Christian Reformed Churches’ Belgic Confession Translation Committee which in its 1979 Report alleged that the Reformed Churches have for over 400 years been holding as their official confession a wrong and inferior version of that creed. Faced with the assignment to make a new, up–to-date translation of this historic creed, the committee decided that it should go back to its earliest French version. It alleges that there is an early obscure draft of that creed which differs materially from those which the churches have officially adopted and held as their confession, and that this earlier version of Guido deBres was in the opinion of the committee preferable to the one in current use. The committee thereupon proceeded to translate this earlier version instead of the official one. Now the committee has been ordered to translate also the churches’ official version; the matter is to be studied further and is to come up for resolution at the 1981 Synod. A prime mover in promoting the idea that we have through the centuries had a wrong, inferior version of this confession is Rev. Leonard Verduin, a member of the committee, who has done much specialized study and writing in the history of the Reformation and who has been industriously criticizing our official Belgic Confession in a series of some 18 (?) articles in the Christian Reformed Churches‘ Banner.

We may briefly trace the committee’s argument. It alleges that while Guido deBres wrote his original confession in a time of persecution, soon after its publication in 1561 a change took place somewhat like that in the days of the Emperor Constantine. Churches which had been persecuted, were now able to get the support of the government. It claims that Calvin wanted to get such support while deBres did not.

It alleges that “John Calvin made his debut in the southern Low Countries with a tract in which he reproached the Flemish evangelicals for failing to work toward an established status for their version of the faith” and that there was a deep and serious rift between Calvin and the Flemish, including deBres, over this matter. “Less than two decades after Calvin spelled out to the Flemish how they should conduct themselves, deBres wrote his Confession, in 1559, from within that very camp that Calvin had chided. Again he apparently paid little attention to Calvin’s call for a different policy.” The committee claims that Geneva (and Calvin) kept this creed from being published “it seems, for two years;” after that it was printed anyway.

When deBres’ Confession began to circulate in printed form steps were taken, almost at once, to divest the delinquent Flemish of their new creedal symbol. As early as 1565 it was proposed, by individuals who had begun to heed Calvin’s advice, that “at each and every meeting of synod henceforth the Confession is to be read in its entirety, as much to give opportunity for expressing our unity as to give opportunity for changes and improvement (p. 537).

The committee report gratuitously makes out of this last provision a somewhat less than honest attack on that creed, alleging that “The words ‘as much to give opportunity for expressing our unity’ seem to have served to assuage the bitter taste of those other words, ‘to give opportunity for changes and improvements.’” The committee senses more politicking and even a conspiracy!

“The very next year, in 1566, an occult synod convened for the express purpose of revising the Confession . . . at it several conspiring nobles were present, not as spectators, it seems, but as voting members . . .” and “the prime purpose of the 1566 revision was apparently to give the creed . . . a new sponsor and to make it over into the product of the faction that was . . . advocating magisterialization of the reform.” In the subsequent “tug of war” between the two factions and later church dealing with the creed, it is suggested in the report that “the question must be asked if this assembly even knew that an ‘occult’ synod had tampered with the text. It would seem that the ‘occult’ synod had been ‘occult’ indeed, and quite far off the record” (p. 538).

The report asserts further that while the revised text came “down to us by way of the Synod of Dordt,” the earlier text “was almost forgotten and was actually lost until a copy was found in rather recent years.” “So scarce did the original version become that it is doubtful if the fathers of Dordt were even acquainted with it at all.” In fact, for practical purposes the committee is really presenting to the public a new discovery! “Our present report is, to the best of our knowledge, the only comprehensive comparison ever made of the original text and the later revision as channeled through the Synod of Dordt” (p. 540, 541).

The last part of the committee report devotes some 21 pages (pp. 582–603) to a comparison of the differences between the accepted version of the creed and the obscure earlier version which it preferred and translated. The differences are many, some minor, others more extensive. The committee, for example, finds the later, accepted version showing “a more rationally speculative and abstract tendency than we see in deBres” (p. 583). It observes that “while deBres accentuated . . . the dignity and nobility of God, giving him all glory in man’s creation, the revisionists underscored much more the responsibility and capability of man as created by God” (p. 585). It finds a difference in the treatment the two versions give of the doctrine of predestination with the official version “moving” toward a more symmetrical theology of election and reprobation (pp. 587–9), a move it sees as contributing to later and present problems with this doctrine. While the earlier version stresses the benefit of excommunication, the official version stresses it as a duty with a more “punitive” purpose (p. 593). While deBres emphasized the destruction of the world in God’s dreadful judgment, the accepted version stressed its cleansing (p. 597).

It observes a “higher” view of the sacraments as “signs and seals” in the official version than in the earlier one (pp. 593–594, 600–601). What it especially stresses, however, is the way in which the later , official creed seeks the support and official backing of the government as expressed in the controversial and later altered Article 36. Its preferences are clearly for the obscure older ver sion which it saw fit to translate.

Professor Faber’s Study and Evaluation

Obviously not many people are familiar enough with 16th Century Reformed church history to fairly evaluate or dispute a number of the committee’s allegations about the earlier version of the creed and how it came to be revised into the one officially adopted and held by the churches for three and a half centuries. One who is able to give us the benefit of such an independent study and evaluation is Professor Jelle Faber of the Canadian (and American) Reformed Churches’ theological school in Hamilton, Ontario. He has written from time to time about this report in the Canadian Reformed Magazine, Clarion, of which he is editor, published in Winnipeg. His observations are the more significant in view of the fact that he comes across as a very careful scholar, remarkably sympathetic and charitable in dealing even with a heretical Roman Catholic such as Hans Kung.

“Thrilled and Appalled”

In the July 19, 1979 issue of Clarion, introducing the report to his readers, Editor Faber stated that he was “both thrilled and appalled” by it. [I was thrilled by the fact that we now have a translation into modern English of the original, personal text of the Confession of Faith as written by Guido deBres and published in 1561.” “I checked the translation with the original and, although I have some objections in detail, this translation evokes the freshness and lucidity of deBres’ French.” “At the same time I was appalled by the manner in which this scholarly fine translation is used in an unprecedented at tack on the Confession of Faith in its revised and now ecclesiastically binding text.” “The whole interpretation by the Christian Reformed Committee of the differences between the editions of 1561, 1566, and 1619 is debatable.” “When it speaks about the ‘course of conflict between two schools of thought’, it overestimates the difference between the original text of 1561 and the revised texts of 1566 and 1619. While the main revision already took place according to a procedure set by the Synod of Antwerp 1565, the difference in church-state relationships and in ‘theological nuances’ were not great. Does Report 33 not invent fictions of contrasts between Calvin and deBres . . . ? The Report reads in this respect as a bad detective story.” The committee’s treatment of the creed as a mere “historical document” “shows that the Reformed concept of binding to an authentic text of the confession, established by a General Synod, is abandoned. Acceptance of deBres’ original version by the . . . Committee is nothing but acceptance of a historical document without strict ecclesiastical binding in the present. So the scholarly translation of deBres’ words becomes a weapon against deBres’ and our confession. The first is thrilling, the second appalling and dangerous.”

A Fictitious Conflict

In the August 25 issue of Clarion Professor Faber continues the discussion of this report, observing, “Everyone likes a well-told story. There are some story-tellers who so ingeniously weave truth and fiction together that you are almost inclined to believe everything they come up with.” “If the matter were not so serious and if the authors themselves were not so convinced of the reality of their narration, one would compare the writers of this Report with such story-tellers.” He proceeds to show by citing evidence that the case which the Report seeks to develop is essentially such a piece of fiction.

On the basis of this study Professor Faber says, “I do not believe the story of Report 33 at all. I even become indignant when I see how Guido deBres is played off against John Calvin and especially how this fabricated story is used in an attack on ‘the current confession.’” He points out that the Report ignores “the important study by F.L. Rutgers Calvijn’s invloed op de Reformatie in de Nederlanden which “calls de Bres a pupil of Calvin, who stood in personal relation to the Reformer” showing that “deBres met Calvin, studied under his leadership and acknowledged him as his teacher, who had formed him theologically and still guided him. Already in 1556 deBres corresponded with Calvin, whom he must have regarded as his spiritual father.”

Faber further shows that the Report pointedly ignores the “well-known fact” that deBres’ 1561 Belgic Confession closely parallels the French Confession of 1559. That French Confession “was the model” for and “is called the mother of the Belgic Confession.” “Calvin wrote the draft of this French Confession and therefore the Reformer of Geneva can be called the spiritual grandfather, or ‘ghost author,’ if you like-of our Belgic Confession. Instead of playing off Guido deBres against Calvin, Report 33 would have acted more responsibly by pointing toward the similarity of thought of Calvin and deBres, the French and the Belgic Confession.”*

Professor Faber states further, “I do not believe the existence of a fundamental contrast between Calvin and deBres, or between the text of the Belgic Confession in 1561 and ‘the Revision’ . . . The political climate did not change soon after 1561; there is in 1566 no dawn of ‘a new and different era.’” He shows how the committee report misrepresents the whole thrust of Calvin’s tract. In that tract “Calvin did not reproach ‘the Flemish evangelicals for failing to work toward an established status for their version of the faith,’” but “He wrote against cowards who in their hearts acknowledged the truth of the gospel, but under seemingly pious appeal to the examples of Naaman (2 Kings 5:18) or Nicodemus continued to partake of Roman idolatry,” a conviction exactly reflected by deBres in the last half of Article XXVIII of his Belgic Confession. “DeBres versus Calvin? Nonsense.” “DeBres was no Nicodemite!” “Calvin’s ‘policy’ . . . was also the ‘policy’ of his faithful student and pupil Guido deBres. Calvin’s tracts and deBres’ Confession agree rather than disagree. Report 33 is mistaken. It should be rewritten and publicly revoked.”

Concerning Predestination

In the November 3 Clarion Professor Faber considered at some length the claim of the committee report that there was a big difference between the deBres’ earlier version of the creed and the later official version in their dealing with the doctrine of election and reprobation in Article 16. He shows that this is “another myth, comparable to the unhistoric fiction of a controversy between deBres and Calvin.”

The committee translation of the early version he observes at one significant point appears to be the result of following an apparent printing error already corrected by the Antwerp Synod in 1565. “They restored the Confession according to deBres’ original intention.” “The whole story of Report 33 about a shift in dogmatic mood, namely, in the direction of a strict symmetry between election and reprobation, is nonsense. If you want to speak of a symmetry between God’s attributes of mercy and justice, you will find it even more in the original, broader deBres version of 1561 than in the revision of 1566.” Some scholars in the past, have, in fact, seen in the revision a toning down of the doctrine of election in deference to the Lutherans-exactly the opposite of what the committee claims! “Although I, for one” says Faber, “believe that the shortening of Article 16 in 1566 was a stylistic matter, it is remarkable that nobody ever in t he revision of Article 16 discovered a trend to “emerging scholasticism” and a shift from Calvin to Beza, or some development of this kind. This is an invention by the Committee Report 33.

Church and State

Finally in the December 1 Clarion Professor Faber considered the controversial Article 36 which deals with the relationship of the government to the church. He points out that whereas in the Netherlands a number of historians and theologians (he names 11 of them) had maintained that the “the revision of Article 36 in 1566 was caused by the new insight that the text of 1561 had commissioned the civil government with too broad a task in regard to the church” in America this committee (and others) have given an exactly opposite explanation, that the article was revised because the earlier version’s assignment of responsibility to government was considered “not broad enough!” A contrast which can be read by scholars in two such opposite ways is hardly clear evidence for either claim. Professor Faber’s own opinion is that “the differences are, basically and really, slight” and he regards them “as mainly mere stylistic changes.” Choosing one version instead of the other will not resolve the problems about Article 36.

Dr. L. Praamsma ‘s Observations

In our Christian Reformed Church circles it is unlikely that anyone could be found whose familiarity with the church history of the Reformation approaches that of Dr. Louis Praamsma. A biographer of John Calvin, who has taught in Calvin Seminary and recently wrote a number of volumes of church history in the Dutch which are in the process of being translated into English, and with a reputation as a careful scholar, he was asked by the C.R. Synod to serve as an added member of the translating committee but declined because of poor health. In the May 30, 1980 Banner (pp. 26, 27) he reacted to the series of articles on the ‘career’ of the Belgic Confession, written by Rev. L. Verduin, the member of the translating committee who was promoting the idea of the committee expressed in the Report. Dr. Praamsma expressed his “increasing amazement” as he read these articles. Especially in the accusation that there was a “hidden agenda at the Synod of Dordt” with that synod serving “political rather than theological purposes” he saw simply a rerun of old Arminian slanders of that Synod, which demanded his protest “because there is no solid grounds for it.”

He wrote, “I would also protest against many of the theses of Verduin, because they are no more than hypotheses.” Prominent among the 12 such groundless guesses which he lists are those which allege the conflict between Calvin the Flemish evangelicals and their churches. “With due respect for the scholarship and ingenuity of Mr. Verduin all these theses are, in my view, assumptions.” Dr. Praamsma’s observations parallel rather closely those of Professor Faber.

Conclusions

1. As Professor Faber and Dr. Praamsma have indicated, we have in this report by the committee appointed to translate the Belgic Confession a case being made to justify the committee’s setting aside the churches official historic creed in favor of an earlier almost unknown version. That case is based on the claim that there was serious conflict between the versions, and between deBres and the Flemish churches and Calvin and the other men of Geneva. Especially Professor Faber shows how implausible this case is because it lacks solid grounds and ignores evidence against it.

It is striking that although the committee report argues its case with vigor and enthusiasm, it at the same time tacitly admits that much of what it brings up is mere guesswork. The report is full of such qualifications as “apparently,” “it seems” etc.

At the end of the argument seeking to promote the early version in opposition to the official revision we are given these remarkable conclusions; “We want to stress (1) that our analysis or interpretation of historical materials is also, of course, provisional and ought to be regarded in that light.” Again, “We want to emphasize (2) that we have no desire, in what follows to make an airtight case for the 1559/61 Confession in contrast to later revisions. The complications of history and historical rootedness of all man’s efforts , including the very best, will not allow us to put this in black and white terms.” (If it does not want to bring the church to any firm conclusions why has it labored so mightily to press such conclusions?) (p. 541).

Despite its disclaimers of wanting to reach firm conclusions the committee report at the end asks the Synod to approve its substituting of the old version for the revised and official one (p. 603)! It ought to be self-evident that such a collection of conjectures and guesses as these hardly constitute solid grounds that should induce a church to change its official creed.

2. Furthermore, the committee‘s manner of dealing with the creed, trying to substitute for it something else because it finds the older unapproved draft more in harmony with present day conditions and its own tastes than the one the church holds, is an irresponsible way to deal with the churches‘ official confession of faith. I may find this or that detail of the committee’s argument personally appealing, but that does not give me or anyone else the right to smuggle our personal opinions or whims into the official confessions of the church! This procedure is, as Professor Faber properly observed, nothing but an effort to change the confessions without going through the proper gravamen procedure to make such changes. 3. The committee‘s approach to and handling of the creeds treats t hem as mere historical documents, subjects for discussion, but binding neither them nor anyone else. As Professor Faber aptly pointed out the committee said, “For by definition a creed written at a certain time, is an historical document. In our view it should not be rewritten or revised but only translated, at most, by later generations.” “This statement shows that the Reformed concept of binding to an authentic text of the confession established by a General Synod, is abandoned. Acceptance of deBres’ original version by the Christian Reformed Committee is nothing but acceptance of a historical document without strict ecclesiastical binding in the present. So the scholarly translation of deBres‘ words becomes a weapon against deBres’ and our confession.”

Faber is right. The Committee report is really, as he said, an “attack on the Belgic Confession,” more insidious and more comprehensive, in its implications, than that of Dr. Harry Boer on the Canons of Dordt. It really reduces all the creeds, just as did the Presbyterian Confession of 1967, to a mere collection of historical antiquities which bind no one.* As such an “attack” our synod should firmly r eject it, as the recent synod (too politely) rejected Dr. Boer’s misrepresent at ion of the Canons of Dordt.

*It may be recalled that Rev. Philip Holtrop, one of the members of the committee, in the Feb. 1977 Reformed Journal proposed exactly this policy of treating creeds as historical documents, not to be used to bind anyone in the present. See my article “A New Sales Pitch for Modern Theology” in the May, 1977 OUTLOOK.