The covenantal vision of the Westminster catechisms

When I last wrote on the Heidelberg Catechism, I concluded with an observation about my own Presbyterian doctrinal heritage: “People often claim the Westminster Confession and Catechisms are substantially different on this point, but that is a myth.”

Like the Heidelberg Catechism, the Westminster Catechisms teach the persons catechized to regard themselves as Christians and chosen by God’s grace. “What does the preface to the ten commandments teach us?” asks the Westminster Shorter Catechism. And the answer is given for the catechumen to say by memory, “The preface to the ten commandments teaches us that because God is the Lord, and our God, and redeemer, therefore we are bound to keep all his commandments.” The word, “redeemer,” has already been used in the document:

Q. 20. Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery?
A. God having, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a redeemer.

Q. 21. Who is the redeemer of God’s elect?
A. The only redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, forever.

To say that God is “our redeemer” is to say by faith that we belong to Jesus Christ. The Larger Catechism expands on this meaning of the preface to the decalogue, saying that it reveals, “that he is a God in covenant, as with Israel of old, so with all his people; who, as he brought them out of their bondage in Egypt, so he delivers us from our spiritual thraldom; and that therefore we are bound to take him for our God alone, and to keep all his commandments.

Here we see the same covenantal dynamic as we found in the Heidelberg Catechism in which guilt, grace, and grattitude are personally applied to the person being catechized. The person catechized is supposed to obey God’s law because he has bee delivered from spiritual slavery by Christ his redeemer.

It is especially interesting that when the catechisms want to anchor the person being catechized we find no instruction to look back to one’s effectual calling. Rather, it is baptism that is held out as the point in one’s biography which one should hold on to and grow in:

The needful but much neglected duty of improving our baptism, is to be performed by us all our life long, especially in the time of temptation, and when we are present at the administration of it to others; by serious and thankful consideration of the nature of it, and of the ends for which Christ instituted it, the privileges and benefits conferred and sealed thereby, and our solemn vow made therein; by being humbled for our sinful defilement, our falling short of, and walking contrary to, the grace of baptism, and our engagements; by growing up to assurance of pardon of sin, and of all other blessings sealed to us in that sacrament; by drawing strength from the death and resurrection of Christ, into whom we are baptized, for the mortifying of sin, and quickening of grace; and by endeavoring to live by faith, to have our conversation in holiness and righteousness, as those that have therein given up their names to Christ; and to walk in brotherly love, as being baptized by the same Spirit into one body (WLC 167).

The sacraments, of which baptism is the initiating one, are Christ-appointed holy ordinances, “wherein, by sensible signs, Christ, and the benefits of the new covenant, are represented, sealed, and applied to believers” (WSC 92).

What I concluded about the Heidelberg Catechism applies just as well to Westminster: Notice that nothing whatever is written of implied about the expectation of a future violent conversion experience in later years. No, the redemption is promised to them no less than adult believers. The Westminster Catechisms teaches the catechized child that he is a Christian. It teaches each boy and girl that his or her guilt has been dealt with by grace so that they should live a life of faith and grattitude. Since, in the Reformed churches, these children have been baptized, it is clear that the catechisms are not speaking from it’s own authority (i.e. the authority of the author or of the denomination that uses the catechisms) but from God’s own authoritative message in baptism.

4 thoughts on “The covenantal vision of the Westminster catechisms

  1. Jim

    You almost never hear baptism refered to this way (“improving on your baptism”) in Reformed & Presbyterian church, i.e., that while the rite of initiation, it has current and continuing application; it’s a source of meditation and response.

    It sort of echos the line in Luther’s catechism about “drowning the old man daily.” Sounds like an apt restatement of “improving you baptism” to me.

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  2. pduggie

    I suppose some people could say that the confession is just using “the judgement of charity”.

    That may be true.

    But if it is, the confession doesn’t call attention to iself using such a judgement.

    I think if you say to someone “Trust the God who loves you, and I’m using the judgement of charity when I assume God loves you, for all I know you could be hellbound” that you’re not actually being very charitable.

    Charity vaunteth not herself.

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  3. pduggie

    Joel Garver tells me (IIRC)) that the procsess of going to the head of the church and professing your faith to be received as a communicant member was an innovation in presbyterian polity that came in in the 19th century, and was controversial at the time.

    Showing up at church was supposed to be enough profession of faith.

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  4. Pingback: Mark Horne » What does the righteousness of faith say?

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