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

The Finale of a Series on Westminster Chapter 23 and a Response to Kevin DeYoung

Presbyterians unanimous about voluntarism?

DeYoung then writes, “when the General Assembly of 1789 presented a fawning address to the President of the United States (an address drafted by a three-person committee with Witherspoon as the head), they didn’t laud George Washington as the reformer of the church or the avenger of both tables of the law. Instead, they 

“esteem[ed] it a peculiar happiness to behold in [their] chief magistrate, a steady, uniform, avowed friend of the Christian religion; who has commenced his administration in rational and exalted sentiments of piety; and who, in his private conduct adorns the doctrines of the gospel of Christ; and, on the most public and solemn occasions devoutly acknowledges the government of divine Providence.”

DeYoung has a habit of overstating statements.  He finds a statement that post Westminster revision (ch.23) presbyterians make to the executive branch of government, notes no first table preoccupations, and then adds a point for the voluntarist argument.  This is not convincing and as time would tell not representative of the American WCF subscribing church. Consider the 1814 PCUSA GA petition to the U.S. Congress, which is not even 20 years later. 

“We are accustomed to consider that our prosperity as a nation depends upon the smiles of heaven, and that the profanation of the Sabbath is calculated to awaken the displeasure of God, and to bring down his judgments.”

DeYoung notes what the Presbyterian church said to Washington but fails to note what they say to government shortly after.  The 23:3 post changes Presbyterian church shows the following about their beliefs about the magistrate by this statement. 1.  National obedience to God’s law had temporal consequences, in a way that shows continuity with the OT.  2.  23:3 was re-written with the magistrate in mind as keeper and enforcer of the first table of the law.  3.  The failure of a nation to observe the first table of the law nationally was a sin against God. 4. The American government should make laws about first table matters.  5. The post 1788 Standards church was not voluntarist nor as DeYoung claims made by those that abandoned the doctrine that teaches the magistrate as an enforcer of both tables of the law. 

Consider what the same assembly stated the following year about their concerns for Sabbath breaking not being affirmed by the government about mail.

“A free government, therefore, in which existing laws have lost their efficacy, presents to view a government in which the supreme authority lies prostrate under the feet of the lawless and disobedient. In producing the most unhappy state of society, the first efforts of iniquity will be exerted to silence those laws and regulations which most powerfully counteract the depraved feelings of the heart, which tend to strengthen the moral sense, and which remind men of their accountability to that tribunal from which there is no appeal. If, therefore, the main spring of moral instruction, and moral feeling, is found in a due sanctification of the Sabbath, to destroy its influence to them so irksome, will be the first efforts of the sons of Belial!”

In summary, the post 1788 Presbyterians believed that voluntarism or a first table neutral magistrate is nothing less than the work of Satan.

The first table of the law is not wickedness once you leave the church parking lot?

DeYoung’s next quote is quite telling about his theological posture on virtue. “He believed civil liberty and religious liberty always went hand in hand; lose one, and you’ll lose the other. As he said in “The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men”—his famous sermon from May 1776 that paved the way for independence—“I do not wish to oppose anybody’s religion, but everybody’s wickedness.”  This statement in itself is a significant departure from the Westminster teachings on the law of God.  1. WLC question 14 states,“Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.”  This means that wickedness includes man’s sinful religion, as it is a violation of the first table of the law (see WLC 103-121).   Is it not wicked for mankind to worship wickedly as much as it is to murder wickedly?  All 10 commands are righteous, and all violations of them are wicked.  Wickedness is any breaking of any of God’s law at any time, anywhere. 2. WLC 152 says that every sin deserves God’s wrath and curse in this life and the one to come, which is to say that God in the present opposes man’s evil religion.  DeYoung’s commendation of this quote infers that the magistrate should not even though God calls it to be His avenger in Romans 13.  3. WLC 99:5 says, “that what God forbids, is at no time to be done;8 what he commands, is always our duty;9 and yet every particular duty is not to be done at all times.”  Witherspoon’s quote would make first table public sinning the exception to this in a society.  With Witherspoon and DeYoung’s logic, it could be worded to say, “what God forbids is at no time to be done except when it pertains to first table sins done in society.” 4. WLC 99:7 and 9 say, 

“that what is forbidden or commanded to ourselves, we are bound, according to our places, to endeavour that it may be avoided or performed by others, accord- ing to the duty of their places.””That in what is commanded to others, we are bound, accord- ing to our places and callings, to be helpful to them;13 and to take heed of partaking with others in what is forbidden them.” 

This means that if blasphemy societally speaking is wrong for ourselves, then we are bound in our place and calling that others not be able to freely pursue such sins.  In our places and the places of others, we are to labor to prevent that which is sinful from taking place.  Which is to say that wickedness is doing nothing about wickedness in either your place and calling or others places and callings. DeYoung via Witherspoon believes that Westminster is wrong here, as we have no duty to labor that all in their places and callings be responsible to the first table.  5. This logic undermines WLC 118 which says, 

“the charge of keeping the sabbath is more specially directed to governors of families, and other superiors, because they are bound not only to keep it them- selves but to see that it is observed by all those that are under their charge; and because they are prone ofttimes to hinder them by employments of their own.”  

According to Witherspoon and DeYoung superiors in the civil sphere have no duty whatsoever to restrict man’s wickedness and promote righteousness when it comes to the first table (here Sabbath keeping).  This is my great concern with men in NAPARC like DeYoung, their articulation about their views on the magistrate are conveying a different view of God’s law.  Their views on God’s law, societally speaking, are antinomian.  As they change the historic view on the magistrate, they are simultaneously changing the law.  It is for this reason that many of the historic antinomians were those who strongly opposed the establishment principle, meaning that anti-establishment and antinomianism are historical hand maids.  What DeYoung is calling for here is not simply a different view of the magistrate, but also a different view of God’s law. 

What we see now that they never saw then

DeYoung then says the following, “this was a situation the Westminster divines, let alone the Covenanters, couldn’t have envisioned and wouldn’t have countenanced. But Presbyterians in America saw the relationship between the church and the state in different terms, and they revised the Westminster Confession accordingly.”  In speaking to this point, I would like to ask the following to all who would hear me.  Are we prepared to say that we have a view of vital areas of the Confession that would be totally unrecognizable to the original writers?  Is this what American Presbyterian is? A Confessionalism that could not even be imagined by those who gave us the Confession?  DeYoung needs to stop vacillating conveniently from his statements that at time show great continuity about the Kingdoms from the Scots to America and other times great contrast and discontinuity.  Either we have much continuity with the original standards on this matter, and so must reject this voluntarist view of the changes in 23, or we have a severely different civil Confessionalism that we must repent for.

DeYoung then states, 

“an important case in point, as I’ve tried to show, is the way the doctrine of the civil magistrate changed over time. John Coffey’s conclusion is apt: “With the exception of the Reformed Presbyterian Covenanters and some Seceders, eighteenth-century Presbyterians found ways of distancing themselves from the Westminster Assembly’s teaching on the coercive powers of the godly magistrate in matters of religion. . . In every part of the English-speaking world, Lockean ideas of religious liberty looked increasingly attractive to Presbyterians who feared Anglican hegemony or saw little prospect of becoming the dominant majority.” 

It is here where DeYoung again reveals where this voluntarist Presbyterianism comes from.  It does not come from the Standards, it does not come from the scriptures, it comes from enlightenment ideology. Said another way, American’s have distanced themselves from Rutherford and Gillespie by attaching themselves to Locke.  This confessional piety that DeYoung is presenting here is a syncretist one which weds the crown of Christ with the powers of this age.   It reads the Westminster Standards through the enlightenment. 

Conclusion

DeYoung then concludes with the following.

“As a minister in the PCA, and as one who takes vows to uphold the revised version of the Westminster Confession, I think the changes were for the better. But my aim in this article hasn’t been so much to prove the changes were better as it has been to show the changes are significant and that they represent two different and irreconcilable views of the civil magistrate.”

“If American Presbyterians in particular want to look to their confessional past for a model of church-state relations, they’ll have to determine if they’re going back to London or back to Philadelphia. They cannot be in both places at the same time.”

Let me conclude this long series by stating the following.

1.          Subscription to the American Standards does not demand that previous language that is no longer in it be deemed wrong and antithetical.  The only denials that we are subscribing to in the Standards are the denials that are in the standards.  Affirming 23:3 as amended is not formally denying the original 23:3.  DeYoung is incorrect here. 

2.          The totality of the Westminster standards language on law, society, and magistrates contradict DeYoung claims about the new language in 23:3.  Much of what DeYoung says is canceled in the new 23:3 is affirmed regularly in other parts of the Standards. 

3.          The new language of 23:3 is still establishment language and retains a view of the magistrate as a keeper of both tables of the law.  It surely softens and broadens the establishment principle, however it does not nuke it to oblivion. 

4.          The writings of key Presbyterian leaders in America post changes in the standards show that they did not see a newfound voluntarism which in turn secularizes and first table neuters the magistrate. 

5.          The continuity of the civil theology from London to Philadelphia must be acknowledged and yet the contrast as well; however, the polarity of DeYoung with his one or the other dichotomy must be rejected outright.  Our standards soften establishment and make room for it being pan protestant, however they do not make it null and void. 

6.          The voluntarist principle is not a tenable view of the reformed tradition, and it never will be.  It is a principle that comes from man’s natural fallenness while the establishment principle something that springs from grace and revelation. 

7.          The solution to aberrant Christian Nationalism is not voluntarism but confessional/biblical establishmentarianism. 

8.          The establishment principle is so thoroughly embedded in much of the standards that to deny it entirely is virtually to deny the Confession, particularly its Christology and views of law. 

9.          Theologians like DeYoung claim that establishment views historically and presently are more reflective of culture rather than the canon, however voluntarism is by far the most culturally produced view of society (it is a principle of nature as Gibson shows).  The reformation produced the most biblical establishment view, while the secular humanist enlightenment codified voluntarism in Christendom. 

10. Confessional 2K theology is anti voluntarism, anti-Erastian, anti Pope, and pro establishment principle.  2K theology was codified in a way that can not exist without the establishment principle.  Voluntarism coupled with 2K theology is like removing fencing from the table. 

11. 2K theology is only tenable with the establishment principle that limits the state Christocentrically.

12. I believe that men like DeYoung feel the pressure and pushback in their churches and amongst other Christians due to the rise, credibility and newfound acceptance of the establishment principle.  Articles like this are an attempt at regaining the credibility that theologians like DeYoung are losing. 

13. In the coming years, those who believe that establishment Principle null and void will be seen as theologically null and void to the coming generation of theologians and members. The writing is on the wall, and writings like this will be nothing more than debris to step and over.

14. Gospel Coalition is constantly virtue signaling to political elites and state worshiping Christians, I believe that this article is a sophisticated virtue signaling jab at Christian nationalists to the end that they would be seen by that world as anti CN and so deemed acceptable.  The Gospel Coalition as a whole has been exposed to be nothing more than cultural, and so unable to speak credibly about culture. 

15. The original standards were correct on the magistrate and the new-found language also correct.  Perhaps a synthesizing of both of them is in order. 

16. The views that men like DeYoung and Van Drunnen (on a podcast DeYoung commended Van Drunnen’s book on principled pluralism) are promoting do not reflect the Confessional thinking about the law of God, Christ’s Kingship, and the civil sphere of the American Presbyterian tradition, the second reformation tradition, the reformation tradition, the early church, nor the Apostles.  The voluntarist position was confessed historically (mostly) by sects and heretics.  And the voluntarist presently in the orthodox confessional realm has never been articulated ever by anyone in the way it is being articulated now by these men.  What DeYoung is calling for in this article is a Presbyterianism that it is unrecognizable to everyone before 5 minutes ago. 

---

Image Credit: Unsplash

Share This