# What is ex animo subscription?



## py3ak (Oct 17, 2012)

Carl Trueman has a good blog post (including a fantastic quote from B.B. Warfield) on two ways of signing a confession.

From the article:


> There is all the difference in the world between the one who signs a confession because he passionately believes it to be an accurate summary of scriptural teaching and the one who signs it because, at a pinch, he can just about make it say what he believes the Bible to teach.



The first is what we mean when we say that this is a confessional board: and that is why, though we welcome many who have reservations, and are happy for those who are still undecided or just beginning to learn to ask questions, the official position of the board is that we will not provide a platform for advocacy against that system of doctrine.


----------



## Contra_Mundum (Oct 17, 2012)

Love the T-man.

Thanks, Ruben.


----------



## Semper Fidelis (Oct 17, 2012)

I love the Warfield quote:



B.B. Warfield said:


> I wish to declare that I sign these Standards not as a necessary form which must be submitted to, but gladly and willingly as the expression of a personal and cherished conviction and further that the system taught in these symbols is the system which will be drawn out of the Scriptures in the prosecution of the teaching to which you have called me. Not, indeed, because commencing with that system the Scriptures can be made to teach it, but because commencing with the Scriptures I cannot make them teach anything else.



I wonder what percentage of Seminary professors today would agree with that statement.

Not nearly as eloquently, but I've been extremely concerned about the attitude that I see expressed about the Confessions by Reformed Churchmen. Arguments are made on the floors of Presbyteries, at GA, and in committee reports that are clearly anti-Confessional. 

I've seen, first hand, men stretching the Confession to say precisely what they want. In one case, a paedo-communionist stated that he could read the Confessions in such a way that he could see his position in them and he was not required to take the several exceptions to the Standards. What concerned me more greatly, however, was the broad indifference to the matter. As long as the man had a Biblical reason for what he believed and he was comfortable subscribing to the document it was sufficient grounds to ordain him as a minister. The "new normal" is not what the Confessions teach but what the Church tolerates. In the end, I'd rather we actually change our Constitution to reflect that we don't have any convictions in the matter because it alarms me that we can actually employ a Reader Response hermeneutic to our Constitutional documents.

I was listening to an interesting exchange recently (can't remember what podcast) but it was a history of the PCUSA. I believe it was at the turn of the 20th century that some men were beginning to deny the historicity of Moses and some of the older Presbyters were able to get the GA to declare it out of bounds by a majority. The point, however, was that the slide had already begun so that, within 20-30 years Modernism had become the new normal. 

I sometimes fear that we're within a generation of the same problem.


----------



## py3ak (Oct 18, 2012)

Perhaps it illustrates Dr. Trueman's point well that Finney expressed an agreement with the Westminster Standards "as far as he understood them". Given that, according to Iain Murray's report, _he had never read them_ that was kind of an easy thing to say; but it was enough for him to be received!


----------



## Mushroom (Oct 18, 2012)

Finney is exactly the man who came to mind when I first read this thread...


----------



## sevenzedek (Oct 18, 2012)

Thanks for letting me learn.


----------



## py3ak (Oct 18, 2012)

Finney is a particularly egregious example, Brad, but I think Rich is right to be concerned with less blatant cases, where people are content to use the words of the Confession, _as long as they are not held to the meaning_. In one way it's not as bad as Finney's misleading answer, because they have at least read the Confession; in other, it is quite dismaying, because they apparently think "agreeing" can also mean "misconstruing in a manner acceptable to myself."


----------



## MW (Oct 18, 2012)

"Ex animo" set in contrast to the union card is a good illustration. The difference is, for one man the confession of his faith is his life while for another it is nothing more than his livelihood.


----------

