Hello, welcome to our third video in our online inquirer's series. This video is going to be on the Westminster Confession of Faith. My name is Shawn Troutman and I'm one of the elders here at Forest Hill Presbyterian Church. Glad you could use this video and glad we could teach in this way. So tonight we're going to be talking about the Westminster Confession of Faith. we're going to be talking about some of the historical backgrounds of how it came to be we're going to be talking about some of the things that it teaches and how we use it in our churches today and how it can be profitable for us today. So you can see here I'm out front of the Westminster Abbey here in London and this is where the Westminster Confession of Faith was actually authored which is where it gets its name the Westminster Confession of Faith and inside this Mr. Abbey famous famous church is the Jerusalem chamber so here inside the Jerusalem chamber is actually where the committee and the assembly met and this is where they really did the majority of the work of in constructing the Westminster Confession of Faith. So we're going to be in this chamber tonight as we go through some of our topics here. So to start off with a little bit of historical background, the Westminster Confession of Faith was actually written during a time of the English Civil War. And so as the context of this comes to be, you have King Charles I basically versus Parliament. And there was a power struggle. King Charles wanted to rule as an absolute monarch and Parliament was trying to put the brakes on that. And through that whole process, actually Parliament is the one who called for an assembly to gather and to create a new confession of faith. So at the time the Church of England had a confession, it was called the Thirty-Nine Articles, and as Parliament was trying to basically fight against King Charles, they were trying to gather support and one of the people groups that they were trying to get support from was Scotland. And Scotland had their own confession of faith and they were committed to reforming the church according to the Reformation principles that had developed over the last hundred years before this. And Scotland was not exactly excited about the 39 articles that the Church of England currently had. and they wanted to reform the Church further, and so this was commissioned to really kind of help to appease the Church of Scotland, and to allow them to join in on an alliance, which they called the Solemn League and Covenant, and part of that requirement was that the Church would be reformed according to the Scriptures. So the 39 Articles, the group of people that wanted to reform the Church further, were called the Puritans, and many of the Puritans and Scottish theologians, they really saw the 39 Articles as a bit flawed, and they wanted to continue to reform it. So Parliament called for this Assembly to rework the 39 Articles. So this Assembly consisted of 121 theologians, and they were working on how do they reform the worship of the church and the doctrine of the church. They started in 1643. Now sometimes if you're doing a little bit of reading on the Confession and you come across some older documents, sometimes these people, the 121 theologians, are sometimes called the Westminster Divines. And the reason for that is that's sort of an old-time title for someone who was a theologian. So it's not that these people were held in higher esteem, as in they have divine status, but it meant that they studied the things that were divine. Just like theo meaning God, the study of God, divines meant that they studied God and his attributes and his works. So these men gathered, these consisted of bishops, they consisted of elders, they consisted of pastors, preachers, theologians, all kinds of people from all over England to come together and put together a better confession. So they worked for several years. They were commissioned in 1643, and they really kind of went through 1648 is when they finally sort of produced their last documents. And the things that they produced were a directory of public worship, which replaced the Book of Common Prayer, so you may be familiar with the Book of Common Prayer, which is what's used by the Church of England today to guide their services. the book of the directory for public worship was less prescriptive in what what it prescribed didn't say you have to do this on these days but it gave the outline for how how the churches were to worship according to the scriptures another thing to mention is that there's actually quite a bit of variety in the backgrounds of of these men who gathered to write this confession. There were Presbyterians in the group, there were Congregationalists, there were Independents, and there were Episcopalians, all in this group. So there's quite a bit of variety when it comes to church government. And so some of these things became compromised. He's all these different groups. So then, after 1645, they start working on the Confession of Faith. Now, the original intent was actually just to revise the 39 Articles, but as they sort of got into it, they realized that they really just kind of needed to start fresh. So they started fresh, and they composed a Confession of Faith, which enacted all the Westminster Confession of Faith. So that was produced in 1646. And the interesting thing is, when that was produced, remember this was actually commissioned by the Church of England but there was representation from Scotland so Scotland did send some delegates to this assembly and they were sort of there as an advisory function so they weren't full members of the assembly but they helped to advise there's some very famous people there preachers and writers and Puritans from Scotland. So this Westminster Confession goes back to Scotland with these representatives, and immediately the Church of Scotland accepts this. They look at it and they are very pleased with the results, they are pleased with how biblical this confession is, and they accept it without any revisions. the church of england they take it to um sorry the Westminster assembly takes us to parliament which is parliament is the ones that commissioned this and these were actually the ones who would be approving this um you remember that in england the head of the church is the king and at the time the parliament was in power so they were basically the head of the church. So parliament decided not to accept it and what they wanted to do was they wanted the assembly to go back and they wanted to document all the proof texts, all the scripture passages that would support the doctrines that they taught in the confession. And actually the assembly resisted this a little bit and the reason was not because they didn't think that the confession was biblical. They actually were very conscientious and worked very hard to produce the most biblical document that they possibly could. And there was often very long discussions and arguments about what was the biblical teaching, back and forth on what the Bible taught on these things. And so they took a lot of time to really search out what the true meaning of the scriptures were and how they applied to what we believe. The reason why they didn't want to initially put these proof texts in was because they sort of thought it was insufficient, and that people really needed to understand the argumentation behind the passages and the context, and they really didn't like this idea of slapping a Bible verse on the doctrine and calling it a day. and they did preserve a lot of documents, they preserved all their minutes, and they preserved all their argumentation for and against certain doctrines and how to present those things, and so they really wanted people to kind of do the heavy work of learning about those things from that, but they decided they went ahead and added the scripture proof text, and they ended up adding over 2,000, I think it was about 2,500 different texts of scripture are used throughout the confessions, the confession, in order to sort of support the doctrine behind it. So this confession is just this steeped in biblical truth, steeped in the Bible, and really biblical in what it teaches. same time the assembly goes on to produce shorter catechism and a larger catechism and these catechisms were designed to really distill down the teaching of the confession in question and answer formats. The shorter catechism was designed to teach children and to be an instrument of instruction for them and help them have a mechanism to learn the faith And the large catechism was designed for those who were going into the ministry, for preachers, as a way of instruction for them. So the Westminster Confession was adopted by the Scottish Church. Yet, ironically, the Confession was actually never adopted by the Church of England through Parliament. So actually the Church of England went back and continued to use the 39 Articles and continued to use the Book of Common Prayer and actually never adopted the Westminster Confession of Faith with it, which is sort of ironic. But the legacy of the Confession lives on through the Scottish Church. and the Scottish church really sort of out of the Scottish church grows Presbyterianism as we kind of know it today it has its roots in Scotland and the form of government that we really kind of abide by currently and then that comes over to America. And so America, the Presbyterian Church starts in America, and they get together, and in 1729, the Presbyterian Synod was not a full denomination at the time, it was a synod, which is just a group of churches that are gathering together, and they they unite together and they adopt the Westminster Confession as their confession of faith. With a few minor revisions and adjustments, and the main adjustment that is changed in 1729 by the americans was this was the um was a section in chapter 23 section 3 on um which deals with the power of the state over the church the original basically the original um Confession of Faith gives the power of the state to call together the Church and to have some authority over the Church in its discipline and in what it believes. And in America, as we continue to learn and search the Scriptures, American Presbyterian Church really believes that no, the state does not have authority over what the church believes, that the state does not have that authority to discipline or to dictate what the church should believe. So that is updated in the American Presbyterian version of the Westminster Confession of Faith. So what is the Confession of Faith? Here it is. Here's the table of contents. We have 33 chapters, and it is... you can see the titles here. It starts with the doctrine of Scripture, a beautiful chapter on what we believe about Scripture, about Scripture as being our highest authority, and why we believe it to be true, and what it teaches. then it really starts to focus on God, so it kind of talks about first the nature of our religion is being revealed, and God revealing himself through scripture, and then we start to learn about God, and we learn about who God is, his attributes, we learn about how he exists in his trinity, and what that means, and what we can say about that, and what we can't say about that, what we know, what we don't know, We learn about God's paternal decrees, meaning how He controls the world and how He governs in His sovereignty, how He works out His sovereignty through creation and providence, and then we discover a little bit about man, about the fall of man into sin and punishment, and then really gets into the gospel, the heart of the gospel here, between chapters 7 through 15, really, and on, really gets to the heart of the gospel, who Christ is, our relationship with Christ, and how we come to believe in him, and what it means to be justified, what it means to be adopted into God's family and sanctified, and what is saving faith versus false faith or spurious faith, what is repentance. And then it starts to work out, you know, those who have believed the gospel, how does that work out into our lives? chapter on good works and perseverance of the saints, the law of God, how does a Christian who is saved by grace, how does he relate to the law of God, and what things are issues of Christian liberty, what does Christian liberty mean, how do we worship God rightly, and then how do we organize ourselves as a church, what is the mission of a church, what is the church to do, how are we to gather together as a body of believers, and then what does God call us to do as a church so we get into the sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, which are things that the church is to be part of the work of the church, administering baptism and the Lord's Supper, and then how the church sort of stays pure through centuries, and then calling of synods and councils, and then it ends with the last judgment and the state of man after death and resurrection. So it really stretches across really a lot of redemptive history, redemption through the Bible, and really just a very thorough and excellent outline and a lot of full teaching here. Those of us who believe this really creates a very comprehensive and complete package on what we should believe the Bible teaches. So that's kind of long, right? And if you've grown up in the church here in America today, we're not used to that. We're not used to a very long confession of faith. The confession itself, if you buy it in a booklet, it's probably about 50 pages long or something like that. And if you have a version that actually has the proof text printed out in it, it's even longer than that. It's about 200 pages or something like that. it's not extremely long, it's not too long to read, but it's a lot longer than what we expect to see, and if you've ever done some looking for a new church, a lot of times you go online and you look at their statement of faith, see what they believe, and I don't know that you would find very many churches that have a 50 page summary of what they believe, right? Usually it's a few bullet points on what the church believes, right? So what is the difference between a statement of faith and the confession that we subscribe to? So statements of faith are short. They really contain just the essentials, right? The essentials of what you need to believe to be a Christian. And Pastor Jason, a few weeks back, covered some of these in his previous video on the essentials of the faith. and those are the things that you basically have to believe to be a Christian. If you don't believe some of these doctrines, then we've called into question whether you believe the gospel and whether you're a Christian. It does provide a basis for unity, but it's a very thin basis for unity, so it's a great thing to know that We can join together as believers, and we have a unity in Christ through the essentials and through the gospel. We can work together, but sometimes it might be difficult to church together with these people, because we have to think about a little bit further how we're going to do certain things and what we believe about certain things. So these things are usually agreed to, sort of signed off as you join the church or whatever, but beyond that, they're not really discussed much, not used really too much in teaching and sort of guiding some of the work and teaching of the church. Definitely not the focus of the organization, right? But a confession of faith, on the other hand, we would call these confessional churches, and these mean that they subscribe to a confession of faith. so we subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith, some Reformed churches will subscribe to other confessions and other documents, and then you've got Reformed Baptists subscribe to the London Baptist Confession of Faith, and you have other confessions of faith like that, so we would call these confessional churches, Lutherans have a confession of faith that they would subscribe to, right? They're longer, as you saw, 33 chapters, they really flesh out a lot more of the details of what we believe, more comprehensive, and this is a really key point you saw. You started at the beginning of Scripture, the Scripture of self and creation, and then you kind of go all the way through to the last days and the resurrection. So really a really comprehensive document, which is not the case with the typical statements of faith. Here's another difference. Confession of faith is not required for church membership in our churches. What does that mean? Well, if you have a short confession of faith, or a short statement of faith, it really covers the essentials, the things that Jason covered. We do believe that you have to understand the gospel, that you have to believe certain foundational doctrines, like the Trinity, and these essential things are required to join the Church, right, because that's the basis for what we believe, who God is, and how man is saved, and things like that. However, the confession of faith itself is, since it's much longer, since it's much more comprehensive, there are many things that are very important that are covered in the confession of faith, but they are not necessarily essential for salvation. And a really great example of this would be infant baptism. So the Confession teaches that we have infant covenantal baptism, and we believe that, we practice that. Well, we don't believe that you can't be a Christian if you don't believe in infant baptism. We know that that is not an essential doctrine that someone would have to believe to be a Christian, And so since that's the case, we don't believe we don't we don't require that for church membership So what we require for church membership are the things that the price requires? To be a Christian and we don't set a higher standard than that So if you if you are a Christian you are welcome in our church, right? but it does it is what's it is what's agreed to as as a church and as actually an even broader body of We don't really see ourselves as necessarily just an individual church. We are a group in a denomination, in a group of churches together that all agree to these same things, and that is our basis of ability to work together and to harmonize together and have some unity, deep unity, based on what we believe. so the officers of the church do have to subscribe to it they have to agree that this is this is what they believe the church teaches or the bible teaches sorry and this is what what the church will teach um so this is the basis of the doctrinal uh church uh teaching in the church it's also the basis um that really you know as officers of the church and as teachers in the church this is what we are held accountable to um as a teaching uh as a teaching of God's word so gotta kind of be clear of that um we'll talk about this in a little bit but you know we do believe that the Bible is the final and ultimate authority so if there is something that um we think that it's contradicted in the Westminster Confession that can be changed potentially it's kind of a long process but it could be and that is the Bible is our ultimate authority but we sign off we agree that the confession is a summary of what the Bible teaches and so our teaching should be in line with confessions on that basis. So why do we use a confession? Some people might not be used to a confession, are the purposes of it? Why do we do this? If people aren't going to read a statement of faith too much, how much more are they not going to read the confession much longer? Well, these four points here kind of come to us by Hodge, who was a theologian years ago, and he kind of breaks up into sort of four different categories of why a confession can be a helpful thing for us in a church. The one is it preserves and disseminates the knowledge of the church that has gone before us. So one of the things that we believe in the Reformation heritage and as Presbyterians is that we are not alone in what we do here. God has put us together as a church. He has not just created a bunch of individual, what you might call, lone rager Christians. He has brought us together. He gets to one of the chapters on the communion of the saints. God has brought us together as a church. He's brought us together as a people. So the Bible is our highest authority, but we can learn from each other. We can learn what Bible teaches, and we can learn from those who have gone before us, who have studied the Bible, and who have worked through certain controversies. And actually a lot of what we have in the Church as doctrinal statements and as confessions, really a lot of these come to us through periods of unrest in the Church, periods of disagreement and conflict, and it really calls the church to do a lot of thinking and a lot of digging into the scriptures to understand what the Bible teaches. So the Trinity is a really great example, and the Nicene Creed, which sometimes we read in church, is a really beautiful statement on what the explanation of the Trinity is, what we believe about the Trinity, and that was developed under a controversy, the Arian controversy, where the divinity of Christ was being debated, and the fact that there were those who were saying that Christ was not divine, but he was sort of the first among created beings. And so the Church had to study and understand what they believed about Christ and his divinity and the Trinity. and they were able to articulate this in this document and provides a lot of truth and basis for unity, and the Trinity is still something that's very difficult to understand, and we should not move past that. We should learn from those who went before us and have studied these things, and learn from what they have taught us, so it allows us to do that. The other thing it allows us to do is it allows us really to discern the truth from false teacher or from error, Because this confession, because it is comprehensive, because it goes through many different categories, it prevents the truth in a very full and comprehensive way. And some of the most successful, if you want to call them successful, but false teachers, some of the most dangerous false teachers, they don't come up with doctrines that are totally off the wall, totally backwards, but often what happens is there are shreds of truth in what they teach, but they take things out of proportion, or they emphasize things that are not emphasized in the scriptures, or they just focus on one part without about understanding the context of what the Bible is teaching as a whole. And so this confession really kind of helps to piece those things out and understand in its full context what the truth is. And then it acts as a basis for the fellowship and harmony of the church, and for churches together. And that's what we believe as Presbyterians, is that our churches are connected to each other. We're not just individual, but we are accountable to each other as churches, and the confession of faith allows us to agree on what we believe the Bible teaches, and move forward with that. in that unity. And then it's used to be an instrument for instruction in the Church, and it is a wonderful statement, a wonderful question, and a really wonderful guide to the Bible, to the Scriptures, because it is so biblical, and there is so much Scripture packed into this. It's a very fruitful exercise to learn what we believe, and very helpful for us to do that, and it's a very organized fashion. So why else use confession? So a couple other things. One is everybody believes something about the Bible. So there are some who would say, you know, we shouldn't have any man-made documents or confessions. We should just teach the Bible, right? And that is, of course, true. We should teach the Bible. But what do we believe about the Bible? and what do we believe that the Bible teaches, right? We all have thoughts on that, and we all have ideas, and no matter what church you might go to, those ideas are going to come through in the teaching, and those ideas are going to come through in what the church believes. But sometimes, even if a church says they have, the old slogan was, no creed, but the Bible. Even if you say that, there are still certain things you believe about the Bible. You're just not writing them down and allowing others to see what you believe about the Bible, and allowing them to critique that and hold you accountable. So everyone does believe certain things about what the Bible teaches, and we want to write those things down in the confession and allow people to examine them. And then the other thing is we believe this is a summary of what the Bible teaches. It's not just what we believe or from tradition or whatever, but we truly believe that the Bible teaches these things. And it does increase accountability because it's very clearly laid out what we believe. And so if we start to teach things that are counter to this, we can be held accountable for this. know you're not teaching in line with what you have agreed that you believe the Bible teaches, and there are mechanisms to do that. One of the things when Martin Luther really started the Reformation, most people believe that the Reformation started in 1517 when Martin Luther, in protest and as for debate, nailed his 99 feces to the Wittenberg door, church door. So in 1517 he started his work, and one of his great accomplishments was to translate the Bible into the common German language, and he was very excited to be able to do this, to allow people to read the Bible on their own, and that has been a staple of Protestant theology and emphasis is people's own private Bible reading. But one of the things he warned against is that people would take the Bible and use it as what he called a wax nose. And what he meant by that is that, you know, potentially people would take the Bible and they could bend it and they can mold it and they could basically make it say whatever they wanted it to say. by taking things out of context or you know whatever and he was worried about that and and that is we do see that happening in quite a quite a bit of ways today and so the confession actually helps us with that and it helps us understand that we are not we're not interpreting the bible alone there has been others who have gone before us and there are others today that we can learn from and we can agree upon these are the things we believe the bible teaches So what about sola scriptura? You heard in the essentials class, one of the other videos, that we believe in sola scriptura, which means the Bible alone is our highest authority, highest and only ultimate authority, right? So isn't this just a man-made document? Isn't this just, isn't this sort of going against the idea of sola scriptura? Well, For that, we really need to take into account what the Bible means by that, and does it mean that we can't have other documents, or does it mean that the scripture is the highest authority? And so we don't believe that soul scripture means we can't write other books, or that we can't teach other things. What we mean by that is that scripture is the ultimate authority. And then that is what is going to judge all other documents. So the Westminster Confession is subservient to the Bible and is judged by the Bible. So if there are things that we believe are not biblical, then we are to work to change those things and reform those things. So what does the Westminster Confession itself say about its authority versus the authority of scripture? And here's just two paragraphs that are taken from the Westminster Confession of Faith. As you saw on the table of contents, this is from chapter one, so it starts right off with scripture. So for those who say, yeah, Westminster Confession of Faith, that's going above and beyond the Bible, it's taking the place of the Bible. Westminster Confession itself I would disagree with that and say no, this is not to take the place of the teaching of the Bible. So in section 4 it says, the authority of the holy scriptures for which it ought to be believed and obeyed and depended upon, depended not upon the testimony of man or the church, but wholly upon God, whose truth itself, the author thereof, and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God." Scripture is authoritative because it is the very Word of God. Nothing even comes close to that. The Westminster Confession is not the Word of God. It is an interpretation of what we believe the Word of God teaches. And so because the Word of God is God speaking, it has the inherent authority of God, which the Confession does not have. And then in paragraph 10, it says, the supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, and the opinions of ancient writers, and the doctrine of men, which would include the confession of faith, and of private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest. can be no other than the Holy Spirit speaking in the scriptures. So the scriptures are what we are to use to judge even this confession of faith. So it does not contradict the doctrine of soul scripture. It helps us to understand scripture and articulate it to others. Again, A. A. Hunge says, "...the real question is not, as is often pretended, between the word of God and the creed of man, but between the tried and proved faith of a collective body of God's people, and the private judgment, and the unassisted wisdom of the repudiation of creeds." So this is basically just saying that Those who want to reject creeds and confessions altogether really are only doing so out of their own private opinion, and they are rejecting the wisdom of God, the wisdom of the Church, the wisdom of the men of God, who have put these things together in a faithful way to the Scriptures. Okay, so how do we use this today? Well, a couple things it's really useful for. One is it's useful for our own instruction and our own advocation. So I would encourage you to read the Confession. I would encourage you to read it with your Bible and to look up the verses that are presented there in the Confession. and to really allow it to push you further into scripture, which is what it really was intended to do. It was intended to point people back to scripture and have them go into scripture to learn and to read and to study and to praise God for the things that he has revealed to us. So read the confession of faith with your Bible in hand. Now the confession is helpful because it is, as we said before, comprehensive and teaches us many things the Bible teaches, but it also, it does not avoid the difficult things, which is really, really important. it deals with very difficult doctrines, doctrines such as predestination, it deals with the problem of evil, it deals with the law of God, which can be a difficult and challenging subject, right? And all these things it deals with biblically, and it addresses the issues, but it doesn't go beyond scripture, what it says. So there are some things that maybe can't be fully explained because it's not fully explained in scripture, and so the confession does a really nice job of presenting these things, but then also not going beyond it. So one of the things you hear of a lot today is, you know, the church didn't teach me about, didn't answer a lot of these questions that I had, that I had doubts about, the nature of God and how a good God could punish people and they kind of claim that the church has never taught them those things, the church has never asked those questions. Well if you read this confession it really deals with many of those issues and so really it's a good guide for us to prepare ourselves for our own doubts but also for the questions of others and that deals with things very biblically so it's a very good resource for that. So that is basically a summary of what the confession is and how it came to us and how we should use it. We will use it in church at times. You may notice that in our worship services we read from the confession or we read from the catechism because the Bible teaches us to confess our faith to others. And so we use this confession of faith not only to remind us what we believe but to help us to teach others through proclaiming God's truth. that is revealed to us in the Bible to one another so that we may believe it. So read this confession, open your Bibles, look at the text, read through these things, and then believe. Believe what the Bible teaches and believe these great truths that are presented to us in the confession. I think you will find it very, very fruitful and very helpful. So thank you for that and please let me know if you have any questions or would like to discuss any of these things further. Have a great night.