The Southern Presbyterian Journal/Volume 13/Number 29/Healthy, Sick, or Dead?
Articles on the Westminster Confession
by Gordon H. Clark
The Word of God (WCF 1)
Creeds
Knowledge and Ignorance
The Trinity (WCF 2)
A Hard Saying (WCF 3)
Providence (WCF 5)
Creation (WCF 4)
Healthy, Sick, or Dead? (WCF 6)
The Covenant (WCF 7)
Christ the Mediator (WCF 8)
Justification (WCF 11)
Sanctification (WCF 13)
Free Will (WCF 9)
Effectual Calling (WCF 10)
Adoption (WCF 12)
The Law of God (WCF 19)
Assurance (WCF 18)
Saving Faith (WCF 14)
Repentance (WCF 15)
Good Works (WCF 16)
Christian Liberty (WCF 20)
Perseverance (WCF 17)
Worship and Vows (WCF 21, 22)
The Sacraments (WCF 27)
Baptism (WCF 28)
The Church (WCF 25)
The Civil Magistrate (WCF 23)
The Lord's Supper (WCF 29)
Censures and Councils (WCF 30, 31)
Resurrection and Judgment (WCF 32, 33)
In these times when religious periodicals are so full of politics and so empty of Biblical exposition, the ignorance of the people is so great that every doctrine of the Westminster Confession needs vigorous proclamation. As we look at the doctrine of sin in Chapter VI, it is hard to avoid thinking that it needs even a more vigorous presentation than the others. This natural reaction may be exaggerated, but the chapter surely contains a wealth of material pertinent for our careless age.
Chapter IV had said that man was created righteous; the present chapter adds that our first parents sinned, and "by this sin they fell from their original righteousness, and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body."
Roman Catholicism holds that man was not created positively righteous, but, rather, neutral; after his creation God gave him an extra gift of righteousness; and when Adam sinned, he lost the extra gift and fell back to the neutral state in which he was created. Thus man's present condition, according to Romanism, is not too bad. The Bible and the Confession say that man fell far below the estate in which he was created and is now wholly defiled in all his faculties and parts.
The modernists have a better opinion of themselves than even the Romanists have. If the race fell at all, it was an upward evolutionary fall; and man has been making rapid progress ever since. Herbert Spencer set the norm for much modernistic preaching in his prediction that the little evil remaining on earth would vanish in a short time. Books were written about moral man in an immoral society that needed only a good dose of socialism to become Utopian. Ministers dilated on human perfectibility. And in the summer of 1914 a college president and Presbyterian elder had almost finished a book to prove there would be no more war. He had forgotten what Christ said. Now, forty years later, two world wars and the brutality of totalitarian governments have shaken the confidence of this type of muddle-headedness.
The neo-orthodox are now ready to admit that something is wrong with man. But do they agree with the Bible as to what this something is? Does their obscure mixture of a few Biblical phrases and a great deal of esoteric terminology mean that man is dead in sin, "utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil"? One thing is clear: the neo-orthodox deny that the guilt of Adam's sin was imputed to his posterity. Adam was not our representative in his trial before God. Indeed, Adam is only an unhistorical myth. And yet these men have had the effrontery to claim that they, rather than we, preserve the position of the Reformers, Let them read the Confession.
We too should read the Confession. And we should preach it with vigor. Not only have Romanists, modernists, and neo-orthodox departed from the teachings of the Bible, but there are also others, who in spite of professing to adhere to the Scripture, have diverged, sometimes widely, from the truth.
There was a Bible professor in a Christian college who taught that man was a sinner, man was in a bad way, man was sick in sin. Now, salvation, so this Bible professor explained it, is like medicine in the drug store; and the sick man ought to drag himself to the store and get the medicine, and be cured. There was also a convinced Presbyterian on this faculty, who taught in accordance with the Westminster Confession. So evident to the students was the contrast between these two theologies that the President disconnected the Presbyterian from his post.
The Bible and the Confession teach that man is not just sick in sin; he is dead in sin; and salvation rather than being compared with medicine is compared with a resurrection.
Another form of minimizing sin is the belief that sinless perfection is possible in this life. The Confession says, "This corruption of nature, during this life, doth remain in those that are regenerated; and although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, yet both itself, and all the motions thereof, are truly and properly sin."
The error of the "holiness" groups is similar to the Romanist and modernist error in that it is a failure to recognize the exceeding sinfulness of sin. To them, sin seems rather superficial, and therefore it can be eradicated in this life. They sometimes restrict sin to "known sin." But if the aim of the Christian life is merely to avoid known sin, then the more ignorant of the law we are, the more righteous we would be.
Yet for all their sinless perfection, these are the people who hold that one can lose one's salvation and become unregenerate a second time. This shows that the Scriptural view of sin, so accurately summarized in the Confession, has far reaching implications. Its force is seen in the nature of salvation, the perseverance of the saints, the varieties of free will, the imputation of Christ's righteousness, and in fact throughout the whole system. Nor should we be satisfied with knowing only a part. We need the complete Confession.