Is Election truly “Unconditional,” as we say it is in tUlip? John Wesley said that just leads to ignoring God’s commandments.

Preachers have continued to believe Reformed doctrines when they were no longer making any pastoral or personal use of them. That was bound to send a bad message, and still does. It’s like a sermon without any application: we believe this, but who knows what good it is.

They knew they were supposed to believe them so they did, but they were under glass in their church museum.

There are two options. Be honest and remove whatever we don’t use from our confessional commitments. A lot of people say that is the right way to do things, but it hardly ever happens.

The original American adoption of the Westminster Standards in 1730 omitted part of the church/state relationship of the original so we don’t expect or desire that the government would call our meetings.

The only other changes were in the 1830’s. Maybe the Pope is the Antichrist, but we don’t ask everyone to agree. It became acceptable to marry your deceased wife’s sister. (When you went west to Kansas and your wife needed help, her sister from Boston came out. The kids loved her. Then your wife died and it seemed right to marry her sister. Leviticus doesn’t allow that, but that must be ‘ceremonial’ law.)

But that’s all, if we leave out the 1903 amendments. That’s another story. Are they ‘Arminian’ or do they clarify? Warfield originally opposed them, but when they were adopted, he noted that they functioned within the rest of the Standards and were defined by them so they were acceptable. But the OPC and the PCA have dropped them, but not the EPC.

What do we do with a preacher who doesn’t apply the Bible? We encourage him to get to know his people, where they are and what they need to hear. I have been a supply preacher and had to guess, and that is really hard.

What if the preachers leave out the parts of the Bible they don’t know how to apply? That’s where we need to help each other. That’s the strength of ‘expository’ preaching; preach on everything in the Bible. When you preach through Romans, don’t stop with Romans 8 but keep going through ‘Jacob have I loved but Esau I hated, before they were even born.’

How does that help what you just said in chapter 8, ‘nothing will separate you from the love of Christ’? Is it something like this: can you count on God to keep his promises, when it didn’t seem to work with Israel? That will still take a lot of work, but at least you know why it’s worth doing.

Or, John quotes Jesus as saying, ‘you can’t come unless the Father draws you.’ Does that look like an excuse for not sharing our faith? Is that why you have to be an Arminian to be really into evangelism? That can’t be right. Look closer. Jesus doesn’t say that in general, but to those who keep rejecting what he says.

Is that something we should learn to say to those folks who tell us, I’ll think about it? Is that the way we tell them, if you think God is at your disposal, think again?

Is Election truly “Unconditional,” as we say it is in tUlip? John Wesley said that just has to lead to ignoring God’s commandments. How do we put together unconditional election and the conditions of the covenant? Can we learn from Shepherd and FV? That will take work, too.

But it will be work worth doing. Otherwise we might as well get honest and drop those dead letters from our theology. We need to work with our Westminster Standards and especially with the Bible underneath them. That will happen as we labor hard on applying them, I think.
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D. Clair Davis is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. He was Professor of Church History at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia and now teaches at Redeemer Seminary in Dallas, Texas.