Daily Archives: August 1, 2007

The Westminster Confession is Heretical

Posted by on August 1, 2007 49 comments

The second chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith is entitled “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity”.  The statement consists of three articles, the first two of which expound that God is a “a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions” and that this God is “immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible”.  After expouding these, and other classical themes regarding the attributes of God, there is a final section which briefly says that “In the unity of the Godhead there be three Persons of one substance, power, and eternity” and that the Father is unbegotton while the Son is begotten by the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son.

This statement of faith is heretical from the title on.  It assumes that God and the Trinity are two different things.  And thus it goes on to say that the three persons subsist “in the unity of the Godhead”.  This assumes that the unity of the Godhead itself is not constituted by the Three, but underlies them as some sort of “fourth”.  Thus, the Westminster Confession posits a “god” behind and beneath the Holy Trinity which is modalism.  Of course all this is to be expected when the opening two statments (by far longer) exposit all the real content of what we know about God in a manner totally independent of God’s revelation in Christ.  In contrast, according to the Christian faith God is the Trinity and this is revealed through God’s action through Christ in the Spirit. 

 The Westminster Confession is theology at its worst.  It is sub-Christian and posits a generic God as the “real” deity and then tries to tack on Jesus and the Trinity as an irrelevant afterword.  Christian theology must repudiate statements such as this.

The Christian Intellectual Life

Posted by on August 1, 2007 4 comments

Much ink has been spilt over the question of what it might mean to be a Christian intellectual.  Often such books are either laments concerning the anti-intellectualism in the church or apologetic pleas to the church that intellectualism, or “the life of the mind” be viewed as a valid Christian practice.  Whatever the book or article, there is generally always some sort of perceived gap between the church and the academy. 

This, I would suggest is primarily, if not exclusively the fault of the academy.  The academy, at least in its modern incarnation (and this point is key) sequesters the intellectual life from the church, and then academic theologians are flabbergasted when the church ceases to be intellectual! 

I don’t think there is a “solution” to this problem other than to insist that the academy must undergo a massive change if it is to properly serve the church.  The nature of this change is not easily synthesizable.  However, I would suggest that some thoughts in this direction can be gleaned from monasticism.  It has been monastic orders throughout the ages who have found ways of integrating service, communal life, contemplative spirituality, and academic study into an integrated form of life which serves the church and the world.  If the academy is going to again become an ecclesially based reality, and thereby stimulate a vibrantly Christian intellectual life that is profoundly ecclesial, I think that it must become more monastic in shape and practice.  

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