Westminster Confession of Faith

1
Westminster Confession of Faith

• Associated with the Shorter and Larger Catechism

2
Historical Framework

• Westminster Assembly was commissioned\in 1643 as
  a result of a promise made by Parliament We will
  reform the English Church along the Scottish
  lines if Scotland will help Parliament overthrow
  Charles I (1600-1649).
• Charles I wanted to impose Anglicanism as the
  religious framework of England. Civil war broke
  out in 1642.

3

• 121 divines and 30 laymen completed the Form of
  Presbyterian Church Government and the Directory
  of Public Worship in 1644.
• This Directory was intended to replace the Book
  of Common Prayer
• Confession was accomplished in 1646, and the
  Shorter Catechism and Larger Catechism were
  written by the next year. The documents produced
  by the Westminster Assembly are known as the
  Westminster Standards. It was the Parliament
  that required Scriptural proofs for each
  theological statement.

4

• Both the governments of England and Scotland
  approved the Confession by February 1649.
• Confession provides the big picture. Its purpose
  can be compared to Calvins (1509-1564)
  intentions for the Institutes as a GUIDE and
  RESOURCE when his commentaries were read. Both
  Calvin and the divines pointed to Scripture as
  the sole AUTHORITY.

5

• Some chapters are more broadly accepted (e.g. by
  Catholics), others have evangelical emphasis,
  while a third category of chapters covers
  Presbyterian Calvinistic doctrine. A quote by
  Spurgeon should be noted Calvinism is a
  nickname for Christianity.

6
Complexity of Divines

• The Episcopalians (who supported an episcopacy)
  included such figures as James Ussher, Archbishop
  of Armagh. The Episcopalian group usually did not
  attend the sessions, because the king had not
  authorized them.
• The Presbyterians (who supported an
  assembly-based structure found in Puritanism),
  the largest group, included figures such as
  Edward Reynolds, George Gillespie and Samuel
  Rutherford.
• A small group of Independents (of the various
  Congregationalist views including baptists) were
  present and had the support of Oliver Cromwell,
  and these included Thomas Goodwin.
• The Erastian representatives, such as John
  Lightfoot, who favored the state's primacy over
  the ecclesiastical law.

7
The Doctrine of Holy Scripture

• Although the light of nature, and the works of
  creation and providence, do so far manifest the
  goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave
  men inexcusable 1 yet they are not sufficient to
  give that knowledge of God, and of His will,
  which is necessary unto salvation. And 2
  Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times,
  and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to
  declare that His will unto His church And 3
  and afterwards, for the

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• better preserving and propagating of the truth,
  and for the more sure establishment and comfort
  of the church against the corruption of the
  flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world,
  to commit the same wholly unto writing And 4
  which makes the Holy Scripture to be most
  necessary And 5 those former ways of Gods
  revealing His will unto His people being now
  ceased. And 6 Under the name of Holy Scripture,
  or the Word of God written, now contained in all
  books of OT and NT

9
Conclusions drawn about the Bible

• Creation leaves men inexcusable (I, 1)
• Bible 66 books are given by inspiration of
  God, to be the rule of faith and life. Also,
  entire perfection, infallible truth, and
  divine authority. (I, 2 5)
• whole counsel of God (I, 6)
• nothing at any time is to be added (I, 6)
• Bible is for not only the learned, but the
  unlearned (I , 7)
• Gave mandate to translate into all languages (I,
  8)
• Prescribes the analogy of faith interpret
  Scripture with Scripture (I, 9)

10
A.A. Hodge summarizes and comments on status of
the knowledge of God
11

• There is the assumption of all those extreme
  Rationalists who deny the existence of any world
  beyond the natural one discoverable by our
  senses, and especially of that school of Positive
  Philosophy inaugurated by Auguste Comte in
  France, and represented by John Stuart Mill and
  Herbert Spencer in England, who affirm that all
  possible human knowledge is confined to the facts
  of our experience and the uniform laws which
  regulate the succession

12

• of those facts that it is not possible for the
  human mind, in its present state, to go beyond
  the simple order of nature to the knowledge of an
  absolute First Cause, or to a designing and
  disposing Supreme Intelligence, even though such
  an one actually exists that whether there be a
  God or not, yet as a matter of fact he is not
  revealed, and as a matter of principle could not,
  even if revealed, be recognized by man in the
  present state of his faculties.Commentary on the
  WCF, A - A. Hodge

13

• This assumption is disproved
• By the fact that men of all nations, ages, and
  degrees of culture, have discerned the evidences
  of the presence of a God in the works of nature
  and providence, and in the inward workings of
  their own souls
• By the fact that the works of nature and
  providence are full of the manifest traces of
  design

14

• The same is disproved from the fact that
  conscience, which is a universal and
  indestructible element of human nature,
  necessarily implies our accountability to a
  personal moral Governor, and as a matter of fact
  has uniformly led men to a recognition of his
  existence and of their relation to him
• Romans 119-20

15

• That there is a God is the first principle of all
  religion, whether natural or revealed, and we are
  here taught that the being of God and a number of
  his perfections may be discovered by the light of
  nature. By the word God is meant a Being of
  infinite perfection self-existent and
  independent the Creator, Preserver, and Lord of
  all things. It is true, indeed, that to give a
  perfect definition of God is impossible, neither
  can our finite reason hold any proportion with
  infinity but yet a sense of this Divinity

16

• we have, and the find and common notion of it
  consists in these three particulars,that it is a
  Being of itself, and independent from any other
  that it is that upon which all things that are
  made depend that it governs all things. When we
  affirm that the being of God may be discovered by
  the light of nature, we mean, that the senses and
  the reasoning powers, which belong to the nature
  of man, are, capable of affirming the existence
  of God. Rom. 119, 20Exposition of the WCF, An
  - R. Shaw

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How Does This Chapter of the Confession Help Us
Today

• Colossians 26-8

18
Evolution

• The Question of Evolution and Intelligent Design

19
Life is Godless

• Darwinism removed the whole idea of God as the
  creator of organisms from the sphere of rational
  discussion.
• Sir Julian Huxley

20
Life is Purposeless

• Life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate
  the survival of DNAlife has no design, no
  purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind
  pitiless indifference.
• Richard Dawkins

21
Life is Meaningless

• There are no gods, no purpose, and no
  goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no
  life after death.There is no ultimate foundation
  for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no
  free will for humans.
• William Provine

22
William B. Provine

• I am working on four disparate research
  projects (1) a history of the theories of
  neutral molecular evolution (Kimura, Ohta, King,
  Jukes, and many others) (2) a history of
  geneticists' attitudes toward human race
  differences and race crossing (3) implications
  of modern biology for free will, moral
  responsibility, and the foundations of ethics
  and (4) a history of ideas about speciation from
  1963 to the present.

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• In recent years, graduate students working with
  me have written their theses on topics such as
  the history of mimicry theory, history of ideas
  about variation in natural populations, role of
  botany in the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s
  and 1940s, a study of the controversies
  surrounding the genetic effects of atomic bombs
  dropped on Japan, ideas about inheritance in
  humans in the period 1600-1865 in the USA, using
  the history of biology to teach introductory
  college-level biology, reactions of the
  professional ecology community to the work of
  Rachel Carson, history of ideas about sexual
  selection, tensions in the history of
  neuropsychology, and a biography of Tomoko Ohta.

24

• Tomoko Ohta is currently at the Japanese
  National Institute of Genetics and, in 2002, she
  was elected to the United States National Academy
  of Sciences as a foreign associate in
  evolutionary biology.
• I have collected an enormous library of evolution
  and genetics that is available for our use. The
  library consists of more than 300,000 reprints
  and a huge collection of books on evolution.

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So How Does the Confession Help?

• It gives us a quick overview of the difference
  between natural revelation and special
  revelation.
• It reminds us that natural revelation needs
  interpretation
• It provides the interpretation
• It states how special revelation augments
  natural revelation by giving us personal and
  saving knowledge of God
• It gives us a framework to understand and
  critique modern thinking.