The
De Facto Authority of the Westminster Confession of Faith
The
most dangerous kinds of authorities are those that deny being authorities. We
end up serving them without knowing that we are serving them, since we believe
them not to be authorities. How can we tell when we are treating something as
an authority? When our thinking is directed and restricted by it, and we are
reluctant to disagree with it.
It
seems to me that my Presbyterian brothers and sisters are reluctant to disagree
with the Westminster Confession. This document, in my opinion, functions as a
de facto authority to Presbyterians. When I witness this, I want to ask them:
What authority does the WCF have? Why are you binding yourself to the WCF? Why
should anyone care what the WCF says?
The
answer to such questions is not that the WCF is authoritative, or that those
who authored it have authority over us. I think the WCF functions as a de facto
authority because adherence to it is made the sine qua non of retaining
in-house fellowship with other Presbyterians. We become governed by the WCF out
of fear of losing that fellowship, not because the WCF has any genuine
authority. I can remember once during seminary I raised some concerns about
certain claims in the WCF, and one response I received was this: "If you
don't agree with what we believe, then why do you want to be one of us?"
This implicit threat of being excluded / excommunicated, transforms the WCF
into a functional authority. What is it that makes losing Presbyterian fellowship
fearful and thus the WCF functionally authoritative? It is, understandably, the
thought of losing community. Just as in any group, one takes on the identity of
the group as part of one's own identity. "I am a Presbyterian". That
identification of oneself as a Presbyterian makes frightening the thought of
being cut off from in-house fellowship with other Presbyterians, especially the
community of those of which one is a part.
Let
us say that I had been a Catholic in a Catholic seminary, voicing disagreement
with some claims in the Catholic Catechism. Of course the same implicit threat
could have been used. But the correct reply to me would have made mention of
the *authority* of the Catholic magisterium, and thus the authority of the
Catholic Catechism. In other words, the Church would not be treated as a club
which one joined if one agreed with its doctrine. The Church would be treated
as something having the authority to bind the conscience of the believer. Anyone received into the Catholic Church must say these words: "I believe
and profess all that the Holy Catholic
Church believes, teaches, and
proclaims to be revealed by God." Why "all"? Can't we take
"exceptions"? No, because the Church claims to be authoritative, so
we are not allowed to come into the Church picking and choosing from her
doctrines. If we could, we would still be our own authority. [Of course there
are 'cafeteria Catholics' who reject certain teachings of the Church, but there
is no formal allowance for their doing so.]
Presbyterians
do not have the option of claiming that the WCF is authoritative and binding on
all Christians. That is why taking exceptions to it is allowed. Presbyterians
have to pick some (arbitrary) point at which the exceptions are so many or so
significant that the person can no longer be accepted as part of the
Presbyterian/Reformed 'club'. My point here is that Presbyterians are in a real
sense no closer to 'sola scriptura' than Catholics, because Presbyterians too
have an extra-scriptural authority that functionally governs them and forbids
them to think contrary to it. The relevant difference is that Catholics
*acknowledge* magisterial authority, while Presbyterians deny the authority of
the WCF. And it is dangerous to be governed by that which one denies is
authoritative.
When
a document is not authoritative, then it is quite irrelevant whether anyone or
anything is in conformity with it or not. The question "Does x conform to
the WCF?" tends to replace the more important question, "Is x
true?", and in that way tends to subvert the pursuit of truth, by
excluding a priori anything that does not conform to the existing theology. If
the existing ideology is genuinely *authoritative*, then immediately dismissing
dissent from it is not a problem. But if the existing ideology is *not*
genuinely authoritative, as is the case with the WCF, then the a priori
exclusion of anything contrary to it is a recipe for an epistemological isolationism
that perpetuates any existing errors, and aims at something less than truth.