Important dates in The Westminster Assembly and Judicial Law articles by Coldwell and Winzer

Over the past five years I have been subscribing to The Confessional Presbyterian journal (CPJ) and finding out how much more I desire to find out about my Presbyterian heritage. Every journal is filled with articles, original translations of usually writings that have never been available in English, a Psalm to set to an original meter, and then book reviews. It's really been a great reading experience, and it has also helped me learn more about being a Reformed Presbyterian (RP) because a fair amount of the articles have come from members on pastors of various RP churches, and most of their editors are RPs.

Over the past number of years I have become more convinced that a teaching called Theonomy is a harmful and dangerous teaching because it misunderstands God's Law at every possible point - I'll demonstrate proof for this claim in a later post. In 1998, however, the General Assembly of the Free Church in Scotland produced a report titled, Theonomy and the Confession of Faith, which declared,

... that the teachings commonly known as Theonomy or Reconstructionism contradict the Confession of Faith and are inconsistent with Biblical doctrine. It is also essential that the Assembly communicate that declaration to the Church and the grounds on which that judgement has been made. To this end the Committee is recommending that this section of the Report together with the relevant part of the Deliverance be circulated to all Presbyteries and Kirk Sessions.

My church's first pastor was a Theonomist, and more pertinently when he left some of the members that still remain alive and in my church still believe that Theonomy is biblical and the solution to societies social ills. As far as I currently know, the RPCNA hasn't issued a statement for or against Theonomy as a Synod. It has, for the most part only lost its influence. Two of the most important works for Theonomy was R.J. Rushdoony's The Institutes of Biblical Law which was published in 1973 and then Greg L. Bahnsen's Theonomy in Christian Ethics in 1977. More importantly, and parts of this narrative is speculative, from an RP perspective some of the Theonomic voices sounded very similar to the Mediatorial Kingship of Christ over the nations doctrine which is a distinctive that the Reformed Presbyterian Church worldwide has held to since the mid-to-late 17th century, in various ways. However, there are very important distinctions that either were not deemed important or were ignored at the time for the sake of the "culture wars", which I'll get into at another time.

All of the above was setting the context for what I'm about to explain. One of the claims of Theonomy is that their position has historical precedence before Rushdoony and Bahnsen. Additionally, since Dr. Bahnsen was also minster in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church he needed to explain how Theonomy did not conflict with Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) 19.2-4, which presents the Threefold Division of the Law as follows:

II. This law, after his fall, continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness; and, as such, was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai, in ten commandments, and written in two tables: the first four commandments containing our duty towards God; and the other six, our duty to man.
III. Besides this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, His graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits; and partly, holding forth divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the New Testament.
IV. To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging under any now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

I shortly hope to provide a defense of the Threefold Division of the Law in a future post, but for the purposes of this post we should assume that the Threefold Division comes from the Bible instead of being read into the Bible.  Anyway, the CPJ in its fifth volume (its an annual journal, by the way) published two articles totaling nearly 90 pages about The Westminster Assembly and Judicial Law by Chris Coldwell and Matthew Winzer. Chris Coldwell compiled in the first article which is all data available from the start of the Assembly through the completion of chapters 19, 20, and 23 of the WCF with a focus on any material that can still be currently found about the subject of judicial law from a member of the Assembly connected with work on the ninth proposition of Article 7 of the Thirty-Nine Articles and chapters 19, 20, and 23 of the WCF.  Just this article alone is 52 pages! Matthew Winzer then provides a detailed analysis article about the first article. Lane Keister in the sixth volume called these two articles "The best treatment of this phrase ['general equity']" on page 205 footnote 4 in his review of Joseph C. Morecraft, III's Authentic Christianity: An Exposition of the Theology and Ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism.

While Mr. Coldwell and Rev. Winzer are to be commended for their hard work in putting all this data together and then presenting analysis, the thought of reading 90 pages for most people interested in this discussion might be a bit too big to actually read. Therefore, when I went though the two articles for the second time last year I created a "cheat sheet", or a document which helps provide some focus on all the great material found in those two articles to whet the appetite for reading the rest of the articles.  Which is presented below:

Important dates in The Westminster Assembly & the Judicial Law Chronology article by Chris Coldwell as appears in The Confessional Presbyterian 5 (2009)

All the dates are important in Coldwell’s chronology, but since there are so many listed dates and events it is important to narrow down the list for brevity:

May 1, 1645 (pgs. 27 - 29) - A selection of Daniel Cawdrey and Herbert Palmer's book Sabbatum Redivivum: or, the Christian Sabbath vindicated is provides a lot of detail about the Threefold Division 

November 24, 1645 (pgs. 33, 34) – A work against the Brownists by Robert Baillie is reproduced. See Rev. Matthew Winzer’s Analysis article pages 70, 72, 88, and author’s conclusion on 322 for more information on the importance of Baillie’s work against the Brownists

March 26, 1646 (pg. 37) – Coldwell quotes from session 610 Christian Liberty Report about how WCF 20.1 was worded to include Christian’s being free from both the Ceremonial and Judicial Law

October 12, 1646 (pgs. 41 – 44) – Selections of a very helpful sermon preached before some members of the Assembly by Anthony Burgess is printed giving an exegetical explanation of the threefold division of the law of Moses

December 2, 1646 (pgs. 45 – 47) – Selections are printed in the article from Jus Divinum about the difference between two types of commands given by God: Immediate or Mediate; Moral commands and positive commands is another distinction. In addition, a summary statement by William Gouge preaching on Hebrews 7:12 about judicial law is reproduced

December 4, 1646 (pg. 47) – The Minutes of the Assembly record Mr. Gillespie’s request for the alteration of the wording of WCF 23.1 from “Christ” to “God”. See Winzer’s Analysis on pages 74 – 77 (the section titled, “The spheres of nature and grace”) for Winzer’s implications of this change

December 7, 1646 (pgs. 48, 49) – Coldwell reports on the finalized wording of WCF 20 and gives some comments about 20.1 omitting “Judicial Law” from what it was in the minutes on March 26. Coldwell also, in the printed copy, wrongly refers the reader back to March 27 instead of March 26 for original wording. As of writing this – January 09, 2013 – the CPJ has not published an errata about this mistake. Is the March 26 date correct and Coldwell’s reference on December 7 wrong? Is the later reference correct and the chronology as printed wrong? Is Coldwell referring to something else listed under March 27? Mr. Coldwell responded the same day and said that he will look into the error

April 29, 1647 (pgs, 50, 51) – WCF 19.4 is reproduced with Scripture proofs and the margins reads “… Gen. 49.10. with 1 Pet. 2. 13, 14. …”

March 8, 1647/48 (pgs. 53 – 55) – Coldwell prints some excepts from a work by Francis Cheynell which is arguing for Magistrates punishing heretics on the basis of equity between the Moral Law in both Testaments

Now I realize that this assumes you have access to the two articles in question, but the point of this exercise is to encourage you to read the articles. The evidence strongly proves that Theonomy was not an orthodox position held by the writers of the Confession, and that the closest 17th century equivalent to the 20th century Theonomic movement was soundly rejected by the Assembly.