Tag: Westminster Confession of Faith

The Chapter Twenty-Three Paragraph Three Debate

Published on by D. G. HartLeave a comment

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. 

Rev Kev vs. The American Reformers (who POUNCED!!)

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

Kevin DeYoung deserves praise for defending John Witherspoon and the American revisions to the Westminster Standards. Some of us were doing this back in the day when the Federal Vision was echoing the theonomists. But the post-liberal turn among Protestant Christian nationalists and Roman Catholic integralists has increased the need for a defense of the American revisions and their harmonization of Reformed teaching and the American Founding (republicanism, constitutional federalism, religious liberty).

The post-liberal Protestants at American Reformer have not welcomed DeYoung’s understanding of American Presbyterians’ revisions of Westminster. Some argue for continuity between the original Westminster Confession and the 1789 revision. Others go farther and assert that even the American Revisions require an affirmation of a religious establishment.

What is largely missing from the critics of DeYoung is attention to the Covenanters (or Reformed Presbyterians) whose views are similar to theirs — the American Founding is seriously flawed — and whose understanding of the civil magistrate was the dominant view among Presbyterians at the time of the Westminster Assembly. DeYoung’s first article does in fact address the corner into which the Covenanters had painted Presbyterians. He wrote:

In 1707, the Act of Union brought together England and Scotland under the name of Great Britain. Many Presbyterians opposed the union as inconsistent with the principles celebrated in the National Covenant (1638) and the Solemn League and Covenant (1643) and as undermining the Revolution Settlement (1690) which restored Presbyterian government to the Established Church in Scotland.

DeYoung later adds the change in Presbyterianism that transpired after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He uses John Coffey, the leading scholar of Samuel Rutherford, to describe that change:

“With the exception of the Reformed Presbyterian Covenanters and some Seceders, eighteenth-century Presbyterians found ways of distancing themselves from the Westminster Assembly’s teaching on the coercive powers of the godly magistrate in matters of religion…. In every part of the English-speaking world, Lockean ideas of religious liberty looked increasingly attractive to Presbyterians who feared Anglican hegemony or saw little prospect of becoming the dominant majority.”

Zachary Garris says the Covenanters are not in the mainstream — that’s true for America today. But it was not true for the people who wrote the Westminster Confession — Presbyterians, Puritans, and Independents from England and Scotland. In fact, Scotland’s covenants with her kings (the Stuarts) who became the kings of England as well set the standard for political theology at the Westminster Assembly. Here’s why:

The Scottish Reformation gained a victory in 1581 with King’s Confession of 1581 by which James VI (later James I of England) vowed, with Parliament, the Kirk, and the people to uphold and defend the true religion (Reformed) and oppose the false religion (Roman Catholicism).

In 1638, this time with Charles I (James’ son) imposing the Book of Common Prayer on the Scottish Kirk, Parliament, the Kirk, and the people ratified the National Covenant. The expectation was for Charles to pledge his allegiance to this covenant because of the original (King’s) covenant with his father.

Soon after the National Covenant, Scottish military went to war with Charles — you guessed it, he didn’t take the vow — in the first of two “Bishop’s Wars” (1639-1640). The Scots’ covenants and war with Charles were the trial run for the English Parliament’s civil war with the king (1642-1649), the same Parliament that called for an overhaul of the Church of England and gave the responsibility to the Westminster Assembly. The English Parliament needed military help from the Scots who in turn gave it conditioned on Parliament’s ratifying an international covenant — the Solemn League and Covenant (1643). Although that covenant had different legal justification from the Scots’ National Covenant, the Solemn League and Covenant extended to England and Wales the same cooperation among the civil government, the church, and the people to uphold the true faith (and oppose the false religion of Rome) in Scotland.

Covenanting and national covenants were hardly peripheral to seventeenth-century Presbyterianism of the Westminster Confession. Covenanting likely explains one of the oddest chapters in the Confession of Faith — chapter 22 on Oaths and Vows. (If you are in a covenanting mind set, you may likely clarify the theological import of promises taken in the civil and ecclesiastical realms.)

If you wonder where Christian Nationalism among Presbyterians comes from, you may well want to look to the Covenanters.

This covenanting backdrop is especially important for understanding the American revision of the Westminster Confession. By the 1780s, the covenanting position was not part of the Presbyterians who comprised the first General Assembly of the PCUSA. That is because the Covenanters had formed their own communion, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. Which is also to say that everyone in the Presbyterian world (England, Scotland, Ireland, the United States, and eventually Canada) gave up on covenants with Scottish monarchs. The lone exceptions were the Covenanters and certain sectors of the Seceders (Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church).

Why the critics of Dr. DeYoung do not resonate with or follow the Covenanters is a mystery. So is their unwillingness to acknowledge that they desire a relationship between the church and civil magistrate like the ones the Covenanters briefly had between 1638 and 1650. There is also a good chance that the American Reformers who pounced on Dr. DeYoung agree with Covenanter assessments of the American Founding. This is the Covenanter understanding of the U.S. Constitution (which puts a dent in American patriotism):

There are moral evils essential to the constitution of the United States, which render it necessary to refuse allegiance to the whole system. In this remarkable instrument, there is contained no acknowledgment of the being or authority of God —there is no acknowledgment of the Christian religion, or professed submission to the kingdom of Messiah. It gives support to the enemies of the Redeemer, and admits to its honours and emoluments Jews, Mahometans, deists, and atheists—It establishes that system of robbery, by which men are held in slavery, despoiled of liberty, and property, and protection. It violates the principles of representation, by bestowing upon the domesticity rant who holds hundreds of his fellow creatures in bondage, an influence in making laws for freemen proportioned to the number of his own slaves. This constitution is, notwithstanding its numerous excellencies, in many instances inconsistent, oppressive, and impious.

Since the adoption of the constitution in the year 1789, the members of the Reformed Presbyterian Church have maintained a constant Testimony against these evils. They have refused to serve in any office which implies an approbation of the constitution, or which is placed under the direction of an immoral law. They have abstained from giving their votes at elections for legislators or officers who must be qualified to act by an oath of allegiance to this immoral system. They could not themselves consistently swear allegiance to that government, in the constitution of which there is contained so much immorality. (Reformation Principles Exhibited, 1807)

The differences between the PCUSA and the RPCNA reflect the changes that occurred throughout the Presbyterian world once most communions abandoned Scotland’s National Covenants. Locke made a lot more sense of British society for accommodating religious diversity than insisting on promises Stuart monarchs had made to Scotland and England. And that difference was an important factor in Witherspoon’s role in revising the Westminster Confession and Catechisms.

Dr. RevKev understands that both the moderates and the evangelicals in the Church of Scotland, as well as the Old Side and New Side Presbyterians in America had no sympathy for Scotland’s covenants. They had move on.

Critics of Dr. RevKev may refuse to be lumped with the Covenanters. That’s fine. But they do need to take the Scottish background into account both to understand the context for the Westminster Assembly and the reasons behind American Presbyterians revising the Confession of Faith.