Our primary standard God’s word in the holy scriptures. Our secondary standard is the 1936 Orthodox Presbyterian Church version of the Westminster Confession of Faith. This is the same standard used by the Presbyterian Church in America.
A copy of the confession can be found here
A brief history of the Westminster Confession of faith
To understand why we use this 1936 version of the Westminster Confession of Faith, a little history is in order. According to Ephesians 1:4, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world” the Church can be said to predate creation itself. However, we can start to see our modern Christian church emerge in the first century AD after the great commission. It was not easy for the disciples Christ left behind. Satan started attacking the Church as soon as possible. Satan’s attacks come in two broad categories, hard physical persecution (hard attacks) and the perhaps more dangerous, intellectual, “soft attacks” of various heresies that lead people away from Christ.
Almost immediately in Acts, we see Satan launching a hard attack of serious persecution. However, this backfired and dispersed the Church across a wider geographic area, causing the good news of the gospel to spread even further. Soon we see Satan introducing a soft attack, with the Judaizers preaching a works-based gospel heresy. It is important to realize that the “church” is seen by outsiders as a sub sect of Judaism at this point.
The Judaizers caused the very first Church council to be called in Acts 15. This council was the beginning of a trend that would continue over the next couple thousand years. There would be a group, often wealthy and controlling the markers of establishment, who will veer away from the truth of God’s word. Then, a group of wise Christian leaders would assemble and put out a statement, backed by scripture (Acts 15:16-18), that clarified the point(s) in question and directly exposed and rejected the heresy.
Century after century, the attacks of the enemy continued. In the late middle ages, the enemy was making serious gains in the control of Church leadership. Various voices rose up, but it felt like no major battles were won until 1517 when a German monk by the name of Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg. These 95 theses were the first viral hit of the modern world, and along with the new invention of the printing press, inflamed Europe.
Luther made incredible progress pushing back the works-based theology that had infested the Roman Catholic Church. His works such as Bondage of the Will are timeless aids to the Christian fighting heresy. However, he only got so far in his life time. He had applied the Bible to the question of salvation, but what if the Bible were applied to everything? This is the approach that a young fan of Martin Luther’s would take, and so the story of John Calvin begins.
John Calvin wrote and preached extensively. . His church in Geneva Switzerland became sort of a headquarters for the Reformation forces across Europe. Calvin’s teachings are what really shook the power structures of medieval Europe and helped usher in the modern age.
Calvin directly trained a Scottish pastor named John Knox, the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland[i]. Knox returned from studying with Calvin in Switzerland in 1559 and went on to transform Scotland into a reformed stronghold. A legacy that directly led to the Westminster Confession of Faith.
But to get to that, we need to fill out the picture of the English spiritual scene at the time.
God was not just using Luther in the early 1500s. Among those men God used, was an English scholar by the name of William Tyndale. Tyndale saw that many of the ills in society could be cured by giving people access to the Bible in their own language. He set about using the latest advances in original manuscript research to provide the first English Bible translation of the Reformation period. Tyndale had a massive impact on the development of English as a language.
Tyndale’s writings were influential in providing an excuse for King Henry the VIII to break the Church of England away from Rome. King Henry had his own motivations for doing so, namely that he wanted to get a divorce from his Spanish wife, and the Pope would not let him. Tyndale didn’t think the divorce was a good idea either, and ended up paying for this and other views with his life.
However, Tyndale’s influence on England was could not be ignored, and his translation of the Bible radically impacted English society. For a time, Bibles with large portions of their translations from Tyndale, were provided in every parish church.
A showdown in England thus commenced. On one side, the idea that salvation was earned through good works, even if that good work is just the act of accepting salvation; and on the other side, the true Biblical view that we are saved exclusively by God’s grace, as it says in Romans 5:8, “For while you were yet sinners, Christ died for you.”
It must be remembered that in the time leading up to the 1640’s, Satan was very big on using hard physical attacks against the saints. On the European continent, the 30 Year War was raging, and Catholic Armies had been murdering Christians across Europe with intensity since the 1540’s. What religion ended up on top mattered in a way that today we don’t really understand.
By 1642, the forces in England had coalesced into two major camps. The Royalists (made up of Arminians and Roman Catholics, both using a works-based understanding of salvation) and the Parliamentarians, the home team for the Grace only “Reformed” Christians. The Parliamentarian side is the one the Scots joined.
In 1642, the English civil war broke out. Looking to a future victory, Parliament organized the Westminster assembly to draw up documents summarizing the reformed position. The documents they produced; the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the larger and shorter catechisms, are collectively known as the Westminster standards.
In the grand tradition of writing statements that clarify the correct system of theology according to scripture (see Acts 15 again), the Westminster divines did an impressive job. Many of the reformed confessions used around the world today trace themselves to this document. However, the divines did have an area of disagreement that was hard for them to work through. This was the issue of how society should organize its civil government.
There were many people that were not happy with the take of the Westminster Confession with regards to the civil magistrate. Perhaps the biggest detractor was Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell wanted more freedom of worship and was wary of repeating the same problems of the past with Church and state being melded together. However, The Scots didn’t see much of a problem and decided to formally adopt the confession in 1648.
The Scots, run by Presbyterians, had joined the civil war largely to get England to adopt Reformed theology as a state religion. However, when the English didn’t adopt the confession, the Scots felt betrayed. As the factions continued to struggle for who would get power after the civil war, the Cromwell faction executed the King of England (and Scotland) via the axe in 1649.
A lot of Scots felt this went way too far, and was not what they had signed up for. They decided to bring the King’s son out of exile in Fance and make him their Protestant King, even though the teenage Charles II really did not have his heart in it.
Years later, one of the Scots sent to fetch the boy king, Alexander Jaffray, would write in his diary:
“We did sinfully both entangle and engage the nation and ourselves and that poor young prince to whom we were sent, making him sign and swear a covenant which we knew from clear and demonstrable reasons that he hated in his heart. He sinfully complied with what we most sinfully pressed upon him; where I must confess, to my apprehension, our sin was more than his.”[ii]
The English saw the return of the king to Scotland as a first step to a later invasion of England, and dispatched Cromwell to invade Scotland first. Cromwell completely crushed Scotland’s forces, and Charles II made a hasty one man retreat back to exile in Fance. Cromwell would go on to become dictator of Britain, and then, despite all the previous drama, be replaced upon his death with none other than Charles II, the very boy King Cromwell had chased out a few years earlier. Charles II was not a fan of Reformed theology, and so, the issue of having a ruler who would use the clauses in the Westminster Confession relating to government never really became an issue. As rapidly, first by Cromwell and then by Charles II, the rulers of Britan were not in inclined to the document.
But God was not done with Great Britan. Charles II had a reign known as the restoration, a period where he slowly began the process of returning Britan to Catholic (works based) control. Upon his death his little brother, James II, took the throne. James II was openly Roman Catholic and made no secret about his plans for the kingdom. The Christians of Great Britain knew that desperate times called for desperate measures, and so in 1688 they asked William III of Orange, the great grandson of that Protestant hero, William the Silent, to come and take the throne.
William the Silent was the founder of the modern Neverlands and a key character in the history of Europe. Let’s step back in our story and return to John Calvin in the 1500s. While Knox took Calvinism to Scotland, the other region to embrace the ideas of Calvinism was the Dutch provinces. At the time, the Dutch provinces were controlled by the Spanish crown. The first wars of religion had taken place in Germany in the 1540’s, and they resulted in the Lutheran princes getting the right to decide the religion in their domains. However, the Dutch provinces were were ruled by the Spanish crown and not the Lutheran princes, so Catholicism was the order of the day. The Calvinists though knew that their duty was to God, not government, and would not comply with the state-ordered religion. Thousands were killed. As such, a rebellion known as the Dutch Revolt was launched.
William of Orange was a nobleman who ended up becoming the leader of the revolt. However, the revolt did not go as planned for the rebels. It was on the night when he was most defeated, having lost his fortune, the war, everything, that William decided to trust God and become a Calvinist. He believed the scriptures that said God was in charge, and he put that belief into practice.
William’s fortunes were reversed and he continued to fight for years. William is famous for being the first European ruler to push for freedom of religion. It is critical to realize that the idea of freedom of religion is a Calvinistic tradition in origin. Many people are familiar with the idea of election, that God changes specific people’s hearts to follow him. What William understood, was that if God does not change someone’s heart, forcing them to ascribe to a given creed is only forcing them to lie. He went to great lengths to defend the rights of others to disagree.
But that toleration was not a favor that the Spanish had any intent to return. William and his descendants fought the Catholic armies of Europe almost constantly for the rest of the 1500s and 1600s. William III was simply the latest in a long tradition of Calvinists warriors.
William III was married to the daughter of James II of England and was also a grandson on his mother’s side to Charles I (the one who got his head cut off by Cromwell). So William III had royal blood, which made him a good pick that many hoped would avoid another Cromwell situation. William III brought with him his Calvinists ideas about freedom of religion that had been so championed by his great grandfather. He instituted regular elections for parliament and helped pass the English bill of rights, which among other things provided Protestants with the right to bear arms.
William III and his wife Mary II accomplished a lot in their reign, but they never had any children. However, the people of England were done with Catholic monarchs trying to subvert their faith and decided that the succession should, instead of following bloodline exclusively, go to the next protestant heir. The heir that they chose was George I, a Lutheran elector of Hanover. Hanover of course being in Germany, the home country of Martin Luther.
It is at this point that our story must jump over the Atlantic Ocean and pick up in America. England had permanent colonies in America since Jamestown in 1607, but by the 1770s (under King George III), Americans were getting nervous. A major concern that drove the American revolution was a fear that their Reformed theology would be attacked by England. They only had to look north to the 1774 Quebec act in Canada which removed references to the protestant faith and restored the power of the Catholic Church to impose tithes.
Then, contrary to the English Bill of Rights that King William III had given them, English troops attempted to remove armaments from the colonists at Concord, and thus in 1776 the American Revolution began.
By the grace of God, the Americans won the war in 1789. As it became apparent that the two countries of Great Britan and the United States would separate, the process of untangling various institutions had to commence. In 1788 the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America was formed. By this point, many additional lessons had been learned about how government and religion should interact. Thus, the American Presbyterians updated the Westminster Confession to bring it more in line with Scripture and also the Calvinistic thinking of William III.
They would again update the document in 1887 to remove non scriptural mandates regarding marriage, but since the Bible had not changed, the vast bulk of the confession didn’t change either.
Satan had failed in his direct attacks upon the English-speaking world; it was time for some more softer attacks. It is interesting that as soon as the glorious revolution was completed, a new phase of philosophy began: The Enlightenment. The ideas of the enlightenment, ultimately that man does not need God for progress, became modernism. And under modernist control, the American Presbyterians (PCUSA), adopted major changes to the Westminster Confession, changes that attacked the heart of the grace only message of scripture.
But God was not defeated. Real Christians saw the problem, and they split away from the captured PCUSA denomination and in 1936 started the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), and along with this split, they returned to the previous version of the Westminster Confession. However, they did decide to implement two more changes (sections 22.3 and sections 25.6).
The Southern churches of the PCUSA took a little longer to get involved in the fight against the modernists, and when they started to break away in mass in the 1970s, they started the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). The PCA would adopt the changes made by OPC in 1936.
Our Pastor, Michael Kohl, is an ordained PCA minister, but unfortunately, he decided to leave the Northwest Presbytery in the 2000s due to their acceptance and promotion of the heresies of Federal Vision, heresies that directly contradicted the Westminster Confession of faith. With the founding of Berean Christian Fellowship in 2021, Pastor Kohl is back in the ministry, and is focused on staying true to God’s word, truth that we believe is accurately articulated in the 1936 version of the Westminster Confession of Faith.
To help clarify the history of the Westminster Confession of Faith, below is a table outlining the changes over time.[iii]
Table of Changes[iv]:
| Section | 1647 | 1788 | 1887 | 1936 |
| 20.4 | …erroneous opinions or practices… may lawfully be called to account and proceeded against, by the censures of the Church, and by the power of the civil magistrate. | …erroneous opinions or practices… may lawfully be called to account, and proceeded against, by the censures of the church. | Kept 1788 | Kept 1788 |
| 23.3 | The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven: yet he has authority, and it is his duty, to take order that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordainances of God duly settled, administrated, and observed. For the better effecting whereof, he has power to call synods, to be present at them and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God | Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath ap pointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance. | Kept 1788 | Kept 1788 |
| 24.4 | The man may not marry any of his wife’s kindred, nearer in blood then he may of his own: nor the woman of her husband’s kindred, nearer in blood than of her own. | Kept 1647 | [Sentence is removed] | Kept 1887 |
| 22.3 | Yet it is a sin to refuse an oath touching anything that is good and just, being imposed by lawful authority. | Kept 1647 | Kept 1647 | [sentence is removed] |
| 25.6 | There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof. but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalts himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God. | Kept 1647 | Kept 1647 | There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof. |
| 31.2 | As magistrates may lawfully call a synod of ministers, and other fit persons, to consult and advise with, about matters of religion; so, if magistrates be open enemies to the Church, the ministers of Christ, of themselves, by virtue of their office, or they, with other fit persons upon delegation from their Churches, may meet together in such assemblies. | It belongeth to synods and councils, ministerially to determine controversies of faith, and cases of conscience; to set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and government of his church; to receive complaints in cases of mal administration, and authoritatively to determine the same: which decrees and determinations, if consonant to the Word of God, are to be received with reverence and submission; not only for their agreement with the Word, but also for the power whereby they are made, as being an ordinance of God appointed thereunto in his Word. | Kept 1788 | Kept 1788 |
[i] https://dianaleaghmatthews.com/john-knox/
[ii] Page 41, Life and Times of Charles II by Christopher Falkus, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, 1972.
[iii] Based on the preface to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2005.
[iv] Based on changes listed in the WCF preface: https://www.pcaac.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WCFPreface.pdf