The Westminster Larger Catechism

An Introduction

The early church professed and confessed that Jesus Christ was both God and man, Lord over the universe and the unique and glorious Saviour of sinners. The modern world, both in scholarship and in the so-called 'Christian' church, has done much to change this primitive high view of Jesus. James I. Packer suggests that one of the ways in which Protestantism has compounded the problem is that "the practice of making children memorize catechisms stating Christian doctrine has fallen out of use".

The Westminster Assembly of the seventeenth century produced a set of documents which have been recognised by Reformed Christians the world over as a true statement of biblical doctrine. That is not to say that these documents are final; only the Bible itself can claim to have the last word. Nor is it to say that on various subjects there is no more room for discussion; there is always room for further insight and for further debate over the way in which particular doctrines may be stated or expressed. And we must always remember that our modern world is almost four centuries removed from that of Westminster, and the church constantly faces new situations and new challenges which will inevitably shape her theology.

But within the Reformed tradition, Christians have recognised that the Westminster Confession of Faith can play a vital role both as an expression of biblical belief, and a measure of theological orthodoxy. Many churches, including the Free Church of Scotland, have taken this superb document as the confession and expression of their understanding of the Bible's teaching.

However, 'spirituality' seems to be today's buzz-word. Perhaps that is a reaction to the experience of many churches which have been high on doctrine, but have felt little of Holy Spirit presence or power. To be sure, it is possible for our churches to be orthodox in the extreme, and yet to lack such power. There was an error which crept into the Scottish Church called 'Sandemanianism', which held that it was enough to consent to the truthfulness of doctrines in order to be saved. Yet, as the Bible tells us, even the devils believe, and they tremble (James 2:19). Their five-point Calvinism does not change their nature one little bit. We must always guard against a religion that is high on doctrine but low on experience; after all, even teachers in Israel need to be born again (John 3:7).

Yet unless our spiritual experiences are grounded in a firm grasp of Scriptural doctrine, we will be like the man in the Sermon on the Mount who built his house on the sand (Matthew 7:26-7). Whatever his house may have been like from the outside, it was the foundation that mattered. And the test ultimately was not what taste he had in décor, or what show he could put on within his walls; the final test was in the depth of his foundation.

As Christians, we may have many experiences to speak of, and much 'spirituality', yet we will be in danger if we lack depth in our understanding of the doctrines of the faith. Part of putting on the armour of God is to gird our loins with truth (Ephesians 6:14), which Peter further defines in this way: "Therefore, gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:13).

I hope that these studies of the questions and answers in the Larger Catechism will serve such a purpose, and that we will grow to be solid Christians, grounded in the truth of God's word, and bearing fruit in our lives to his glory.

Introduction To The Larger Catechism

If Packer is right in his assertion that lack of catechetical instruction has been one of Protestantism's contributions to the theological ignorance of the twenty-first century, then it is time to redress the balance. Questioning and answering is a highly effective teaching method, no less in our modern world than in the world out of which the Larger Catechism came. But even in churches which hold to the Westminster standards, it is usually the Shorter Catechism that is used for the instruction of children.

Many of us brought up in the Free Church of Scotland spent hours grappling with the Shorter Catechism as part of our Sunday School routine -- we learned answers to questions by rote, failing to understand what we were learning most weeks. For the more ambitious of us, our church awarded a special prize for those who could repeat all 107 questions of the Shorter Catechism at one sitting. The prize was usually a Bible, and it was a coveted one.

It was actually quite a shock to discover that the Shorter Catechism was not actually Westminster's intended catechetichal manual, but an abridgement of it. It had been designed for those of "weaker capacity"! Weaker capacity? We thought that the memorising of the Shorter Catechism required extraordinary capacity! But then perhaps things were different in the seventeenth century. In the twentieth, at least, the Shorter Catechism was our textbook, and the Larger, with its 196 questions, was hardly read or studied at all.

When we became adults and put away childish things, we then learned the value of all these question and answer sessions. There was a storehouse of doctrine in our minds, as well as an experience of grace in our hearts. And even if there were times in later life when we could not remember exactly the nuances of repentance unto life, or what was required in the sixth commandment, we had a background against which the preaching of the Gospel could resonate. We were tuned into the vocabulary of the Bible, and listening to the Word of God being expounded meant that the seed of the Gospel was not entirely falling on unprepared soil. I think B.B. Warfield was right: "It is worth while to be a Shorter Catechism boy. They grow to be men. And better than that, they are exceedingly apt to grow to be men of God."

But what of Westminster's Longer Catechism? How was it produced, and what was its purpose? And why has it fallen by the wayside in so many church and Sunday School systems? That last question is the hardest to answer. Perhaps we ought to take a little time just to sketch the background.

The Westminster Assembly

Perhaps I should begin by recommending three books which will prove valuable for those who want to examine the work of the Westminster Assembly in greater depth. The first was written originally in 1904, by William Beveridge, entitled A Short History of the Westminster Assembly. It was republished by A Press in 1991 and 1993, and gives a first class and comprehensive account of all that was involved in the calling and the work of the Assembly. In 1996 Christian Focus Publications published William Barker's Puritan Profiles: Personalities Drawn Together by the Westminster Assembly, an extremely readable and enjoyable collection of biographies. The Assembly did indeed 'draw together' a variety of men from different shades of church life, and Professor Barker's book adds a useful personal touch to the whole issue.

I would suggest, however, that an indispensable guide to the whole matter of Westminster is the Banner of Truth publication To Glorify and Enjoy God, edited by John L. Carson and David W. Hall, and published in 1994 as a 350th anniversary commemoration of the Assembly. In addition to providing further reading material, this volume summarises the historical context of the Assembly, the works produced by it, and a summary of the themes and influence of Westminster. Another useful summary by Professor Sinclair B. Ferguson is to be found in the article "Westminster Assembly and Documents" in the Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology (T&T Clark, 1993).

So what was Westminster about?

In June 1643, Parliament passed an ordinance calling for "an Assembly of learned, godly and judicious divines" to meet at Westminster and to deliberate on the worship and learning of the Church of England. That meant reviewing and reforming its worship, discipline and government. Parliament ordained that the Assembly would settle the government of the Church "as may be most agreeable to God's holy word, and most apt to procure and preserve the peace of the church at home, and nearer agreement with the church of Scotland, and other reformed churches abroad."

It was a wide remit, and was the culmination of almost four years of previous petitions, acts and resolutions before Parliament. Part of the historical reason for these events was that the Reformation had not been as thorough-going in England as it had been in Scotland; indeed, the first petition to Parliament in December 1640 called for the complete abolition of episcopacy.

In the event, the Assembly convened in Westminster Abbey on 1 July 1643, and appointed committees to deal with matters such as the drafting of a Confession of Faith and Catechisms. The last minuted session of the Assembly was on 22 February 1649, but it was not dissolved until 1652, having met in committee over these last three years.

The 'divines' who met at Westminster represented a wide range of ecclesiastical backgrounds. There were episcopalians, like Archbishop James Ussher and Dr Daniel Fairclough, Puritans of an Independent church view, such as Thomas Goodwin and Jeremiah Burroughes, London Clergy such as Edmund Calamy, theologians from New England, such as John Cotton of Boston and Thomas Hooker of Connecticut, and Scottish Presbyterians, such as Samuel Rutherford and George Gillespie. The Scottish Commissioners attended as a consultative committee, rather than as members of the Assembly, but their influence was nonetheless considerable.

Diverse though this gathering was, those who attended had one thing in common: a desire to see a thorough reformation of the church, so that church life and witness would conform to the teachings of the Word of God. The formal principle of the Reformation was the divine authority of the Bible: it was on the basis of "Scripture alone" that Calvin, Luther, Zwingli and others had promoted the European Reformation. So it was that the Westminster Assembly, a child of the Reformation movement, met to consider such questions as the biblical teaching on the government of the church and on theological issues.

The Assembly began its work in July 1643, and had produced its famous Directory for Public Worship by January 1645, and presented its Confession of Faith to Parliament in December 1646. A resolution of the Assembly in January 1646 ordained that "the Committee for the Catechism do prepare a draught of two Catechisms, one more large and another more brief, in which they are to have an eye to the Confession of Faith, and to the matter of the Catechism already begun". As historian William Beveridge (History, p139) reminds us, "The Larger Catechism was practically complete before the Shorter was really begun".

For a summary of Westminster's attempt to produce a single Catechism, I would refer you to Wayne Spear's article on "The Unfinished Westminster Catechism" in To Glorify and Enjoy God, Appendix A, pp259-266. As Robert Godfrey's article on the Larger Catechism in the same volume (Chapter 6) points out, the decision to produce two catechisms instead of one really was "a key breakthrough" in the Assembly's work (p130). The Assembly began debating the wording of the Catechism in April 1647; it was presented to Parliament in October of that year, and approved by Parliament in April 1648.

As Dr Godfrey points out, it is difficult to know, however, what use the Assembly intended to make of the Larger Catechism. Perhaps it was intended for instruction from the pulpits Sunday by Sunday; it was certainly intended as a comprehensive and exact manual of theology.

The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in July 1648 enacted that the Larger Catechism be used throughout the Church. Presbyteries had already examined it, and Assembly Commissioners were further given the opportunity to express any doubts they may have had regarding its contents. The Assembly declared the Catechism to be "agreeable to the Word of God, and in nothing contrary to the received doctrine, worship, discipline and government of this Kirk." It further described it as "a rich treasure for increasing knowledge among the people of God," and sent it forth as "a Directory for catechising such as have made some proficiency in the knowledge of the grounds of religion".

Objections To The Westminster Theology

Not all have agreed, however, that the Church of Scotland's adoption of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms were a good thing. Thomas F. Torrance, for example, while acknowledging that the Westminster Confession of Faith was "undoubtedly a magnificent achievement", nonetheless says that "Its acceptance, along with the Larger Catechism and the Shorter Catechism ... did mean that a more legalistic Calvinism was authoritatively grafted on to the more evangelical Calvinism of the older Scottish Tradition" (Torrance, Scottish Theology, Chapter 4). He goes on to accuse the Westminster theology of reversing some of Calvin's emphases, and being forged on the anvil of federal, or covenant, theology. To Torrance this is a bad thing; he says that the federal aspect "gave the Westminster Confession and Catechisms a very legalistic and constitutional character in which theological statements were formalised with 'almost frigidly logical definition'".

Professor Torrance is a highly respected scholar in the liberal evangelical Scottish tradition. Yet his aversion to the theology of the Westminster standards is obsessive; for him, it represents an adulterating of Reformation Calvinism. It is true that the larger part of the Catechisms is taken up with a discussion of the requirements and prohibitions of the ten commandments, but, as Sinclair Ferguson reminds us, this was not about Westminsterian legalism but about pastoral concerns, underlining the conviction of the Westminster divines that "the whole of Scripture must be applied to the whole of life".

It is my own conviction that the church needs to return to the evangelical Calvinism of the Reformation, to the doctrines articulated in the Confession of Faith and disseminated through the Catechisms. I hope that this study of the Larger Catechism will help us to understand the fulness of grace and truth that is in Jesus Christ, and to live our lives in a way that will truly be to his glory, and lead to our enjoying God for ever.