Westminster Standards

How does that help? How does that strengthen the bond of the church in Canada? And so we are a fellowship of reformed Catholic pastors, elders, and laymen.

Reformed because we ground ourselves in the confessions of the Magisterial Reformation, the three forms of unity, the Westminster Standards, the 39 Articles, And that tradition, that confessional tradition, is bigger than one denomination, federation, communion, association, whatever name you like to use.

It's bigger than one particular body.

Catholic, because we ground ourselves in the holy Catholic faith, and I use the word Catholic there, small c, of course, we ground ourselves in the holy Catholic faith as expressed in the Apostles' Creed.

And so his followers maintain that intellectual affirmation, but that's not what we have confessed.

It's not what we confess in the Westminster Standards.

It's not what we confess in the Heidelberg Catechism.

And that's easy, you know, just go to Heidelberg 21.

They're looking for end-arounds.

And although they can say, generally, yes, I kind of like the Westminster Standards.

I think it's pretty good stuff as it relates to the doctrines of salvation and so forth.

Yet when you start reading through the larger catechism, for instance, people get a little bit squeamish and they start looking for a way out.

Now, I think it would be fantastic if our denomination had a very strong understanding of subscription to the Westminster Confession.

I'm not saying there couldn't ever be exceptions to it, but you better be wholly on board with the Westminster standards because that's the very thing that's going to unify us and prevent us from being a liberal church like the mainline PCUSA or a squishy church like the vanilla non-denominational Evangelifish.

The Westminster Standards are what is going to give us that solid spine of courage and conviction.

So let's talk about a couple of things, shall we? Let's talk about the Lord's Day.

We are continuing, even though we took a break, we are continuing with season 10 of the Faculty Podcast, looking at the Westminster Confession speed run through the confession.

And rather than continue the brilliant banter that you just heard, I'm going to cut it off here and and jump straight into chapter 13 of the Westminster Standards, sanctification.

And I feel like I always open with this kind of question because I'm frequently struck by the order of the confession.

So we've got very expectedly, we've got covenant theology, exposited before we get into kind of the ordo salutis concerns, the condition of man, anthropology, but when we do get into the ordo salutis, we, I think, appropriately start with effectual calling and justification, then adoption, and now we've got sanctification, and I'm initially struck by sanctification before saving faith.

First, there's clearly a Reformed confessional theology.

He was a man within the Presbyterian tradition of the Westminster Standards.

Second...

People such as David Powelson have noted that Adams was influenced by various streams of American fundamentalism.

We really try to equip parents to do that.

And then in our youth ministry, we teach the Westminster Standards.

We have an outstanding youth pastor who just finished up a series this last year with our high school students going through the Westminster Convention of Faith.

And that's bringing in over 100 kids on Sunday evenings.

Well, Reformed theology is kind of broad.

You have Presbyterians who affirm the Westminster Standards, but then you have the German Reformed Church that affirms German confessions.

You know, it's kind of a broad tradition, too.

And so, you know, there's all manner of differences.

out.

Most of them are good with it now.

The Westminster Standards, it's been said that if you take the right number of exceptions to the Westminster Standards, you get the 39 articles.

Wow.

Same thing, too, with it being confessional.

Obviously, every single PCA church confesses the Westminster Standards, which would be the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the larger and shorter catechisms as our doctrinal foundational stand.

These are the things that we believe, and this is true for all PCA churches.

They're not really any liberal PCA churches.