The Westminster Confession Explained

1. What the Westminster Confession Is

The Westminster Confession of Faith is a thirty-three chapter statement of Reformed Christian doctrine, drafted by the Westminster Assembly between 1643 and 1646 and still held today as the principal doctrinal standard of Presbyterian churches around the world. It opens with a chapter on Holy Scripture and closes with a chapter on the Last Judgment, and every chapter is divided into numbered sections, which is why Presbyterians cite it in the form 1.6 or 25.6. Alongside it the same Assembly produced the Westminster Larger Catechism and the Westminster Shorter Catechism, a Directory for the Public Worship of God, and a Form of Presbyterial Church Government.

Two things explain the Confession's unusual staying power. The first is its precision. The Assembly wrote in a register of English that states a doctrine, guards it against the misreading on either side, and stops. The second is its scope. Where the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England are brief and deliberately capable of more than one reading on several points, the Westminster Confession commits itself. A reader who works through all thirty-three chapters knows exactly what the document holds about God, salvation, the Church, worship, marriage, the civil magistrate and the world to come.

Why a Catholic Should Read It

Catholics encounter the Confession more often than they realise. When a Presbyterian friend explains that God's decree covers whatever comes to pass, that argument comes from chapter 3. When a Reformed Baptist says worship may include only what Scripture positively commands, that is chapter 21. When someone insists that justification is a legal declaration and nothing more, that is chapter 11. Reading the source removes a great deal of mutual guessing. It also shows how much the two traditions hold in common: the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, original sin, the absolute priority of grace, the resurrection of the body and a final judgment.

2. The Westminster Assembly, 1643 to 1649

The Westminster Assembly was called by the English Long Parliament during the First English Civil War, by an ordinance of June 1643, and it first met on 1 July 1643 in Westminster Abbey. Parliament had abolished episcopal government and needed a settlement of doctrine, worship and church order to replace it. The Assembly was a body of clergy and lay members advising Parliament rather than a church council with authority of its own. It could recommend; Parliament decided.

Membership was set at roughly one hundred and twenty divines together with lay assessors drawn from the Lords and the Commons. Not all who were named attended, and the working body was smaller. William Twisse served as the first prolocutor, and after his death Charles Herle presided. Meetings moved from the Abbey church into the Jerusalem Chamber for warmth, and the Assembly went on sitting in various forms until 1649, long after the Confession itself was finished.

The Scottish Commissioners and the Solemn League and Covenant

The Scottish presence shaped the outcome. In 1643 the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters entered the Solemn League and Covenant, a treaty binding the two nations to reform religion according to the word of God and the example of the best reformed churches. Scotland sent commissioners to the Assembly, among them Alexander Henderson, Samuel Rutherford, George Gillespie and Robert Baillie. They sat as advisers without a vote, their influence in debate was considerable, and the finished text reads as a settlement acceptable to Scottish Presbyterianism.

What Happened to the Text

The Assembly completed the Confession in 1646 and presented it to Parliament in December of that year. Parliament asked for Scripture proofs, and the text with proof texts was delivered in April 1647. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland approved the Confession on 27 August 1647, with a declaration clarifying its reading of chapter 31 on the power of the civil magistrate to call synods. The English Parliament approved a modified version in 1648 under the title Articles of Christian Religion, leaving out material on church censures and on synods. Presbyterianism was never permanently established in England, so the document that failed as an English settlement became the enduring standard of Scottish and then of world Presbyterianism.

The Shorter Catechism carried the Confession's theology into ordinary households, and its first question and answer have been memorised by generations of Presbyterian children: the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever. A Catholic can say that line without hesitation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church opens on the same note, teaching that God freely created us to make us share in his own blessed life.

3. The Thirty-Three Chapters in Order

The Confession moves in a deliberate order, from God to the last judgment, and knowing the shape makes any single chapter easier to place. The sequence falls into six blocks.

God, His Decree, and Creation (chapters 1 to 6)

• 1. Of the Holy Scripture
• 2. Of God, and of the Holy Trinity
• 3. Of God's Eternal Decree
• 4. Of Creation
• 5. Of Providence
• 6. Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof

Covenant and Christ (chapters 7 and 8)

• 7. Of God's Covenant with Man
• 8. Of Christ the Mediator

The Application of Redemption (chapters 9 to 18)

• 9. Of Free Will
• 10. Of Effectual Calling
• 11. Of Justification
• 12. Of Adoption
• 13. Of Sanctification
• 14. Of Saving Faith
• 15. Of Repentance unto Life
• 16. Of Good Works
• 17. Of the Perseverance of the Saints
• 18. Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation

The Christian Life under Law and Liberty (chapters 19 to 24)

• 19. Of the Law of God
• 20. Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience
• 21. Of Religious Worship, and the Sabbath Day
• 22. Of Lawful Oaths and Vows
• 23. Of the Civil Magistrate
• 24. Of Marriage and Divorce

The Church and the Sacraments (chapters 25 to 31)

• 25. Of the Church
• 26. Of the Communion of Saints
• 27. Of the Sacraments
• 28. Of Baptism
• 29. Of the Lord's Supper
• 30. Of Church Censures
• 31. Of Synods and Councils

The Last Things (chapters 32 and 33)

• 32. Of the State of Men after Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead
• 33. Of the Last Judgment

Chapters 2, 4, 5, 8, 12, 22, 26 and 33 contain very little a Catholic would want to contest. The disagreements cluster in chapters 1, 3, 9, 11, 21, 25, 27 to 29 and 32, and those are the chapters this guide treats at length.

4. Chapter 1: Scripture as the Only Infallible Rule

Chapter 1 is the load-bearing wall of the whole Confession, and every later chapter rests on it. It teaches that God's revelation, once given by many ways to his people, has been committed wholly to writing, so that Holy Scripture is now the complete and sufficient rule of faith and life. Section 6 puts it precisely: the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life is either expressly set down in Scripture or may be deduced from Scripture by good and necessary consequence, and nothing at any time is to be added to it, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or by traditions of men.

Section 10 draws the conclusion that has divided Christendom since the sixteenth century. The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men and private spirits are to be examined, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture. Councils and Fathers are consulted, weighed and never made the final court. That is the Reformed doctrine of sola scriptura in its mature and most careful form.

What the Confession Does Not Say

Presbyterians are often accused of holding that tradition counts for nothing and that private judgment is the last word. The Confession says neither. Section 5 grants that the testimony of the Church may move and induce a reader to a high and reverent esteem of Scripture. Section 7 admits that not all things in Scripture are alike plain, and that the unlearned may need the ordinary means to understand them. Chapter 31 gives synods and councils real authority to settle controversies and to be received with reverence and submission, provided they agree with the word of God. The Confession asks for a hierarchy of authorities with one of them final.

The Canon and the Deuterocanon

Section 2 lists the sixty-six books that the Confession receives as canonical, and section 3 rules on the rest: the books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of Scripture and are of no authority in the Church of God, to be approved or used no differently from other human writings. That excludes Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees and the Greek portions of Esther and Daniel.

The Catholic Answer

The Catholic Church holds that the Gospel comes down to us through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition together, flowing from the same divine wellspring, and that both are entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church. The Second Vatican Council's constitution Dei Verbum 9 and 10 sets this out, and it also states that the Magisterium is not above the word of God but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on. St. Paul asks the Thessalonians to hold fast to the traditions they were taught by word of mouth or by letter (2 Thessalonians 2:15), and he calls the Church the pillar and bulwark of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15).

On the canon, the Catholic list was set out at the Council of Florence in 1442 and defined by the Council of Trent in its fourth session on 8 April 1546, and it includes the deuterocanonical books that Westminster removed. The deeper point is procedural: a table of contents is not itself found in Scripture, so the question of which books belong requires a judgment the Confession's own rule cannot supply. Our guide to the deuterocanonical books works through the historical evidence, and the broader question of authority is treated in Scripture and Tradition and in the Catholic understanding of the Bible.

5. Chapter 3: God's Eternal Decree

Chapter 3 draws heavier argument than any other part of the Confession, inside Reformed circles and outside them. Section 1 states that God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatever comes to pass, and it immediately guards the statement on both flanks: God is not thereby the author of sin, no violence is offered to the will of the creature, and the liberty and contingency of second causes is established rather than taken away.

Section 3 then divides humanity. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death. Section 5 says the elect were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world out of God's free grace and love alone, without any foresight of faith or good works in them as a condition moving him to it. Section 7 speaks of the rest of mankind, whom God passes by and ordains to dishonour and wrath for their sin.

How Reformed Christians Themselves Read It

Presbyterians commonly make three points in defence of the chapter, and they are worth stating fairly. First, section 8 warns that the doctrine is to be handled with special prudence and care, and it is offered as a ground of assurance and humility rather than as a subject for speculation. Second, the Confession never teaches that God causes sin; the reprobate are condemned for their sin, and the decree of election is unconditional in a way the decree of reprobation is not exactly parallel. Third, the chapter is built from Ephesians 1:4 to 5 and Romans 9, texts that speak of choice before the foundation of the world and of mercy that does not depend on human willing or running.

The Catholic Answer

Catholic teaching holds firmly to eternal election and to the total priority of grace. God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world; no one comes to the Father unless drawn; the beginning of faith and the very desire to believe are gifts. The Second Council of Orange in 529 settled that against the semi-Pelagians, and the Council of Trent restated it in its decree on justification in 1547.

Where Catholic teaching parts from chapter 3 is the second half of the division. The Catechism of the Catholic Church 1037 states plainly that God predestines no one to go to hell, and that a wilful turning away from God and persistence in it to the end is required for damnation. In the ninth-century controversy over Gottschalk of Orbais, the Synod of Quiercy in 853 rejected any predestination of a person to sin or to damnation, and the Church holds together two truths it does not claim to have fully reconciled: God's universal salvific will, since he desires all to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4), and the reality that grace is unmerited and effective. Catholic theology has more than one school on how those fit, and the schools of Bañez and Molina argued the question for decades without either being condemned.

A fuller treatment of the Reformed system behind this chapter, including the five points and limited atonement, is in our guide to Calvinism and the Catholic response.

6. Chapters 6 and 9: The Fall and Free Will

Chapter 6 teaches that the sin of Adam brought guilt and corruption on all his posterity by ordinary generation, that from this original corruption we are utterly indisposed, disabled and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, and that this corruption remains in the regenerate during this life, so that even its motions are truly and properly sin. Chapter 9 draws the consequence for the will. Man in his state of innocency had freedom and power to will and to do what is good; by his fall into a state of sin he has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation, and is dead in sin and unable by his own strength to convert himself or to prepare himself for it.

Chapter 9 also insists that God does not force the will. In effectual calling, treated in chapter 10, God renews the will and determines it to what is good freely, so the sinner comes most freely, being made willing by his grace. The Confession is describing a liberated will rather than a coerced one.

The Catholic Answer

The Catholic Church teaches original sin with real severity. Human nature is wounded, subject to ignorance, suffering and death, and inclined to sin, and no one can turn to God without prevenient grace. That much is common ground, and it is worth saying so, since Catholics are often assumed to think lightly of the fall.

The disagreement is over the phrase "wholly lost". Trent's decree on justification, in its canons of 1547, condemned the proposition that free will was extinguished and lost after Adam's sin and that it remains only in name. The Catholic position is that free will is wounded and weakened, and remains genuinely free, which is why a person can resist grace as well as consent to it, and why Scripture can address commands and warnings to the unregenerate. Grace moves the will from within and does not replace it. Our page on free will and grace works through the texts on both sides, and original sin covers the doctrine itself.

7. Chapters 7, 11 and 16: Covenant, Justification, Works

Chapter 7 supplies the framework in which Westminster reads the whole Bible. God's dealings with humanity run through two covenants: a covenant of works made with Adam, promising life on condition of perfect and personal obedience, and, after the fall, a covenant of grace in which God freely offers life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring faith and giving the Holy Spirit to make the elect willing and able to believe. The covenant of grace is administered differently under the law and under the gospel, and it is one covenant across both testaments.

Chapter 11: Justification

Chapter 11 is the heart of the Reformation for Presbyterians. Those whom God effectually calls he also freely justifies, pardoning their sins and accounting and accepting their persons as righteous, not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone. He does not impute faith itself or any evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness. He imputes the obedience and satisfaction of Christ to them, and they receive and rest on Christ and his righteousness by faith, which faith they do not have of themselves.

Section 2 forestalls the obvious objection. Faith, receiving and resting on Christ, is the alone instrument of justification, and it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love. Chapter 16 then says that good works are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith, done in obedience to God's commandments, and that believers cannot merit pardon or eternal life by them, since the good in them proceeds from the Spirit and they are in this life imperfect.

The Catholic Answer

The Council of Trent, in the sixth session of January 1547, taught that justification is a passing from the state in which a person is born a child of Adam into the state of grace and adoption, and that it includes the remission of sins together with the sanctification and renewal of the interior man through the voluntary reception of grace and the gifts. The Catholic objection to chapter 11 is to the word "only". Justification really does include God's declaration of pardon, and it also really does change the sinner, pouring charity into the heart by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). Faith is the beginning, foundation and root of justification, and it is joined with hope and charity. When Scripture speaks of merit, Catholic teaching holds that the merit belongs first to God's grace, since we are crowned for gifts he first gave, a point Augustine made and the Catechism repeats.

James is the text that keeps the dispute alive: a person is justified by works and not by faith alone (James 2:24). Presbyterians read James as speaking of the demonstration of a faith already justifying. Catholics read James and Paul together, with Paul excluding the works of the law that precede grace and James describing the living faith that saves. Our guide to faith, works and salvation handles both passages at length, and the Catholic doctrine of salvation gives the wider picture.

Since 1999, the ecumenical picture has changed enough to be worth naming. The Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation signed a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification at Augsburg on 31 October 1999, stating a shared understanding of justification by grace through faith while acknowledging remaining differences in language and emphasis. The World Communion of Reformed Churches associated itself with that declaration at Wittenberg on 5 July 2017. The Westminster Confession is unchanged by these acts, and the conversation around it is no longer where it stood in 1646.

8. Chapters 17 and 18: Perseverance and Assurance

Chapter 17 teaches that those whom God has accepted in his Beloved and effectually called and sanctified can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere to the end and be eternally saved. Perseverance depends on the immutability of the decree of election, the merit and intercession of Christ, the abiding Spirit and the nature of the covenant of grace, and it does not depend on the believer's own free will. Section 3 is candid about the cost of this: the elect may fall into grievous sins, grieve the Spirit, wound their consciences and bring temporal judgments on themselves, and they will be renewed to repentance.

Chapter 18 refuses the caricature that this produces careless Christians. Assurance is not of the essence of faith, and a true believer may wait long and struggle with many difficulties before attaining it. Assurance rests on the divine truth of the promises, the inward evidence of the graces to which the promises are made, and the testimony of the Spirit of adoption. It may be shaken, diminished and intermitted by negligence, by falling into some special sin, or by God withdrawing the light of his countenance.

The Catholic Answer

Catholic teaching holds that final perseverance is a gift of God, and we are right to pray for it daily, and it also holds that a baptised Christian in a state of grace can lose that grace by mortal sin and be restored through repentance and the sacrament of penance. Trent's sixth session taught that no one can know with the certainty of faith, free from all possibility of error, that he is among the number of the predestined, apart from a special revelation. The Catholic instinct here is that Scripture's warnings are real warnings addressed to real believers: Paul disciplines his body lest after preaching to others he himself should be disqualified (1 Corinthians 9:27), and the branches in Romans 11:20 to 22 stand by faith and are told not to be proud but to fear.

Catholic teaching on this point is a teaching of hope. Hope is a theological virtue, and the Church teaches confident trust in God's mercy and condemns despair as firmly as it condemns presumption. Where Westminster gives certainty grounded in the decree, the Catholic tradition gives assurance grounded in the promises and the sacraments while keeping the warnings of Scripture in force. If sin is what stands between you and that peace, our guide to the sacrament of confession explains how the Church answers it.

9. Chapters 19 to 21: Law, Liberty and Worship

Chapter 19 divides the law of God given to Israel into three: the moral law, summarised in the Ten Commandments and binding for ever on all people; the ceremonial law, which prefigured Christ and is now abrogated; and the judicial law, which expired with the state of Israel and obliges no further than its general equity requires. Believers are freed from the law as a covenant of works and remain under it as a rule of life.

Chapter 20 sets out Christian liberty and liberty of conscience in language that had real political weight in the 1640s. God alone is Lord of the conscience and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his word or beside it in matters of faith or worship. To believe such doctrines or obey such commands out of conscience is to betray true liberty of conscience.

Chapter 21 and the Regulative Principle

Chapter 21 states what Reformed writers call the regulative principle of worship. The acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself and so limited by his own revealed will that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation or any other way not prescribed in Holy Scripture. The chapter then lists what is prescribed: prayer, the reading of Scripture, sound preaching and conscionable hearing, the singing of psalms with grace in the heart, and the due administration and worthy receiving of the sacraments. Sections 7 and 8 set apart one day in seven as a Christian Sabbath, to be kept holy by a holy resting from ordinary works, words and thoughts about worldly employments and recreations.

The Catholic Answer

The Catholic Church agrees that worship is God's own institution and not a human invention, and that the Eucharist at its centre was commanded by Christ on the night he was betrayed. It reads the regulative principle differently. Scripture does not legislate the details of Christian worship, and the apostolic churches developed rites under the Spirit's guidance, so a form of worship that Scripture does not explicitly command is not thereby forbidden. Images fall under the same disagreement. The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 taught that the honour given to an image passes to the one it represents, and that veneration of images is not the adoration owed to God alone.

On the Sabbath, Catholic teaching keeps Sunday as the Lord's Day, the day of the Resurrection, with the obligation of Mass and of rest from work that would hinder worship, family life and the renewal of mind and body. The Catholic tradition has not generally read the fourth commandment as transferring the Old Testament Sabbath restrictions to Sunday. Our guide to the Mass sets out the Catholic pattern of worship in full.

10. Chapters 25 and 26: The Church Visible and Invisible

Chapter 25 opens with a distinction that governs Reformed ecclesiology. The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one under Christ its head. The visible Church, also catholic or universal under the gospel, consists of all those throughout the world who profess the true religion, together with their children. To this visible Church Christ has given the ministry, oracles and ordinances of God for the gathering and perfecting of the saints.

Section 4 then grades the visible Church. Particular churches are more or less pure according as the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them. The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error, and some have so degenerated as to become no churches of Christ but synagogues of Satan. Nevertheless there shall always be a Church on earth to worship God according to his will. Chapter 26 describes the communion of saints as a real union with Christ and with one another in gifts and graces, and it explicitly denies that this communion takes away or infringes the title or property that each person has in his goods and possessions.

The Catholic Answer

Catholic teaching does not accept that the Church of the creed is invisible. The Church founded on Peter is a visible communion of faith, sacraments and government, and the Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium 8 teaches that this Church, constituted and organised in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him. The same passage acknowledges that many elements of sanctification and truth are found outside her visible structure. Christ promised a Church that the gates of hell would not prevail against (Matthew 16:18), and that promise reads more naturally as a promise about a visible body than about an invisible count of the elect.

On the communion of saints, the Catholic understanding extends the fellowship across death, so that the saints in heaven pray for the Church on earth and the faithful departed are helped by our prayers. Westminster's chapter 26 keeps the communion within the living. See the papacy for the Petrine question, and the intercession of the saints for the wider communion.

11. Chapters 27 to 29: Two Sacraments

Chapter 27 defines sacraments as holy signs and seals of the covenant of grace, instituted by God to represent Christ and his benefits, to confirm our interest in him, and to put a visible difference between those who belong to the Church and the rest of the world. It teaches a sacramental union between the sign and the thing signified, so that the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other, and it states that there are only two sacraments ordained by Christ in the gospel: baptism and the Lord's Supper.

Chapter 28: Baptism

Baptism is a sacrament of admission into the visible Church, a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of engrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins and of walking in newness of life. The Confession requires the baptism of the infants of one or both believing parents. Section 5 states that grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed to baptism that no one can be regenerated or saved without it, or that all who are baptised are undoubtedly regenerated, and section 6 says the efficacy is not tied to the moment of administration but is conferred by the Holy Spirit in his appointed time.

Chapter 29: The Lord's Supper

Chapter 29 teaches that worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, do then also inwardly by faith really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified and all the benefits of his death. The body and blood of Christ are present to the faith of believers in that ordinance as really as the elements are present to their outward senses. The chapter denies transubstantiation as repugnant to Scripture and to common sense, and section 2 rejects what it calls the popish sacrifice of the Mass as injurious to Christ's one only sacrifice, holding the Supper to be a commemoration of that sacrifice and a spiritual oblation of praise.

The Catholic Answer

The Catholic Church holds seven sacraments, defined at the Council of Trent in its seventh session in 1547: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, holy orders and matrimony. On the Eucharist, Trent's thirteenth session in 1551 taught that by the consecration the whole substance of the bread becomes the body of Christ and the whole substance of the wine his blood, a change the Church fittingly calls transubstantiation. The Catholic case rests on Christ's own words at the Last Supper (Luke 22:19 to 20), on the bread of life discourse (John 6:53 to 56), and on Paul's warning that whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup unworthily is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord (1 Corinthians 11:27 to 29).

On the sacrifice of the Mass, the Catholic Church answers chapter 29.2 directly: the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice, and the Mass makes the one offering of Calvary present. The Catechism of the Catholic Church 1367 states exactly this. Read the Real Presence and the Eucharist and the sacrament of baptism for the full case.

12. Chapter 25.6: The Papacy Clause

The original 1646 text of chapter 25, section 6, reads that there is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ, that the Pope of Rome cannot in any sense be head of it, and that he is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, that exalts himself in the Church against Christ and all that is called God. The wording is drawn from 2 Thessalonians 2:3 to 4, and the identification was standard Protestant polemic in the 1640s rather than an innovation of the Assembly. Chapter 24.3 forbids professing Christians to marry papists or other idolaters, and chapter 29.2 attacks the Mass in similar terms.

What the Clause Meant in 1646

Stating the historical position fairly matters here. The Assembly was writing in the middle of a civil war, three generations after the Reformation, in a country where memory of the Marian persecutions and the Gunpowder Plot was living. The identification of the papacy with the man of sin was held by Luther, by Calvin, and by the translators of the Geneva Bible, and Westminster was restating a settled Protestant conviction. Reformed writers of the period argued it from the historicist reading of prophecy, in which the visions of Daniel and Revelation map onto the course of Church history and the papal office occupies the place of the great apostasy.

The Catholic Answer

The Catholic reply has two parts. The first is exegetical. The man of sin of 2 Thessalonians 2 is described as opposing and exalting himself above every so-called god or object of worship, taking his seat in the temple of God and proclaiming himself to be God. The Bishop of Rome professes the Nicene Creed, worships the Trinity, and has never claimed to be God. St. John's own usage is broader and more sober: many antichrists have come, and the mark of the antichrist is denial that Jesus is the Christ and that he has come in the flesh (1 John 2:18 and 22, 4:2 to 3). Neither test fits the papal office.

The second part is that the Petrine claim stands or falls on its own texts. Christ gives Simon a new name and the keys of the kingdom, with the power of binding and loosing (Matthew 16:18 to 19), commissions him to strengthen his brothers (Luke 22:32) and to feed his sheep (John 21:15 to 17). Catholics hold that Christ alone is the invisible head of the Church, and that the pope is his vicar and the visible principle of unity among the bishops. Chapter 25.6's first clause, that there is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ, is one a Catholic can affirm in the sense the Catholic Church intends.

Our full treatment of the antichrist in Scripture and Catholic teaching, including how the Fathers read 2 Thessalonians 2, is on the antichrist, which also notes the Reformers' identification of the papacy with the man of sin. The case for the Petrine office is set out at the papacy. The site holds firmly to the rule that no living person is ever to be identified as the antichrist.

13. Chapters 32 and 33: Death, Resurrection, Judgment

Chapter 32 teaches that the bodies of men after death return to dust and see corruption, while their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them. The souls of the righteous, made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, and the souls of the wicked are cast into hell. Then comes the sentence that concerns Catholics most: besides these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, Scripture acknowledges none. At the last day all the dead shall be raised with the selfsame bodies, and chapter 33 describes the day appointed for judgment by Jesus Christ, the manifestation of the glory of God's mercy and justice, and the exhortation to watch because we know not the hour.

The Catholic Answer

Catholic teaching agrees on the immortality of the soul, on the particular judgment at death, on the resurrection of the same body, and on a final judgment whose hour is unknown. It adds purgatory: a state of final purification for those who die in God's grace and friendship yet are imperfectly purified, assured of eternal salvation and needing purification to enter the joy of heaven. The Catechism of the Catholic Church 1030 to 1032 states it, and the doctrine was defined at the Second Council of Lyons in 1274, at Florence in 1439 and at Trent in its twenty-fifth session in 1563.

The Catholic argument is that purgatory is a purification of those already saved and destined for heaven, which leaves chapter 32's two final states intact. The scriptural warrant includes Judas Maccabeus making atonement for the dead so that they might be delivered from their sin (2 Maccabees 12:44 to 46), a book Westminster's chapter 1.3 excludes from the canon, and Paul's picture of a man whose work is burned and who is saved as through fire (1 Corinthians 3:15). Practice followed doctrine early: inscriptions in the Roman catacombs ask prayer for the dead. Our guide to purgatory gives the evidence in full, and the final judgment covers chapter 33's subject.

14. How the Text Has Been Revised

The Westminster Confession in use today is often not the 1646 text word for word, and quoting the original at a modern Presbyterian without checking which edition his church uses is a common mistake. Three revision streams matter.

The Scottish Reception, 1647 Onward

The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland approved the Confession on 27 August 1647 with a declaration concerning chapter 31 and the power of the civil magistrate to call synods, and the Scottish Parliament ratified it in 1649 and again after the Revolution in 1690. In 1921 the Articles Declaratory recognised the Confession as the principal subordinate standard of the Church of Scotland, subordinate to the word of God, with liberty of opinion on points that do not enter into the substance of the faith. The Free Church of Scotland and other Scottish Presbyterian bodies hold it with their own formulations of subscription.

The American Revision of 1788

When American Presbyterians organised a General Assembly, they adopted the Confession with amendments approved in 1788 and in force from 1789. The amendments fell on the chapters dealing with the civil magistrate, since a state church was incompatible with the new republic: chapter 23 was rewritten so that the magistrate may not assume the administration of the word and sacraments or interfere in matters of faith, and the related passages in chapters 20 and 31 were adjusted. In the same revision, chapter 25.6 was cut back. The American text keeps the statement that there is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ and that the Pope of Rome can in no sense be head of it, and it drops the identification of the pope as the Antichrist and man of sin.

Later Confessional Frameworks

Twentieth-century Presbyterian bodies took different paths. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) placed the Westminster Confession and Catechisms inside a Book of Confessions alongside earlier and later documents, so Westminster is one standard among several. Conservative bodies such as the Presbyterian Church in America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church hold the American revision as their doctrinal standard with officers subscribing to it, and they debate the strictness of subscription internally. A reader quoting chapter 25.6 in an argument should say which edition is being quoted.

Dates and revision details in this section refer to the acts of the bodies named: the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (1647), the Scottish Parliament (1649 and 1690), the Articles Declaratory of the Church of Scotland (1921), and the American Presbyterian General Assembly (adopted 1788, in force 1789). Consult the current constitution of any particular denomination for the wording it uses today, since subscription formulas and amendments vary by body.

15. Who Subscribes to It Today

Presbyterian churches worldwide hold the Westminster Confession as a doctrinal standard, and its reach goes well beyond bodies with Presbyterian in the name. In Scotland it is the principal subordinate standard of the Church of Scotland and is held by the Free Church of Scotland and related bodies. In North America it stands behind the Presbyterian Church in America, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America and, within a wider Book of Confessions, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Presbyterian churches in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Brazil and across Africa and Asia hold it or a recension of it.

The Two Great Adaptations

Two other traditions rewrote the Confession rather than rejecting it. English Congregationalists produced the Savoy Declaration in 1658, keeping most of Westminster's doctrine and replacing its Presbyterian church government with independency. Particular Baptists produced the Second London Baptist Confession, drafted in 1677 and published under the Assembly of 1689, which follows Westminster closely and revises the chapters on baptism and the church for a Baptist ecclesiology. This is why a Reformed Baptist and a conservative Presbyterian can agree on chapter after chapter and part company on the baptism of infants. Our overview of Presbyterian belief and government covers the polity the Confession assumes, and Baptist beliefs covers the other adaptation.

How Seriously Is It Taken?

Subscription varies. In stricter bodies, ministers and elders vow that they sincerely receive and adopt the Confession as containing the system of doctrine taught in Holy Scripture, and stated exceptions to particular clauses are recorded and examined. In broader bodies, the Confession functions as a historic witness that shapes the tradition without binding each officer to every clause. A Catholic entering a conversation should ask which of these two situations applies, because the same denomination name can cover both across different eras.

16. The Catholic Verdict, Point by Point

The Westminster Confession is a serious, disciplined and in many places beautiful statement of Christian doctrine, and a Catholic can read whole chapters of it with gratitude. Chapter 2 on God and the Trinity, chapter 8 on Christ the Mediator, chapter 5 on providence and chapter 33 on the last judgment state doctrines the Catholic Church defined long before 1646 and has never abandoned. The differences are real and they sit in identifiable places.

What This Comparison Is For

A comparison table is a starting point for reading, and it settles nothing on its own. Every row above compresses a genuine argument with texts on both sides, and anyone deciding where to worship owes the question more than a table. Read the Confession itself, which is short and in the public domain, read the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the same points, and read the Scripture each side cites. If you want the wider comparison between the two traditions rather than this one document, start with Catholic and Protestant beliefs compared and the map of Christian denominations.

Related Topics