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Amazing Grace · #6 (**permalink**) 12-13-2007, 02:03 PM

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Originally Posted by VirginiaHuguenot

Chad Van Dixhoorn notes the following in connection with Calvin's Catechism as reasons why the Westminster Catechisms were needed:

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Having outlined the historical purpose of the Larger Catechism, it still seems appropriate to ask why the Catechism had to be written. After all, respected teachers in Britain had composed good catechisms; Calvin’s catechism was in the bookstores and so was the Heidelberg Catechism. Why could the Assemblymen not agree to use one of these catechisms for purposes of unity and instruction?

One answer has to do with the structure or format of earlier catechisms that the majority of Westminster divines did not like. In the eighth edition of A Brief and Easie Explanation of the Shorter Catechism, a young divine named John Wallis, explains the Assembly’s unique method in setting up the catechism: “The Assembly was careful that all the Answers might be entire sentences by themselves, without depending for their sense upon the foregoing Question, being indeed so many distinct Aphorisms, containing briefly the grounds of Christian Religion.” One benefit of this structure, in Wallis’s view,

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is that the learner is not necessitated to charge his memory with the Questions, that he may understand the Answer [sic]; nor is the like danger, as in many other Catechisms, of confounding the understanding by misapplying the Answer to a wrong Question. Their Questions also are so framed, that any one of them may be asked singly and distinctly, without dependance on the Question foregoing.14

Thus the Westminster Assembly’s catechisms were intended to have a unique structure.

Certainly Wallis was not exaggerating when he mentions that “many” of the catechisms contained answers that only made sense with a question, or even a series of questions. All of the main catechisms of the day required the user to memorize both question and answer in order to grasp the biblical doctrines of the catechism. Frequently one had to memorize a whole series of questions and answers, in order to grasp the doctrine under discussion. Take, for example, a series of questions early in Calvin’s Catechism:

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Minister: To consider these things in order, and explain them more fully — what is the first point?

Child: To rely upon God.

Minister: How can we do that?

Child: First by knowing him as almighty and perfectly good.

Minister: Is this enough?

Child: No.

Minister: Why?

Child: Because we are unworthy that he should show his power in helping us, or employ his goodness toward us.15

The content of the catechism is excellent, but the questions and answers, indeed, this entire section, requires knowledge of a long series of questions — a system hardly useful for memorization.
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SCRIPTURE ALONE

Avoiding the Apostles’ Creed has given both of the Westminster Catechisms two strengths. First, the catechisms are based explicitly on Scripture, which is consistent with the position found in the first chapter of the Confession: All our doctrine comes from Scripture alone. Second, every catechism that uses the Apostles’ Creed reflects one of the weaknesses of the Creed — there is no mention of the importance of Christ’s life.

THE LIFE OF CHRIST

This is very important. The Apostles’ Creed speaks of “Jesus Christ” who “was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary” — and what is the next thing that is said? He “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.” The Heidelberg Catechisms, following the Creed, also moves right from Christ’s birth to his death. A similar sequence characterizes Craig’s Catechism or the New Catechism, the latter written during the time of the Westminster Assembly.20

Calvin actually notes this jump in the Creed between the birth and death of Christ and asks in question fifty-five of his catechism: “Why do you go immediately from His birth to His death, passing over the whole history of His life?” While this observation on his part is helpful, his answer is unusually disappointing: “Because nothing is said here about what belongs properly to the substance of our redemption.”21 This is rather shocking, particularly from Calvin. Christ’s life has a great deal to do with our salvation: he spent his life fulfilling all righteousness; he kept the law which the first Adam broke. It is because of Jesus’ active, life-long obedience that God the Father sees us as righteous in Christ. While Calvin clarified this at a later point in his life, his catechism, at least in this regard, remained inadequate.22

14. John Wallis, A Brief and Easie Explanation of the Shorter Catechism Presented by the Assembly of Divines in Westminster, to both Houses of Parliament, and By them Approved. Wherein the Meanest Capacities may in a Speedy and Easie way be Brought to Understand the Principles of Religion, in Imitation of a Catechism, formerly published by Master Herbert Palmer, B. D. and late Master of Queens College (eighth ed., London: for Jane Underhill, 1662), preface. I am grateful to Jason M. Rampelt for bringing this preface to my attention in conversation.

15. “Calvin’s Geneva Catechism,” in T. F. Torrance’s The School of Faith: The Catechisms of the Reformed Churches (London: James Clarke, 1959), 6.

20. A useful reference, at least with regard to the text of various catechisms is T. E Torrance’s The School of Faith. Torrance’s lengthy introduction is less helpful; he approaches his material with twentieth-century Barthian questions quite foreign to his sixteenth and seventeenth-century subjects.

21. See School of Faith, 13.

22. The Catechism may only be the midpoint of a development in Calvin’s thought on this issue. The first edition of Calvin’s Institutes, printed in Basel in 1536, does not recognize the Creed’s jump from Christ’s birth to death (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated and edited by Ford Lewis Battles (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 50-55. The Catechism (1541) mentions the Creed’s move and makes the above observation. The final edition of Calvin’s Institutes (1559) does recognize, to a greater degree, the importance of Christ’s active obedience. See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Library of Christian Classics ed., vol. XXI. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), II:xvi:5. I was too critical of Calvin in the popular version of this article. Since that time I have noted this apparent development and read R. A. Peterson’s brief discussion of active obedience in Calvin’s commentaries. In addition, Richard B. Gaffin Jr. pointed out in conversation that Francis Turretin, no mean Calvin scholar, holds this passage in the Calvin as an adequate treatment of Christ’s active obedience. For R. A. Peterson’s discussion, see his Calvin’s Doctrine of the Atonement (Madison, New Jersey: Drew University, Ph. D. Diss., 1980), 83-85. For Turretin, see his Institutes of Elenctic Theology: Vol. 2. Edited by James T. Dennison. Translated by George Musgrave Giger. (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P & R, 1994), 14:13:xxii:454-55.

Brother Andrew:

My intention is not to pit one against the other. IT is just ironic that we are labeled calvinists, yet use none of his writings in our 3FU or Catechisms.