The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) has been modified by various churches over the last four centuries to suit a view of the relations between Church and state which, I will argue, remains out of alignment with the testimony of God's Word. On my view, the original Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) had it right. This brief treatise thus aims to show the biblical nature and confessional integrity of the view held by George Gillespie and the Westminster Assembly on the topic "Of the Civil Magistrate."
The controverted section, section 3 reads:
III. The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven: yet he hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed; all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed; and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed. For the better effecting whereof, he hath power to call synods, to be present at them, and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God.
I shall divide this section into two parts, each to receive proof individually. The first proposition I will defend is this:
A. It is the duty and right of the civil magistrate to set in order the Church of the Lord Jesus.
B. The second proposition reads:
The civil magistrate has authority from God lawfully to call ecclesiastical synods and councils.
In order to defend proposition A, I first turn my attention to several features of civil authority as represented in the Bible.
First, the Bible as the Word of God, is sufficient to expound clearly and accurately, everything that each Christian might need to know in order to live a life pleasing to God (Psalm 19:7; Isaiah 55:10-11; 2 Tim. 3:15-16).
Second, it is lawful for Christians to receive a calling as the chief (or some lesser delegate of the chief) civil magistrate.
Proverbs 29:2 confirms this: "When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn." So also do the godly examples of Old Testament saints who ruled well: Joseph, Esther, Daniel, etc.
Third, these two propositions necessarily imply that the Bible is sufficient to tell magistrates how they must carry out their office to the glory of Christ, and that this information MUST be found somewhere in the Bible. This means that the Bible offers a legal code sufficient to govern nations, a good and necessary consequence wholly consistent with God's demand for national --not merely individual -- righteousness. Nations must submit to Christ, the King of every other king (Psalm 2, Rev. 19).
Fourth, since the New Testament alone does not provide nearly enough information for this purpose, we must necessarily look to the Old Testament examples of godly rulers, and its stated principles regarding how kings are to rule properly, to show the Bible sufficient for the task. The Bible's own teachings clearly imply this, and this conclusion proves entirely consistent with the Theonomic hermeneutical principle of continuity. This principle has been ably defended by the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen and others, so I will not expend such efforts here beyond what has already been demonstrated in this regard.
Thus, the moral examples of the good kings of Israel continue to bind present magistrates under the New Covenant, obligating them to do according to the behavior of men like King Josiah. Contradictory claims would here necessarily imply the INsufficiency of the Holy Scripture, and thereby show themselves logically impossible. Therefore, I now turn to the example of the good kings of Israel in the Bible for the demonstration of the proposition I aim to defend -- as the Wesminster Assembly also properly did.
2 Kings 23 says of the good king, Josiah, that he required Isreal to swear a national covenant with God:
And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem. And the king went up into the house of the LORD, and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the priests, and the prophets, and all the people, both small and great: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the LORD. And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant.
Next he carried out the Law of the Lord against those who trample the first table of the law, the idolatrous, those who worship not according to the commands of God, heretics and the like:
And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Bethel. Then he began to set in order the Temple and priesthood (the House of God): And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven. And he brought out the grove from the house of the LORD, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.
Josiah also cleansed the Temple, driving out the defiling elements:
And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove. And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba, and brake down the high places of the gates that were in the entering in of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on a man's left hand at the gate of the city. ... And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech. And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the LORD, by the chamber of Nathanmelech the chamberlain, which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire. And the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the LORD, did the king beat down, and brake them down from thence, and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron.
Josiah even removed from Israel the idolatrous reproach of earlier kings:
And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile. And he brake in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men.
Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he brake down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove. And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount, and sent, and took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it, according to the word of the LORD which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.
And all the houses also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the Lord to anger, Josiah took away, and did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Bethel. And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars, and burned men's bones upon them, and returned to Jerusalem. Moreover the workers with familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the images, and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might perform the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the LORD.
Then Josiah set in order the liturgy of the Old Testament Church, holding an extremely faithful Passover celebration:
And the king commanded all the people, saying, Keep the passover unto the LORD your God, as it is written in the book of this covenant. Surely there was not holden such a passover from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah; But in the eighteenth year of king Josiah, wherein this passover was holden to the LORD in Jerusalem.
The Lord's perspective on Josiah's deeds as the civil magistrate of Israel is crystal clear, Josiah won the gold:
And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the LORD with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him. Moreover, the Kings-Chronicles narratives make abundantly plain the fact that each of Israel's kings stood at the bar of God's law as to the quality of their reign.
The most heavily weighted factor by which each received assessment in the Holy Scripture derived from how they upheld the first table of the Law, or the first four commandments, more than any other consideration. This means that to the extent that the other kings ruled as did Josiah, they were approved; and insofar as their contradicted Josiah's, they fall under the Holy Spirit's disapprobation.
Thus, we may properly take the whole of these four books as testifying in favor proposition A above.
The Proverbs And More. Given the teachings of the Old and New Testaments, that those who repent and believes on Jesus are made righteous and wise in Christ, according to the working of the Spirit, who writes the Law of the Lord on the heart and mind of the one who is a new creation in Christ -- the proverbs concerning the wise and righteous are necessarily much better exemplified by the saints rather than pagans.
Thus, the proverbs below highly favor the rule of Christians in society.
Proverbs 29:2 -- "When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn."
Proverbs 20:26 -- "A wise king scattereth the wicked, and bringeth the wheel over them."
Proverbs 20: 28 -- "Mercy and truth preserve the king: and his throne is upholden by mercy."
Proverbs 21:3 -- "To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice."
Proverbs 29:7 -- "The righteous considereth the cause of the poor: but the wicked regardeth not to know it."
Proverbs 28:4 -- "They that forsake the law praise the wicked: but such as keep the law contend with them."
Proverbs 28: 28 -- "When the wicked rise, men hide themselves: but when they perish, the righteous increase."
Proverbs 29: 14 -- "The king that faithfully judgeth the poor, his throne shall be established forever."
Revelation 1:5-6 refers to all Christians as kings and priests:
"... Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen."
1 Peter 2:9 echoes exactly the same sentiment:
"But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light ..."
Now, in attempting to carry out his duties, the civil magistrate will need frequently to consult the Scripture to make sure he has properly followed the divine legal code. This is why the Bible commands the king to read out of the law daily. And, in the course of such consultation, he will doubtless run into difficulties in ascertaining the proper interpretation of some text or other, or else he may have questions about the proper application of a passage whose sense he already knows.
Here, since he has a command from God to carry out duties dependent upon the text, he has a right therefore to call together councils or synods to aid him in fulfilling his calling to administer justice appropriately. For God has given the Scripture to His Church (Deut. 29:29). And the Church has therefore the corresponding obligation to assist civil magistrates in this holy endeavor; for it so much concerns the glory and honor of the Lord's holy reputation so as to mandate compliance.
Moreover, magistrates may call ecclesiastical councils in order to purify the worship and government of the Church (as noted above), or to resolve an imminent social or other public problem for the good of all; to this end, he may also wish to consult ministers of the gospel well-known for their wisdom in regard to the proper interpretation and/ or application of this or that text. And again, this call from the magistrate to so congregate obliges those thereunto called since the greater glory of God requires it. As the Westminster Larger catechism explains, when God commands a particular end, and a particular means proves necessary to fulfilled that end, God implicitly commands the means as well as the end.
The contrary to this view seems impossible, for it would require that God commands by His Word what He forbids by his providence, making Him tyrannical -- which is blasphemy -- and implying that He permits situations to develop in history where a man has sinful options only -- what philosophers call a "tragic moral circumstance." The Scripture plainly decries this view at the hand of the apostle James (1:13-17) in these words:
"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, NEITHER TEMPTETH HE any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
In sum, because God has commanded the magistrate to achieve an end (ecclesiastical purity, social justice, and national righteousness), when the civil magistrate shall deem an ecclesiastical council or synod a necessary means to one or more of those ends, then God Himself has commanded such a council or synod to meet together by means of his appointed, covenantal representative. So just as Solomon built the Temple of the Lord in his day, setting in order the priesthood, so also may the chief magistrate summon church councils for the building of the Church -- the ground and pillar of truth, and the house of mercy -- in our day.
Praise the Lord, for He is good; his mercy endures forever.
Carson Day has written some 1.3 gazillion articles and essays with insightful, if alternative, views. These are presently circling the internet at a happy clip. In college, they let Carson study the history of ideas. Some damage simply cannot be undone.
To visit Carson's blogs, go to the OMNIBLOG: http://ophirgold.blogsot.com or see CARSON'S DAY TRADING OUTPOST http://extremeprofit.blogspot.com for economic and stock market stuff.