Westminster Confession of Faith
The most influential Reformed confession in the English language, the theological summit of the English Reformation and the direct source document behind both the Savoy Declaration and the 1689 London Baptist Confession.
Overview
The Westminster Confession of Faith was produced by the Westminster Assembly, a gathering of 121 ministers, 30 lay commissioners, and several Scottish commissioners that met at Westminster Abbey in London from 1643 to 1649. The Assembly was convened by the Long Parliament to reform the Church of England along thoroughly Protestant lines. Its output included the Confession, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, the Directory for Public Worship, and the Form of Presbyterian Church Government. Of these, the Confession became the most enduring and influential.
The Confession was completed in 1646 and adopted by the Church of Scotland in 1647. Parliament in England never formally adopted it, but it spread throughout the English-speaking Presbyterian world and became the confessional standard of the Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian Church in America, and dozens of other bodies. It remains in force in most confessionally Reformed Presbyterian denominations today.
Historical Context
The Assembly met at a moment of political and ecclesiastical crisis. The English Civil War was underway; Charles I had been rebuffed in his attempt to impose Anglican worship on Scotland; Parliament needed Scottish military assistance and paid for it in part by promising to reform the English church along Presbyterian lines. The result was the Solemn League and Covenant (1643), which committed Parliament to a Reformed settlement. The Westminster Assembly was Parliament’s instrument for achieving that settlement.
The Assembly drew on a century of Reformed theological development , Calvin, Beza, Perkins, Ames, Twisse, and others. It was not an innovation but a codification: the Assembly took the best of the Reformed tradition and expressed it with precision and comprehensiveness unmatched by any previous English confession. Its thoroughness is a product of the prolonged, careful debate that produced it, debates recorded in detail in the Assembly’s minutes.
Theological Distinctives
Scripture. Chapter 1 is one of the most thorough treatments of bibliology in any Protestant confession. It addresses the canon, inspiration, authority, perspicuity, the internal witness of the Spirit, and the relationship between Scripture and tradition. The famous statement that “the infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself” (1.9) has anchored Reformed hermeneutics for centuries.
God’s decree and providence. Chapters 3 and 5 treat predestination and providence with careful nuance, affirming God’s sovereign ordination of all things while preserving the reality of second causes and the freedom of creaturely will. The distinction between God’s ordaining and approving is explicit.
Soteriology. The Confession fully affirms the doctrines of grace. Effectual calling (Ch. 10), justification by imputed righteousness through faith alone (Ch. 11), adoption (Ch. 12), sanctification (Ch. 13), perseverance (Ch. 17), and assurance (Ch. 18) are all treated with care and biblical grounding.
Paedobaptism. The primary point of difference with the 1689 is Chapter 28, which extends baptism to infants of believing parents as the sign and seal of the covenant of grace. This is bound up with a covenantal theology that sees the children of believers as within the outward administration of the covenant in a way Baptist theology does not.
A Key Passage
“God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in any thing, contrary to his Word; or beside it, in matters of faith, or worship.”
Chapter 20, §2
Full Text
The full text of the Westminster Confession of Faith is available at the Presbyterian Church in America and at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.