Although one might declare a scruple ...

Every officer in the Presbyterian church – elders, deacons, ministers of word and sacrament – must answer “yes” to a long list of ordination questions, including this one: “Will you fulfill your office in obedience to Jesus Christ, under the authority of Scripture, and be continually guided by our confessions?”
So, setting aside for now the monumental question of just what obedience to Jesus means, and likewise leaving aside the question of scriptural authority, what does it mean to be “guided by our confessions”?
What are these documents – some of which go back more than 1,500 years? What meaning do these premodern texts and the Reformation era and 20th-century ones, as well, have for a postmodern age? How ought we to read them? What about the stuff we really don’t like? Or with which we fundamentally disagree? Where did they come from? Who wrote them? Why?
Off and on during this season of Lent, I, and others, will post some reflections on the creeds and confession of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) here, and invite your response. Oh, and what other questions should we pose to these documents?