WCF Polemical Overview
Apologetic Notes on the Westminster Confession of Faith
David C. Hewins - 10/28/01

My polemical and apologetic concerns about the WCF center on my approach to Reformed theology. I have always admired Reformed theology as an effort to recover the spirit and teaching of the Early Christian Fathers. This is based on the assumption that the medieval period corrupted the early teaching. If corruption entered the Church after say, AD 500, then the early Ecumenical Councils, including Nicea and Chalcedon, as well as the orthodox writings of the Early Fathers, should display the Faith in a pristine way.

If Reformed theology can be reduced, by direct or reductio arguments, to denial of teaching commonly accepted before AD 500, then that theology is guilty of innovation, not preservation of the Faith given to us by the saints. My conclusion now is that such is precisely the case, and that innovation in Reformed theology came about in large measure because of pessimistic eschatology, oppression by established ecclesiastical and civil powers, and a spirit of strife that should be opposed at a prayerful spiritual level.

WCF accepts a substance doctrine. God is a spiritual substance. Second causation and agency are affirmed. But human agency in decision making is rejected, because decisions tend to be made mechanically by committees without the personal involvement of a bishop.

WCF affirms the Chalcedonian Christology. Christ's dual natures in one Person are affirmed. However it rejects what Chalcedon (AD 451) also affirmed, namely that because of Christ's dual natures, Mary His Mother is Theotokos, the God-bearer. WCF has an inadequate view of the communication of properties (communicatio idiomata).

WCF affirms forensic justification (also known in Reformed theology as justification by faith). However, the early creeds, including Apostle's, Athanasian and Nicene, affirm the resurrection of the body. This implies that our material being as well as our spiritual being will be saved, and have righteous standing before God. Flesh and blood will of course be changed, and as we see it today will not inherit the Kingdom of God. But it will still be recognizable as a body, and will not be left endlessly in a disintegrated state.

Salvation of our material being means that the grace of justification must be applied to the human person over time. If some kind of timelessness is posited for the body, we are dealing with Gnosticism, not Christianity. Full recognition of second causation in time requires a doctrine of justification that starts the process forensically by giving the sinner standing in God's Court, and completes it by infusion of Divine Grace into the baptized person as he grows in grace. But such infusion is precisely what the WCF denies.

In spite of its clear and thorough teaching of the Decalogue, WCF also denies that good works have any merit in completing a baptized person's justification. Confusion about terminology may be inevitable here, because the catholic tradition tends to use 'justification' and 'salvation' as interchangeable terms, whereas the Reformed tradition tends to restrict justification to the forensic or legal work of Christ on behalf of the sinner.

Interdenominational polemics about persecution and inquisition carry very little weight with me because it is documentably true that any civil authority has the duty to, and in fact did, suppress socially-accepted evil where it could. This is true of Calvin in Geneva as well as the Inquisition in Spain. Not to mention Cromwell and the Long Parliament.

The decisive question, as I see it, is what civil authority over history tends to show the most mercy during its rule. Here, Catholic Christianity usually wins, and is at worst no less merciful than other forms of rule. In opposition to work of people like Henry Charles Lea, it must be noted that even a purely utilitarian calculation will show that the ratio of persecuted to total population has been fairly constant over time, with the twentieth century persecutions under Communism and Nazism having the highest ratio of all.