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Quick History and Context of the Confession
The Parliament of England convened the Westminster Assembly
in 1643 to bring religious groups within Parliament together
into one national church with a shared liturgy and a new Reformed
creed. The Assembly met 1,163 times until it concluded its work
in 1649, having produced:
The Confession of Faith, the doctrinal
statement
of the Assembly (being reviewed in this study);
The Larger Catechism, longer than
the Confession itself, written as an aid for preachers;
The Shorter Catechism, a summary
statement
of the Larger Catechism to be used by young people;
the Form of Presbyterian Church Government;
and
a Directory of Public Worship
The years while the Assembly met were turbulent ones. A civil
war raged between religious factions. In mid-1648 the House
of Commons adopted the Confession, but later that year Parliament
was overthrown by the Independents, led by Oliver Cromwell.
The next year King Charles I was beheaded. Cromwell dissolved
Parliament and named himself “Lord Protector” of
England. Presbyterians who didn’t support the new Commonwealth
were excluded from their parishes. After Cromwell’s death,
England was plunged into anarchy, resulting in the restoration
of Parliament and the re-adoption of the Westminster Confession
of Faith in 1660.
In the American colonies, the Westminster standards arrived
with both the Puritans and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. The
Westminster Confession of Faith was so influential in shaping
American Presbyterianism that in 1729 every minister in the
new synod was required to subscribe to it as “essential
and necessary.”
The Confession was again prominent in the United States between
1898 and 1927, when a series of General Assembly statements
declared interpretations of the Confession to be the confessional
norm for the denomination. Since then there have been Presbyterians
who adhered to those twentieth-century interpretations and others
who considered them incorrect and disregarded them. Recently
the Westminster Confession has gained renewed interest as a
significant confessional document of our Reformed heritage.
The Basic Structure and Themes of the Confession
The Westminster Confession of Faith has a lot to
say about the importance of Scripture. It emphasizes two major
themes: the Holy Spirit’s relationship to Scripture (first
five sections), and the interpretation
of Scripture in light of its primary purpose to bring people
to salvation in Christ (last five sections).
It has 35 chapters organized as follows:
I Scripture
II–V The Sovereignty of God
VI–XX God’s Purposes in Human History
XXI–XXVI Ethical Issues
XXVII–XXXV The Church and Our Salvation |
