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Originally Posted by Daniel Ritchie  All right, I am maybe being a bit extreme here, apologies. However, I am sure such a clear misrepresentation of the what the Westminster Standards teach should not be tolerated. |
That the Westminster Standards use the term "moral law" to equal the decalogue alone is demonstrably what the standards teach. For the Oxford English Dictionary is absolutely clear that at that date, the key words the standards used in WLC Qu. 98 and its answer, "summarily" and "comprehended" had the following meanings.
The answer to QU 98 claims that “the moral law is “summarily comprehended” in the Ten Commandments” something quite different. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), “summarily” then meant “in a summary or compendious manner; chiefly of statement, in few words, compendiously, briefly.” The OED also states that “compendiously” then meant: “containing the substance within small compass, concise, succinct, summary; comprehensive though brief; esp. of literary works; also of their authors.” Finally, “comprehended” in such a context meant either "understood" or "included" as in 'education comprehends the training of many kinds of ability' from the Latin comprehendere,' (a meaning well known to the Divines who had all received their University instruction in Latin). OED supports the idea of included in the relevant definitions of “comprehended” as follows:
To grasp with the mind, conceive fully or adequately, understand, ‘take in’. (App. the earliest sense in English.) …."To lay hold of all the points of (any thing) and include them within the compass of a description or expression; to embrace or describe summarily; summarize; sum up.... To include or comprise in a treatise or discourse: now more usually said of the book, etc.... To include in the same category....To enclose or include in or within limits...To enclose or have within it; to contain; to lie around."
Since in contemporary English “summarily” included the idea of “compendious” which meant that the statement of he concept summarized was comprehensively contained within a small compass, the Divines uses of "summarily" to describe the Ten Commandments relationship to the moral law excludes any possibility that they believed the Decalogue to be an incomplete summary of the moral law. The possibility is doubly excluded by their use of "comprehended" which meant including "all the points of" the thing described. When the WLC states that the moral law is "summarily comprehended in the ten commandments," it is teaching that anything not in the Ten Commandments is not included in the moral law.
If Theonomists want to prove the contrary proposition that the term "moral law" in the Standards means the decalogue plus anything else, they are welcome to make the attempt. But, for their first step they simply must prove that the OED has misdefined the three words given above. Absent such proof, it will not be surprising if their case continues to be rejected by better informed Reformed folk.