Tag: confessional revision

The Chapter Twenty-Three Paragraph Three Debate

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Resistance to the American revisions to the Westminster Standards takes different forms.  All objections to the American Presbyterian church’s changes proceed from discomfort with political liberalism of the John Locke variety, even if the focus of historical attention wanders (is it the postwar (WWII) consensus that is the problem or the protections of religious freedom that Jefferson and Madison introduced?).  For that reason, objections to the American revisions can take the following forms:

1) The 1787 changes were not substantial since the revisers did not revise the Larger Catechism where church teaching still gives magistrates grounds to suppress false religion (the common references here are WLC 108 which does not refer to the magistrate and WLC 191 which does);

2) The 1787 revisions, even if they did change the Confession, do not require church officer today to reject the original Westminster Confession;

3) The revision of chapter twenty-three shifts the grounds from protecting Presbyterian churches exclusively to the magistrate’s responsibility to protect all Protestant denominations.

This last objection is arguably the most common and it gives cover to the argument that the magistrate has a responsibility to promote (not maintain, the language of the confession) the true religion.  This is, by the way, an odd argument for confessional Presbyterians to make since it is basically a National Association of Evangelicals approach.  If Presbyterians were serious about being Presbyterian, why would they want the magistrate to protect churches that the Westminster Confession regards as “less pure” than the “more pure” churches of the Reformed confessions? 

Be that as it may, the revision of chapter twenty-three is still odd because it says more than what ChristNats (or ChristNat adjacent) want the confession to say.

The best reading of the chapter for Christian Nationalism purposes is in the confession’s own words:

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief.

If that were all the confessional revision said, ChristNats would win the debate.  Here you have the magistrate as a nursing father (not a tranny, of course) protecting the common faith of Christ.  That sounds like the revisers were making room for Baptists; Methodists were not yet a factor in United States Protestantism.  You also have an explicit reference to “denominations,” a word that became much more common among sociologists a century later for understanding the unity and diversity of Anglo-American Protestantism. 

This part of the chapter also explicitly refers to churchly activity such as “sacred functions,” “government and discipline” of the church, “profession” of faith, and church officers (“ecclesiastical persons”).

So far, the revision of chapter twenty-three, paragraph three, no matter what we do with the Larger Catechism, sounds fairly friendly to Protestantism as the preferred religion in the United States (now if only the ChristNats would avoid the old tactic of calling R2K “Lutheran,” as if – get this – Lutheranism were beyond the pale of Protestantism). 

But!

The revision of chapter twenty-three does not stop with the magistrate as a nursing father protecting generic Protestantism.  If that is what the revisers had intended, they should have stopped – in a Full Stop way – with this language (to repeat):

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief.

The American Presbyterian officers who revised the Confession of Faith did not stop there. Instead, they added the most troubling language and the highest hurdles for ChristNats who want to find a home in the American revisions.  This is what the American church added to chapter twenty-three:

It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance.

Civil magistrates – who do not need to be Christian, by the way – have a DUTY to protect all their people.  “Duty” is the same word used to describe the responsibility of magistrates to protect “the church of our common Lord.”  This word choice would seem to indicate the same responsibility to non-Protestants as the one as “nursing father” (not a tranny, of course) to Protestants. 

Of course, the language of “all their people” indicates that magistrates have a duty to protect (not maintain) people who are not professing Protestants. 

The magistrate’s duty is precisely to protect such people, whether on the basis (“pretense”) of accusations of false religion or infidelity, from “any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury.”  In other words, the magistrate, acting as “nursing father” (not a tranny, of course), has a duty to protect non-Protestants from persecution.

That duty is at odds with suppressing false religion, such as passing and enforcing blasphemy or Sunday laws. 

But if the revised chapter twenty-three supports religious freedom in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution manner – which conflicts bigly with ChristNat arguments – notice also what the revision says not merely about personal or individual beliefs but also organized non-Protestant religion.  The magistrate has a duty to see that:

all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance.

This would seem to apply to both non-Protestant Christians (ecclesiastical assemblies) and to Jewish believers (religious assemblies). “Assemblies” is a curious word since it is a word that characterized both the highest judicatory in the Church of Scotland as well as the legislatures of colonies and later states like Virginia and Pennsylvania. If the revisers of the Confession had wanted to indicate that they needed to live with Jews and Roman Catholics in the United States and that those Americans needed to be able legally to hold their own non-Protestant faiths, they did not need to add that assemblies of believers other than Protestants should be able to assemble (what assemblies do) beyond maintaining (not promoting) their own private convictions. But that was not what the revisions did. Instead, the revised chapter twenty-third chapter of the Confession of faith taught that the magistrate has a DUTY!! to protect the persons of non-Protestants and also to protect their assemblies.

The debate between ChristNats and regular Presbyterians over chapter twenty-three boils down to this: ChristNats prefer that the revision stopped with the phrase, “any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief.”  Regular Presbyterians instead MAINTAIN AND PROMOTE the entire revised chapter, all the way to the magistrate’s duty to protect “the religious and ecclesiastical assemblies” of non-Protestants. 

From DGH on Critiquing Westminster Submitted on 2015 02 12 at 11:15 a.m.

Published on by D. G. Hart11 Comments

Mark,

I understand that you live in Canada and do historical theology and so may be unfamiliar with Presbyterian developments in the United States. But when you want to revise the Shorter Catechism Q. 1 with “To glorify God and Christ and enjoy them, through the Spirit,” you may not understand how much you are following the trail blazed by those American Presbyterians who wanted to gut the Westminster Standards of their hard Calvinist edge.

Maybe you can recall the writings from the 1890s of Benjamin Warfield and W. G. T. Shedd against confessional revision. Their arguments failed and the PCUSA went ahead and added chapters to the Confession of Faith on the Holy Spirit and the Love of God. The thinking (if you can call it that) was that the Confession didn’t say much about the Holy Spirit or the love of God and so needed explicit statements — as if you can’t find the Holy Spirit wherever the divines invoked the Word of God or as if the chapters on salvation and its application are not affirmations of God’s love.

The kicker of this revision was that it set up the 1906 merger between the PCUSA and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church — a body that in 1810 had explicitly rejected Calvinism’s harder edges. Affirming the Holy Spirit and the love of God sweetened the deal and made Warfield worry.

So when you add the language about Christ and the Holy Spirit to Q. 1, do you have in mind some kind of merger between the PCA and the Presbyterian Church of Canada? Your later explanation is helpful to a point. But because you continue to live in the world of seventeenth-century English speaking theologians and don’t seem to pay heed to historical contexts of closer proximity, I do worry about this latest move.

Van Der Molen Pulls Up and Chats A While

Published on by D. G. Hart292 Comments

Our typical interactions with the Indiana attorney and URC elder, who appears to be anti-2k all the time, have been of the drive-by variety in comm boxes at various blogs. But now Mark Van Der Molen has outdone himself and provided a substantial rendering of the history of the revision of the Belgic Confession, Article 36, on the civil magistrate. Particularly intriguing are the revisions’ emergence in the context of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod, an international Reformed ecumenical body that offered to churches like the Orthodox Presbyterian Church a “conservative” alternative to either Carl McIntire’s International Council of Christian Churches or the liberal Protestant World Council of Churches. Readers should check Van Der Molen’s account on their own. They should also be aware of the debate over whether confessional subscription to the revised Belgic extends to footnotes.

Instead of weighing in on another communion’s internal debates, I want to challenge several implications that follow Van Der Molen’s narrative:

First, he claims that 2k advocates have used the revision of Belgic 36 to:

1. remove the magistrate’s concern with the first table of the Law,

2. remove the magistrate’s subjection to the authority of the Word of God, and

3. remove the magistrate’s purpose in the advancement of Christ’s kingdom.

I can’t speak for all 2kers (particularly Scott Clark and Mike Horton, who have subscribed the Three Forms of Unity), but I am not sure that Van Der Molen describes accurately their motives or the consequences of their position. This construction is again a common tactic among 2k’s critics, that somehow 2kers want to see God’s word flouted, and Christ’s kingdom reduced, and the gospel denied. In point of fact, and an attorney should know this, the arguments of 2kers do not prove what their motives are. Also, important to note, is that 2kers have denied explicitly having such anti-biblical, antinomian, and anti-kingdom motivations. Instead, they have repeatedly affirmed that they promote 2k for the good of the church, the defense of the gospel, and the rule of Christ among his people. Doesn’t such testimony count for anything with an officer of the court (I guess not when he is prosecuting alleged offenders)? Of course, 2kers could be confused, foolish, or simply wrong about the effects of 2k. But Van Der Molen once again engages in the overreach common among 2k’s critics (not to mention Rush Limbaugh or Fox News).

Second, Van Der Molen has a Netherlands-centric reading of Reformed history. For instance, he accuses 2kers of re-writing history to make it fit their view (meanwhile he does not notice how 2kers have written a great deal about the larger history of Reformed Protestantism than his narrow topic of revising Belgic 36):

What is not legitimate is a “two kingdoms” re-writing of history to suggest the entire first table has been entirely removed from the magistrate’s purview. Kuyper did not argue for a “table 1-ectomy”. More importantly, neither did our Reformed forbears when they revised the confession. Until we see a “two kingdoms” proponent successfully overture for a second-table-only revision, our confessional subscription today yet stands with the churchmen who adopted the RES Declaration and the revised Belgic 36 which retains the principle that the magistrate’s tasks are subject to both tables of God’s law.

This is a questionable reading of history on several grounds. First, Van Der Molen shows no awareness of the revisions that American Presbyterians made to their confession 150 years before the Belgic revisions. Last I checked, Presbyterians were part of the Reformed churches. The American revision includes this language, which I admit is different from the Belgic revisions:

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance. (23.4, emphasis added)

But in narrowing his historical analysis to the Belgic’s revision, Van Der Molen gives the impression that the Presbyterians don’t count (or that when he cites VanDrunen or me, Orthodox Presbyterians are not bound by Belgic as church officers).

Also troubling about Van Der Molen’s references to the Belgic’s revision’s context is a complete disregard for what happened to the RES or its member churches. The GKN, one of the big players in establishing the RES, no longer exists, having run out of confessional steam in 2004 to join the national generically Protestant church of the Dutch monarchy. Nor does Van Der Molen observe that the RES itself no longer exists, having in2006 voted itself out of existence when it joined the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a body dominated by liberal Reformed and Presbyterian communions. So if Van Der Molen wants his church brethren to respect their forefathers, he may want to specify which forefathers they might be. The GKN? The CRC? The RES? Is Van Der Molen really pinning his hopes on that group of Reformed churches? Talk about re-writing history.

Third, and relatedly, Van Der Molen ignores the ecumenical relations that governed the churches that revised the Belgic Confession. He concludes by stating it is time now “for the Reformed churches to recover the Reformed confessions, Belgic 36 incuded.” Well, how about the American revisions to the Westminster Confession? Does Van Der Molen really want to recover that confession? Or how about the ecumenical relations that may bring tensions between the existing Belgic 36 and OP Confession 23? Did the CRC or GKN (or the Covenanters, for that matter) ever make teaching on the civil magistrate the basis for fraternal relations? Have the URC and OPC objected to the other communion’s teachings on the civil magistrate in attempting to produce a psalter-hymnal? Has Westminster California or Mid-America Seminary ever required its Orthodox Presbyterian ministers to own the Belgic’s teaching on the magistrate and forsake their own communion’s confession?

To my knowledge, the answer is no. But Van Der Molen seems to think that Belgic 36 now needs to govern all the Reformed believers. Why? Three syllables, two words: culture wars. Theonomy, the religious right, and certain varieties of neo-Calvinism (including the Federal Vision) are all reactions to the perceived secularization of the United States in a period known as “Post-Protestant America.” Conversely, 2k is a set of arguments with the aim of steering the churches away from “putting their trust in princes.” Both have developed at the same cultural moment. One has a very narrow reading of Reformed history. The other does not.