We live in a time where many voices across the political spectrum are questioning the wisdom of the democratic liberal order we’ve had in much of the West for the past 200 years. As Christians grieve what has been lost of their former cultural influence (and fear what lies ahead), there have been new discussions and new discoveries about what political arrangement can best serve our nation and our world. Some of these discussions have been more heat than light, but many have been welcome forays into a deeper understanding of political theology. 

Abstract: In 1788, American Presbyterians meeting in Philadelphia approved a revised version of the Westminster Confession of Faith. The most significant change to the original 1646 version concerned the doctrine of the civil magistrate in chapter 23. In the century and a half following the Westminster Assembly, many Presbyterians grew wary of granting coercive powers to the civil magistrate and were drawn to more robust notions of religious liberty. In revising the Westminster Confession, Presbyterians in America rejected an older, European model of church-state relations whereby the magistrate was obligated to suppress heresies, reform the church, and provide for church establishments. As new debates about the proper relationship between church and state continue to multiply, it’s important to recognize that the two versions of WCF 23:3 represent two different and irreconcilable views of the civil magistrate.

The version of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) used by most Presbyterians in America isn’t identical with the version approved by the Westminster Assembly in 1646. Most of the differences between the historic text and the text used by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) and the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) are small—a change related to marrying the relative of a deceased spouse, a softened stance toward swearing oaths, and the removal of a reference to the pope as the antichrist. The most substantial changes—really, the only substantial changes—have to do with the relationship between church and state.

When the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America adopted the Westminster Standards in 1788, they amended the Standards in four places: WCF 20:4, 23:3, 31:3; Westminster Larger Catechism 109. The most significant change is in chapter 23, where the third article was almost completely rewritten, reflecting a new understanding of church and state that allowed for more toleration and gave much less power to the magistrate over the realm of religion.

The purpose of this article is to show what changed in the American revision of WCF 23:3 and why the changes were made. In exploring these changes, it’ll become clear the two versions of WCF 23:3, though overlapping in some areas, are, in significant ways, contradictory. In addition to examining the historical record, this article aims to make a point of contemporary relevance: that there’s more than one Reformed view of the civil magistrate and that those who want to subscribe to the Westminster Confession—either in general spirit or in an official capacity—should think carefully about which version they believe is correct.

A church officer in the OPC or PCA, for example, who subscribes without exception to his denomination’s version (the American version) of WCF 23:3 is implicitly rejecting the view that the civil magistrate has the duty to purify the church, to suppress heresies, and to call ecclesiastical synods. He is, instead, affirming a different view of the civil magistrate that does much more to restrict the magistrate’s power and gives members of the commonwealth much more freedom and liberty in the realm of religion (even to the point of practicing no religion at all).

In short, what the Westminster Assembly confessed in London about the civil magistrate in 1646 is not what American Presbyterians confessed in Philadelphia in 1788. The two versions of the Westminster Confession don’t say the same thing, and they cannot both be right.

1. What Didn’t Change

We can see what changed and what didn’t change by looking at a side-by-side comparison of the two versions of WCF 23:3. What’s bolded is the same in both versions (except moving from singular to plural); everything else was a change from 1646 to 1788.

As we can see, the first sentence of the revised version is unchanged from the historic text up until the word “or.” The Westminster divines and their 18th-century American counterparts agreed that “civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments,” and that they mustn’t exercise “the power of the keys” in the courts of the church. The Confession rejected any species of Erastianism—named after the Swiss physician and theologian Thomas Erastus (1524–83)—that insisted on the state’s authority in ecclesiastical affairs. The Westminster divines may have thought the magistrate was afforded a power about religion (circa sacra), but he wasn’t to exercise power in religion (in sacris).

The Scottish commissioner George Gillespie figured prominently in this debate. True, the lore surrounding Gillespie’s role at the Assembly is sometimes more legend than fact. The 19th-century historian William Hetherington has Gillespie single-handedly vanquishing Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Thomas Coleman, and John Lightfoot; toppling John Selden in a single speech; and thoroughly demolishing Erastianism for all time with Aaron’s Rod Blossoming (1646).

At the same time, it’s true that Gillespie, the youngest member of the Assembly, was an intellectual prodigy and one of the most frequent speakers and most effective debaters. In print, Gillespie argued that while the civil and ecclesiastical powers agreed in many respects (e.g., both are from God, both must obey God’s commandments, both ought to be honored, both can issue censures and correction), they differed in “their causes, effects, objects, adjuncts, correlations, executions, and ultimate terminations.” As he wrote several pages later, “The Magistrate himself may not assume the administration of the keys, nor the dispensing of Church-censures; he can but punish the external man with external punishments.” In short, the church was to be the object of the magistrate’s care but not of his operation.

Gillespie’s views on the civil magistrate, if not entirely convincing to every member of the Assembly, represented the kind of two-kingdom thinking that had been dominant in Scotland for three-quarters of a century. In 1578, the General Assembly in Scotland approved a brief manual on church government called the Second Book of Discipline, what has since been called “the first explicit statement of Scottish Presbyterianism.” A central theme throughout the document is that the Kirk (i.e., the Church of Scotland) and the civil magistrate may work toward some of the same ends but “always without confounding the one jurisdiction with the other.”

The magistrate can only deal with external matters; he cannot make laws that demand affections or compel the conscience to believe certain things. Crucially, the Second Book of Discipline also stipulated that the “magistrate neither ought to preach, minister the sacraments, nor execute the censures of the kirk, nor yet prescribe any rule how it should be done.”

Unlike its neighbor to the south, Scotland insisted the head of the church and the head of the state weren’t the same. When Reformed and Presbyterian pastors make a declaration in the name of “Jesus Christ, the only King and Head of his Church,” they’re denying not only the authority of the pope but also the authority of any earthly monarch over the church.

The Westminster Confession stands in the same tradition, believing the civil realm and the ecclesiastical realm are both under God’s authority but with different officers, different responsibilities, and different aims. As Calvin put it, “Whoever knows how to distinguish between body and soul, between this present fleeting life and that future eternal life, will without difficulty know that Christ’s spiritual Kingdom and the civil jurisdiction are things completely distinct.”

2. Civil Magistrate as Guardian and Avenger

Of course, “completely distinct” didn’t mean for Calvin, or for the Second Book of Discipline, or for Gillespie, or for the Westminster divines that the civil magistrate had no role to play in the establishment, defense, and promotion of true religion. On the contrary, they all believed the civil magistrate was responsible for enforcing both tables of the law. These responsibilities didn’t mean the state was ushering in Christ’s kingdom. That was the work of the gospel and the church. But the magistrate did have a responsibility to reform the church, to suppress false teaching, and to ensure the moral law was honored by all.

Until recently, most Reformed Christians, especially in America, would have quickly dismissed the historic text as tragically mistaken and embraced the 1788 revision as obviously correct. In recent years, however, as republican virtue has waned and as the democratic-liberal consensus has broken down, some Christians have wondered anew if the magisterial reformers and the confessional documents from the 16th and 17th centuries may have been right after all.

Stephen Wolfe, for example, has argued for a “Christian prince” in our day to do the following: “If the ministry degrades, he should reform it. He should correct the lazy and erring pastor but not perform the duties of pastor. He should protect the church from heretics and disturbers of ecclesiastical peace, ensuring tranquil spiritual administration.”

Wolfe insists the Christian prince “has the power to call synods in order to resolve doctrinal conflicts and to moderate the proceedings. Following the proceedings, he can confirm or deny their theological judgments; and in confirming them, they become the settled doctrine of the land.” According to Wolfe, the prince may look to pastors for theological advice as a father seeks advice from his son, but the prince “still retains his superiority.”

The Westminster divines thought about the relationship between church and state in the way most Reformed Christians did at the time: the civil magistrate has a duty to keep the church pure, to suppress blasphemies and heresies, to ensure the church’s worship and discipline are properly reformed, to maintain a settled church establishment, to call for church synods, and (like Constantine of old) to provide for them if necessary.

The Belgic Confession (1561), for example, declared that the “government’s task is not limited to caring for and watching over the public domain, but extends to upholding the sacred ministry, with a view to removing and destroying all idolatry and false worship of the Antichrist; to promoting the kingdom of Jesus Christ; and to furthering the preaching of the gospel everywhere; to the end that God may be honored and served by everyone, as he requires in his Word.”

Sixty years later, the Dutch theologians were still staying the same thing. The Synopsis of a Purer Theology—often called the Leiden Synopsis because it originated in 1624 as a series of disputations among faculty members at the University of Leiden—argued the civil magistrate’s duties fell into two broad categories: (1) the magistrate must make sure the civil laws are in agreement with the law of nature and with the recorded moral law; (2) the magistrate should establish and keep pure the worship of God in his region, reform what has become corrupt in the church, and “as far as he is able” go against heterodox teachers and those who block the way of progress of true religion.

While the Synopsis does espouse a basic two-kingdoms philosophy, it also argues for “the greatest possible harmony . . . between the two administrations, i.e., the political and ecclesiastical one.” The civil magistrate is lauded as nothing less than the “guardian and avenger of both tables of the Law.”

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