The Westminster Tradition vs. DeYoung and the Gospel Coalition, Part IV

A Series on Westminster Chapter 23 and a Response to Kevin DeYoung

Be sure to check out part I, part II and part III.

How American Presbyterians spoke on the state

To consider what was the significance of these changes were to American Presbyterians about matters civil, it will be useful to consider how key American Presbyterians spoke on the magistrate (post 1788).  Let us see what Americans actually said about the magistrate, rather than listening to what Deyoung imagines what the Presbyterians said when they made changes in 1788. 

Alexander Mcleaod, an American Presbyterian writing after the changes in the Westminster Standards writes, “fourthly, It is necessary that Immanuel should have power over the nations and their respective governments, as the guardian of his Church in the midst of her enemies, and as the terror of all those who are his foes (Psalm110:1-3); otherwise, his children might be in a situation in which he could not regulate them, and his enemies might act with impunity against him. If magistracy be not subjected to Christ, he has it not in his power, either to convey the special aids of his grace to pious Christians for the discharge of the duties of civil offices, or to punish his enemies for the most malicious acts of maladministration. However, the personal character may be under his cognizance, he can have nothing to do with the official character. The absurdity of this is too glaring. It is indispensably necessary, therefore, that Zion’s King should rule the nations, to give efficacy to his gospel, to reward him for his abasement, and to afford safety to his Church.” Alexander as an American Presbyterian post 1788 rejects the voluntary principle and affirms the necessity for the magistrate to protect the church through enforcing both tables of the law. 

“The church of Christ is a Kingdom not of this world, but the Kingdoms of the world are bound to recognize its existence.”  Notice how he believes that the distinctiveness of the Kingdom of Christ which is the church is not threatened by the Kingdoms of the world taking a religious posture and being about matters of the church.  Part of the objection of men like DeYoung over a Christian state is their belief that it necessarily confuses realms.  Nonetheless, American Presbyterians, like the Divines, are able to see how both realms are to be explicitly Christian and yet distinct. 

Charles Hodge, another American Presbyterian after the American changes the standards believed that it was necessary for the state to involve itself in the observance of the first table of the law and to teach the word of God in American institutions.¹  Hodge says, 

“we consider the voluntary enslaving of one part of the human race by another, as a gross violation of the most precious and sacred rights of human nature; as utterly inconsistent with the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and as totally irreconcilable with the spirit and principles of the gospel of Christ…It is manifestly the duty of all Christians who enjoy the light of the present day, when the inconsistency of slavery, both with the dictates of humanity and religion, has been demonstrated, and is generally seen and acknowledged, to use their honest, earnest, and unwea-ried endeavours, to correct the errors of former times, and as speedily as possible to efface this blot on our holy religion, and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery throughout Christendom, and if possible throughout the world.”²

Notice how Hodge is speaking about societies laws needing to be in conformity to Christendom.  Hodge did not understand the American Standards as a call for Christendom to end and voluntarism to replace it.  He spoke about the nation civilly as one which was to be understood in light of its Christian identity.  Was Hodge indistinguishable from the Divines on this matter? No.  However, he did not believe that the American position unequivocally removed the magistrate as one who is necessarily about first table matters. Hodge even believed that Americans had a right to overthrow the government if they desecrated the Sabbath.  

Another American Presbyterian (Thornwell) after the American changes of the standards also did not share DeYoung’s sweeping declaration of the American ch. 23 speaking to the abolishment of Christendom and the enshrinement of civil neutrality.

“As the individual, in coming to God, must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently search Him, so the State must be impressed with a profound sense of His all-pervading providence, and of its responsibility to Him, as the moral Ruler of the world.”³ 

“A state therefor [sic), which does not recognize its dependence on God, or which fails to apprehend, in its functions and offices, a commission from heaven, is false to the law of its own being.”The sanctions of a secularized state, in fact, “are insufficient either for the punishment of vice or the encouragement of virtue, unless they connect themselves with the higher sanctions which religion discloses.”⁴

“Your honourable body has already, to some extent, rectified the error of the old Constitution, but not so distinctly and clearly as the Christian people of these States desire to see done. We venture respectfully to suggest, that it is not enough for a State which enjoys the light of Divine revelation to acknowledge in general terms the supremacy of God.  It must also acknowledge the supremacy of His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds. To Jesus Christ all power in heaven and earth is committed. To Him every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess. He is the Ruler of the nations, the King of kings, and Lord of lords.”

“It is not only necessary that the State should have a religion; it is equally necessary, in order to an adequate fulfillment of its own ides, that it have the true religion. Truth is the only proper food of the soul, and though superstition and error may avail for a time as external restraints, they never generate an inward principle of obedience. 

“It is obvious that a Commonwealth can no more be organized which shall recognize all religions, than one which shall recognize none.”

“The service of the Commonwealth becomes an act of piety to God. The State realizes its religious character through the religious character of its subjects; and a State is and ought to be Christian, because all its subjects are and ought to be determined by the principles of the Gospel.”⁵

“As every legislator is bound to be a Christian man, he has no right to vote for any laws which are inconsistent with the teachings of the Scriptures. He must carry his Christian conscience into the halls of legislation.”⁶

“The separation of the Church and State is a very different thing from the separation of religion and the State. Here is where our fathers erred. In their anxiety to guard against the evils of a religious establishment, and to preserve the provinces of Church and State separate and distinct, they virtually expelled Jehovah from the government of the country, and left the State an irresponsible corporation, or responsible only to the immediate corporators. They made it a moral person, and yet not accountable to the Source of all law.”⁷

Some helpful points about the magistrate that we can gather from Thornwell. 1.  Key American theologians post 1788 changes did not believe that the separation of church and state meant the voluntarist separation of religion from state.  2.  A state that is not responsible to Christ and His law is not a Confessional position, and rather it is immoral.  3.  Christian magistrates are to legislate in a manner that is consistent with the scriptures.  Said another way, Thornwell believed that Christianity should be legislated. 4.  States are to be Christian and collectively see their realms as being devoted to God.  The principles of the gospel Thornwell says are to be reflected in this self-conscious Christian nation.  5.  A nation that does not recognize Christianity officially cannot function and bring order.  6. Governments are to submit to Christ in a way that can be comparable to individuals being subject to Christ.  7.  A secular voluntarists state that does not formally depend on God cannot function morally as God intended it to.  8. The religious pluralism in the US Constitution that does not formally pledge submission to the Son was a sinful error that should be rectified. 

Departing from establishment principle to Erastianism or Papacy a mark against the establishment principle?

DeYoung then spends a good portion of his time showing how this disdain for prelacy has historical connection to various Erastian Prelate usurpations into the Presbyterian church.  DeYoung’s various examples of Christian states in Europe overstepping their civil boundaries into the ecclesiological realm proves nothing about the reformed establishment principle being in error.   This tactic is quite common amongst the voluntarist anti-establishmentarian American Presbyterians.  They cite various historical examples of the state usurping the jurisdiction of the church as a self-evident proof that the establishment principle is unbiblical and does not work.  All that DeYoung’s examples prove is that when a state departs from the biblical establishment principle to either Erastianism or Romanism that either the church or state will become deified and confuse realms.  All that DeYoung’s historical examples of sinful oaths proves is that the establishment principle not understood biblically and Confessionally will lead to all sorts of immorality and tyranny.  Furthermore, the fact that the church was tyrannized by the state when they moved away from establishment principle to Prelacy or Papacy proves that the establishment principle when held, biblically maintains church and state.  It is the state departing from the reformed establishment principle that leads to chaos amongst the spheres.

Voluntarism in the Confession about the civil is the road to Confessional collapse

However, there is something I would like to note, as DeYoung speaks positively about the original view of the Standards magisterial views being dismissible in the Adoption Act.  Historically, in Scotland, the establishment principle being eroded was often correlated to erosion in Confessionalism overall.  What I mean by that is that one of the first places where historic Confessionalism begins to deconstruct is in the area of the magistrate.  In the 1800s Presbyterians in Scotland added this formula on the magistrate for licentiates and ministers seeking ordination. 

“Do you own, and will you adhere to the doctrine of the Westminster Confession of Faith as founded on and consistent with the word of God, except in so far as the confusion recognizes the power of the civil magistrate to interfere with religious concerns?”⁸ 

A few things are occurring in this formula.  1. The language of subscription is changing and being severely lessened from previous oaths.  2.  The level of Confessionalism is being diminished in order to prepare the way for unions amongst groups of ministers that significantly differ on essential confessional matters.  3.  Shortly after the matter of the magistrate became a matter of indifference, the extent of the atonement also became a matter of indifference.  What is my point? Simply that DeYoung’s timeline of events that formed the changes in perspective on the magistrate in the 1700s is somewhat oblivious to how such things have historically played out.  The confessional world changing its posture on the magistrate in matters of subscription has often led to the erosion of Confessionalism altogether.  A voluntarist view of the magistrate was often historically accompanied by theological liberalism.  This can also be seen in the Free Church of Scotland’s various splits.  However, my counter in this article is that the changes in the standards were not a move to voluntarism; nonetheless, if the Standards allegedly (as DeYoung claims) have canceled religion in the civil sphere, then we are headed on a trajectory to erode the rest of our standards.  History shows that erosion of Christ’s crown magisterially will erode it soteriologically and ecclesiologically.

Witherspoon proves what about voluntarism as credible?

In the next section, DeYoung then makes his case for voluntarism by discussing Witherspoon.  This section was fascinating to me for one simple reason.  DeYoung is making a case for a radical separation of realms in America with Witherspoon, a figure who was a pastor and a politician at the same time.  Can you see the irony of it all?  Here we have a person acting simultaneously as a magistrate and a minister, and it is this person which is to give us a reformed vision of two Kingdom theology?  If anything, what we learn from Witherspoon is how to not practice the Scottish two kingdom theology.  I suspect that a man that is seeking to carry both the keys and the sword simultaneously is either going to do one of two things.  He will either sway the sword to the keys, or he will sway the keys to the sword, such effects are inevitable when you collapse the realms into one entity or figure.  In the case of Witherspoon, as useful as much of his political theology is, it seems that his official capacity in the civil realm swayed the ministry as elements of American pluralism crept into his ecclesial theology of the magistrate.  Witherspoon in no way strengthens DeYoung’s case for a dramatized and heightened 2K in the American Presbyterian tradition, if anything, Witherspoon is a figure that embodies undermining 2K distinctions.  Ministers are not magistrates, and magistrates are not ministers, if one is both then there is no cooperation of any kind.  This rings a bit of the one Kingdom Kuyperianism of the Kuyper.  Interestingly, earlier in the article, it states that both the original and American Standards are Kuyperian.  The Standards cannot be holding both to 2K and Kuperianism at the same time, the two are antithetical.  What is also ironic about DeYoung citing Witherspoon is what he later admits about what he did politically.

“In 1776, the New Jersey Provincial Congress, which included John Witherspoon, approved a new state constitution. While the constitution restricted office-holding to Protestants, it vigorously defended religious freedom and opposed religious establishments.” 

Witherspoon believed that the magistracy should be restricted exclusively to believers.  Meaning that the realm of magistracy is to be exclusively a Christian one.  Regardless of what one says about religious liberty in NJ, the reality is that the civil realm for Witherspoon was a Christian one.  No atheists or idolaters were to be civil figures via Witherspoon.  DeYoung’s case for American Presbyterianism being confessionally voluntarist is precarious.  At the end of the Witherspoon section, DeYoung says, “there isn’t a straight line of continuity from the Westminster Assembly to the New England Puritans to the American founders.”  There indeed is some truth to this statement, however this is not the point that DeYoung is seeking to make.  He is in one sense seeking to make a case for how the there is not a straight line with the Westminster Assembly and the post 1788 Westminster subscribers.  A point that he has yet to prove thus far.

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