|
Heidelberg and Westminster Catechisms, Especially on Worship
By
Daniel Meeter
The United Church has long abandoned the regular use
of catechisms as a tool of Christian growth and discipleship. Indeed, Church
Union included a built-in bias towards any kind of standardized confessional
statement. In so doing, we have lost a rich source of insight into the Gospel.
Daniel Meeter, a Reformed pastor, relates the Westminster and Heidelberg
Catechisms to practical issues in Christian living. It is hoped that he will
inspire some of us to investigate these remarkable documents and to reflect on
their witness to Jesus Christ. – Editor.
Although the Heidelberg Catechism and the Westminster
Shorter Catechism were written eighty enormous years apart, and for slightly
different purposes, they deserve comparison because of their similar influence
and ubiquity. They are the epitomes of the two divisions of the Reformed
movement. By the nature of the case, I will stress the differences between
them, but we do well to remember that many of our Reformed ancestors took them
as harmonious.
First, a word about catechisms in general. The literary
genre of the catechism predates the Reformation. In the 9th century
already some German dioceses had primitive catechisms. The Waldensians and the
Bohemian Brethren had in common a very interesting one. But the genre was
invigorated by the Reformation, and the golden age of catechisms extended from
1529 to 1647, from Luther to Westminster. In this flourishing of catechisms the
genre was developed and enriched. Even Rome and Constantinople produced their
first authorized catechisms at this time. All these catechisms were written by
the best and busiest theologians, who regarded this task among their prior
obligations. One wonders why Moltmann and Pannenberg haven’t published
catechisms. What if Harvey Cox had dedicated two years of his life to this?
People might still be reading him today. We must commend the Presbyterians for
their recent efforts in this regard.
The genre is not a simple one—a number of interests are
always to be served. There is the obvious interest of children, and the most
basic instruction in the Christian faith. But there is also the interest of
pastors and teachers. And it was for this reason that many catechisms were
issued in pairs. Luther published a Small and a Long. Westminster published a
Shorter and a Larger. The Heidelberg is not a children’s catechism, it was
designed for preachers and teachers. Churches that used the Heidelberg also had
specific children’s catechisms, such as the one my father used in his ministry.
But the remarkable thing about the Heidelberg is that it’s the only one of the
longer catechisms that has come to be loved by ordinary church members.
The genre often had also to deal with political interests.
Both Heidelberg and Westminster first appeared as parts of larger legal
documents. The Heidelberg was published within the Church Order of the
Palatinate, which itself was part of the law of the land. The Westminster
Standards were presented to Parliament as the official Advice of the Westminster
Assembly. Parliament ratified the whole set of standards, but they could hardly
take effect before the Restoration of Charles the Second. The standards did hold
their legal force in Scotland, of course.
In this regard, the great difference between the Heidelberg
and the Westminster is that the respective ruler was the patron of one and the
enemy of the other. Elector Frederick, if not the father of the Heidelberg, was
certainly its godfather, while King Charles Stuart bitterly opposed the whole
Westminster project, and the Standards were written against the royal interests.
The polemic purpose lies just beneath the surface of Westminster. It was meant
to push things further along, and its system was conceived as an ideal. The
Heidelberg was as practical as it was pacific, for it was intended to
consolidate religion and to keep the peace. Furthermore, the Palatinate, unlike
Great Britain, was a principality where the ordinary pastor knew somebody who
knew the Elector.
Let me frame the political dynamic in the words of a pastor
colleague of mine, in a talk he gave ten years ago to some elders in Ontario:
Now you know that the Heidelberg Catechism was part of the Palatinate Church
Order of 1563, and that included rules for church government and administration,
and worship too. Why did they do this? You to have to understand that the
Reformation spread quickly in the universities, where they could all read Latin,
and it spread quickly in the cities, where they could all read German, but when
it got to the countryside, the people couldn’t read, and it ground to a halt.
And so in the Palatinate, as late as the 1560s, you had Ursinus in the
university, and Olevianus in the city, but when you got out to the countryside
you still had Father Schultz and Father Schmidt (note: that probably should
be Father Franz and Father Hans.). Now these were good men, but they weren’t
scholars. They were loyal enough to their prince, and they didn’t mind doing
what they were told to do. So the Heidelberg Catechism is basically a
“How-to-be-a-Protestant-minister Kit” for Father Schultz and Father Schmidt. (Meeter,
Meeting Each Other, 203:n.14)
You get the picture.
Let me compare the outlines of the two. The first answer of
the Heidelberg is that beloved overture which establishes the key, sets the
tone, and states all the themes:
Q: What is your only comfort in life and in death?
A: That I
am not my own, but belong – body and soul, in life and in death – to my faithful
Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,
and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in
such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father
in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I
belong to Him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes
me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
The second answer provides the outline, the triple
knowledge of Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude.
Q: What must you know to live and die in the joy
of this comfort?
A: Three things: First, how great my sin and misery are; second, how I am set
free from all my sins and miseries; third, how I am to thank God for such
deliverance.
There is movement implicit in this structure—from guilt
through grace to gratitude—and this movement is built into many of the answers,
with their threefold pattern of past, present, and future, such as in answer 1:
“he has fully paid and set me free / he watches and he assures / he makes me
wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.” The answers of
the Heidelberg often tell a story, the whole thing’s got a plot, and I think
that’s part of its appeal.
The first answer of the Westminster is also justly famous,
but for its precision and clarity:
Q: What is the chief end of man?
A: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to
enjoy him forever.
Its second answer does not provide the outline, however. It
deals with the sufficiency of scripture:
Q: What rule hath God given to direct us how we
may glorify and enjoy him?
A: The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.
You might consider this a sidetrack, but think of the
context. The enemy was not modernism or liberalism, but the pretensions of the
crown, the prerogatives of Canterbury and York, the preferments of the
bishops in the House of Lords, and the ancient patterns of English common law.
It was a strong statement to make, and we ought not underestimate its daring.
The third answer gives Westminster’s outline, and it’s a
very simple one: first, what human beings are to believe concerning God, and
second, what duty God requires of us. The first part (Questions 4 - 38) takes us
through the doctrine of God, the decrees, creation, providence, sin, election,
Christology, redemption, effectual calling, justification, adoption, and
sanctification. The second part (Questions 39 – 107), on the duty which God
requires, takes us through the Ten Commandments, faith, repentance, the word,
the sacraments, prayer, and the Lord’s Prayer. The Apostles Creed is included
only as an appendix. That section on the Ten Commandments takes up 41 answers,
which is quite more than a third of the whole document, and this brings out the
strongly ethical tone of the whole catechism.
I consider the Westminster Standards to deserve our honor
and admiration. Philip Schaff’s estimation of them in his Creeds of
Christendom is judicious and worthy of full acceptance. The first question
of the Shorter Catechism is brilliant, and it is a question that people are
asking every day. My wife has a book by Wendell Berry with the title, What
Are People For? This is another way of asking, “What is the chief end of
man?” The answer: people are for glorifying God and enjoying God forever. I use
that answer all the time in my ministry, and it is better than the first answer
in Calvin’s catechism, “to know God,” an answer that is open to New-Age
Gnosticism. There is a transcendent vision to the Westminster Shorter that goes
beyond the Heidelberg. And the Westminster system speaks beyond the church to
human society as a whole.
And yet, while we admire the Westminster, it is not lovable
in the way that we love the Heidelberg. This is more than just bias. I haven’t
seen Presbyterians love it in this way, even when they are passionately loyal
to it. The best evidence is that you do not see answers from the Westminster
Shorter on Presbyterian funeral bulletins, as you do with the Heidelberg among
the Reformed. And I’m not just talking about Heidelberg answer 1. I have seen
other answers used this way as well, including answer 54, on the Holy Catholic
Church. What accounts for this difference in affection?
The reasons are many, and I may point you to the relevant
chapters in volume one of The Creeds of Christendom, where Schaff is very
good on all of this (Volume I:787). His trenchant observation is that the
Westminster deals in dogmas rather than in facts. “It addresses the disciple as
an interested outsider rather than as a church-member growing up in the nurture
of the Lord.” (This, by the way, is why the Westminster can speak to the seekers
on my street.) “It substitutes a logical scheme for the historical order of the
Apostles’ Creed.” This, I may say, is because the Westminster is the harvest of
Calvinist scholasticism, while the Heidelberg was written at the seedtime. The
Heidelberg takes the standpoint of the “ich”, it is an I-statement from
one end to the other, while the Westminster was written in the third person.
It’s the difference between the tourist slogans of New York and New Jersey.
Nobody remembers, “New Jersey and You: Perfect Together,” but even in Michigan
people sing, “I love New York.”
The Heidelberg is historical, while the Westminster is
philosophical. The Heidelberg is narrative while the Westminster is logical.
The Heidelberg stresses the actions of God on our behalf, while the Westminster
stresses the obligations of humanity towards God. The latter is about what we
should do, and the former is about what God has done, does now, and will yet do.
And this is why we love the Heidelberg more, because it’s more about God and
less about us. If it is true, as Westminster says, that we were designed to
enjoy God (and not ourselves), then it makes sense that we’ll like better a
catechism that is more about God than about us. We love to tell this story, of
Jesus and his love, and because we belong to this story, we feel that it belongs
to us.
The scholastic character of the Westminster is most obvious
in the emphasis it places on the two related doctrines of the “decrees” and
“effectual calling,” which terms are used throughout the document. God has
decreed, before the foundation of the world, everything that will come to pass (Westminster
Shorter 7 & 8). Some of these eternal decrees are for the salvation of the
elect (W.S. 20). This is timeless and unchangeable. God brings these
decrees to reality in the individual by means of effectual calling. Listen to 30
& 31:
The Spirit applieth to us the redemption purchased by
Christ by working faith in us, and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effectual
calling. / Effectual calling is the work of God’s Spirit, whereby, convincing us
of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and
renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ,
freely offered to us in the gospel.
As I see it, this scheme of the decrees and effectual
calling has two problems. The material problem is that salvation is removed
from history and located in eternity, which is unreachable and unknowable. The
formal problem is that Westminster, in a shorter catechism, raises to first
importance a pair of theological terms that are derivative and extra-Biblical.
You know what happens when your stock portfolio is based on derivatives.
The Heidelberg does not lack for human obligation. But its
categories are Biblical and dynamic. Question and answer 88 is one of my
favorites.
Jn wieuiel stücken stehet die warhafftige buß oder bekerung des menschen? Jn
zweyen stücken: Jn absterbung des alten vnd aufferstehung des newen menschen. /
In how many parts is the true repentance or conversion of man? In two parts: in
the dying-off of the old man and the resurrection of the new. (Kirchenordnung
Kurpfalz, in Niesel, Bekenntnisschriften, 171; my translation.)
Then answer 89 defines the dying-off of the old man and 90
defines the resurrection of the new. These three answers locate our human
obligaion in the death and resurrection of Christ. Answer 88 is thoroughly
Lutheran. It goes back even to the Ninety-Five Theses, which state that the
whole life of Christians is repentance. I submit that this sort of Lutheransm
is not the result of some Melanchthonian political compromise in the Palatinate,
but is actually the proper inheritance of original Calvinism at its evangelical
heart.
Let me compare their ecclesiologies. Here is Heidelberg 54,
in the newest translation:
Q: What do you believe concerning the Holy Catholic Church?
A: I believe that the Son of God, by his Spirit and his Word, out of the
entire human race, from the beginning of the world to its end, gathers,
protects, and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life, and
united in true faith. And of that community I am, and always will be, a living
member.
Wonderful. Notice, first, the personal and experiential
emphasis, even approaching the emotional. Notice, second, the threefold
past-present-future pattern of “gathers, protects, and preserves.” This is an
example of what Schaff means by calling it historical. Third, the church is
defined as an activity of the Son of God. It is within God’s activity that we
find ourselves and our identity.
The Westminster, by contrast, has no equivalent answer
about the church. Indeed, the only mention of the church that I can find is in
the answer on the administration of baptism, number 95, where the word appears
twice, but coupled with “visible” as in “visible church.” The visible church, in
scholastic Calvinism, is by definition a second-class church. Indeed, I think I
can say that the Westminster lacks a positive ecclesiology. The community that
it addresses is the whole Christian commonwealth of the British crown. You could
almost say that its church is England and England is its church. This represents
the full secularization of the church. This statement is not necessarily
negative. In fact, it is a wonderful ideal, and the vision of Revelation 21. It
is a fully realized eschatology. It is the full Calvinist vision of the total
reformation of Christendom. (One thinks of Bucer’s De Regno Christi, a
comprehensive plan for the total Reformation of England politically and
economically no less than theologically.) But what if God’s economy is not there
yet? Or, what if Christendom is over? We know from history that Heidelberg had
an immediate appeal to the refugee and the persecuted congregations of the
Dutch and the Hungarians. It can better survive the end of Christendom.
In the same way, the Westminster lacks a positive doctrine
of worship. This is in spite of the fact that it is all about worship, from one
end to the other. The whole life of Christians is worship, all day, every day,
at work, at rest. Again, it is a great ideal, almost a heavenly one. But
something so general is bound to be diffuse, and therefore weakened in reality.
Worship is always assumed, but never defined, and this is a huge lack in a
document that trades in precise definitions.
Neither does the Heidelberg offer a definition of worship
as such. But one can easily deduce it. We find it question and answer 65, and
this is the heart of my address today:
Dieweil denn allein der glaub vns Christi vund
aller seiner wolthaten theilhafftig macht woher kompt solcher glaube? Der heilig
Geist würckt denselben in vnsern hertzen durch die predig des heiligen
Euangelions vnd bestätiget den durch den brauch der heiligen Sacramenten.
Since then only faith makes us partakers of Christ and all his benefits, whence
comes such faith? The Holy Ghost fashions (works, creates) this faith in our
hearts through the preaching of the holy gospel and strengthens it through the
use of the holy sacraments. (Niesel, Bekenntnisschriften, 164; my
translation.)
The point here is that the ordinary worship service is
God’s chosen workshop for creating and strengthening faith. God’s activity in
the worship service is paramount. God uses preaching and the sacraments for the
creation and sustenance of faith. Preaching is the constant presentation and
rehearsal of the gospel promises, which are the object of our faith. The
sacraments point us to and sustain us in the passion of Christ, by which he won
the benefits that the Holy Spirit applies to us. Worship is at the very center
of God’s saving work. You go to church to get saved.
Westminster does give the worship service a role in
effectual calling. Answers 88 & 89:
The outward and ordinary means whereby Christ
communicateth to us the benefits of redemption are his ordinances,
especially the Word, sacraments, and prayer, all of which are made effectual
to the elect for salvation. / The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but
especially the preaching, of the Word an effectual means of convincing and
converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort, through
faith unto salvation.
The difference is subtle but significant. First, the
ordinances of worship are qualified as the outward means, and are therefore
relativized. Second, faith is presupposed in order for the believer to get the
benefit of the ordinances, and not as being generated by the ordinances
themselves. This is more apparent in answer 91:
The sacraments become effectual means of salvation,
not from any virtue in them, or in him that doth administer them, but only
by the blessing of Christ, and the working of his Spirit in them that by
faith receive them.
What does it mean that the sacraments have no virtue in
them? They end up sort of like the modern exercise machines in the health clubs
of my neighborhood. You can use them if you need to. The long-range effect of
this is to remove worship from the table of Emmaus back into the Second Temple,
which was empty of the presence of the glory-cloud.
If you combine such statements with answer 60, on the
Sabbath Day, the picture is complete:
The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting
all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are
lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in the public and private
exercises of God’s worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works
of necessity and mercy.
Notice that phrase, “the public and private exercises of
God’s worship.” Worship is a human exercise, and it can be either public or
private. It is no less in these private exercises that effectual calling can
take place. This is a natural conclusion which can be drawn from the fact that
after effectual calling is defined in answers 30 & 31, the subsequent answers
treat it in a most general way, as something that God just freely and
mysteriously does in us, without any reference to either the worship service or
the church.
Let me restate my thesis. In the Heidelberg, the service of
Word and sacrament is the essential means by which God makes faith in us. In the
Westminster Shorter, the worship service is an outward human exercise, the
ordinances of which may by used by God, along with other things, for effectual
calling, among those persons who have saving faith. And which of these is the
truer interpretation of Calvinism, its Lutheran core or its scholastic
speculation? We know which way the energy was moving in the world.
Schaff regards both Heidelberg and Westminster as each
reflecting the genius of their native nationalities. Maybe. Winston Churchill is
supposed to have said of architecture, “We shape our buildings and then our
buildings shape us.” It is certain that these catechisms, once wrought, gave
shape and formation to centuries of spiritual culture. Over time, in some
places, their subtleties will have been magnified in effect, and in other
places, they will have conditioned each other. I don’t know to what proportion
the Westminster has reflected or determined the kind of worship, which became
typical of Calvinism, but we know what happened. And it happened even to the
lovers of Heidelberg in spite of Heidelberg, because, in a real sense,
Westminster was closer to where the mind of Europe was going.
Evidence for this in my own denomination is the loss of the
Flood Prayer from the Liturgy for Baptism. As you know, this prayer was likely
written by Martin Luther. Leo Jud, the successor of Zwingli, introduced a
revision of the prayer to Zürich. It was taken into many subsequent church
orders and liturgies, including the Palatinate Liturgy that accompanied the
catechism. From here it passed into the Dutch Reformed Liturgy. In North
America, beginning in the 1760’s, the Flood Prayer began to be omitted by some
preachers, and by 1815 it had been deleted from our official Liturgy altogether.
And this happened without any approval or even notice of our synods. I don’t
think it’s coincidental that this was the same era in which we were introducing
English preaching by importing Presbyterian ministers. The Flood Prayer speaks
strongly of baptism as foremost a miraculous activity of God. In the Netherlands
it was a century later that the Flood Prayer was disused, and it is no surprise
that Herman Kohlbrügge defended it, that champion of Heidelberg.
It is well known to you that American revivalism was born
in backwoods Presbyterianism. The original camp meetings were held in Scotland.
They were called “sacramental seasons.” They were always tied to the Lord’s
Supper. They were the preparation meetings, and they could sometimes last a
week. The people had to get themselves ready for eating and drinking worthily,
and they did this through many exercises of penitence and self-examination. The
Supper was not taken lightly, and God’s presence was not denied, but the
sacrament was regarded first as duty and obedience, and one had to be converted
first in order to profit from it. In 1801, at the Presbyterian Church of Cane
Ridge, Kentucky, many thousands of Scotch-Irish believers had gathered for such
a sacramental season, and it was here that the first revival broke out, with
all the physical manifestations. In the words of Barton Stone himself, “Many
things transpired there, which were so much like miracles. . . .” (Ahlstrom,
Religious History, 433.)
I submit that what you have here is the result of a hunger
for some experience of worship in which the action of God is paramount. When the
sacraments are emptied of miracle, then people will come up with substitute
sacraments that have miracle in them. If the worship service itself neither
converts them nor makes faith in them, then they will get converted and get
their faith outside of church. And eventually they will turn all their worship
services into such exercises, once they have shaken off the firm authority of
Westminster. Nevin was right to make the connection between Puritanism and
revivalism. Horton Davies and Charles Hambrick-Stowe were right to have taught
us to be fair to the Puritans themselves, but the issue we all face is the
nature of God’s activity in worship. Does God work saving miracles in church?
In 1986 my denomination (The Reformed Church in America)
added to its Constitution the following definition of worship: “Worship is the
action of acknowledging God’s worth.” (The Directory for Worship of the RCA,
1986.) This is a rather shallow exercise in etymology, but worse than that,
it approaches worship as primarily human obligation. Yes, of course, when doing
the scientific study of religion, we will have a phenomenological definition
that will define worship as a human cultural activity. But a church’s definition
of worship must be theological, and a Reformed church’s definition ought to
harmonize with Heidelberg. To introduce a definition that is like Westminster is
to condemn our congregations to the constant cycle of
rationalism—revivalism—rationalism—revivalism, and the constant invention of
substitute sacraments that finally do not satisfy.
Let me propose a definition which has arisen out of my own
meditations on Heidelberg 32, 54, 65, 66, 67, and 88. Christian worship is when
God comes to have a meeting with us in Christ. I define liturgy as the form
which the church has given to these meetings which God has with us. These
meetings are business meetings, for God is busy with us, by means of Word and
Sacrament, saving us, gathering us, and converting us into a kingdom of priests
and a holy nation. (I use the word “convert” according to Heidelberg 88.) In the
very act of our embracing the work of God in us, we offer praise to God. There
is a lot of unpacking I would love to do here, but I will leave that for another
occasion.
The sacramental question is the question of the real
presence of Christ. The corollary question is the real action of Christ. The
presence and action of Christ in the sacraments and in the whole service is to
be distinguished from the general presence and action of God in the world. There
are sound biblical reasons to make this distinction, reasons which may be drawn
from a new and better understanding of the covenants. The covenant theology we
have inherited is the federal theology of Westminster, which doesn’t hold up,
and which, together with the decrees, suggests an incipient Unitarianism. We
need to do better with covenant, and we need to do better with the Trinity as
well. We need a more fully Trinitarian theology of the sacraments and of the
church, especially with an enriched pneumatology, and there are signposts in the
Heidelberg for this. For myself I am working on a synthesis of covenant and
Trinity according to the lines set out in the Gospel of John, chapters 13-17.
Here the church is presented as the new temple, in which, especially in worship,
the world is brought to the Trinity, and the Trinity is opened to the world.
Does this interest anyone of you?
I close, like the Heidelberg, with Thanksgiving. The
Lord’s Supper is Eucharist. It is thanksgiving—we know that from our historical
studies better than Nevin did. In the Palatinate Lord’s Supper Form the prayer
of consecration is not a proper Eucharistic prayer. But the note of thanksgiving
is triumphant in the Supper by means of it ending on Psalm 103, “Bless the Lord,
O my soul.” This is what I grew up with—we end communion by blessing God. I
think the worship service is always supposed to rise to thanksgiving, even when
you don’t have communion. The worship service stages the same drama liturgically
that the Heidelberg does catechetically, from Guilt, to Grace, to Gratitude. The
kind of praise here is not just a general praise, as in Westminster, but the
particular sort of praise which is thanksgiving. In a real sense, therefore,
the Heidelberg is a Eucharistic catechism. If the Heidelberg is not as
transcendent as Westminster in its vision for humanity, it is deeper in its
feeling for the heart of God. The Book of Revelation tells us that the saints in
heaven will be singing the Song of Moses and the Lamb. Both of these songs are
Eucharistic songs in that they are songs of thanksgiving for rescue and
reconciliation. So then, may I ask again, what are people for? To glorify God
and enjoy God forever, yes, but what this will look like is a great feast of
thanksgiving.
List of Works Cited
For the Heidelberg
Catechism:
Wilhelm Niesel, ed. Kirchenordnung der
Kurpfalz. 1563. In Bekenntnisschriften und Kirchenordungen der nach
Gottes Wort reformierten Kirche. 3rd ed. Zürich: Evangelischer
Verlag, 1938.
Ecumenical Creeds and Reformed Confessions.
Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 1988.
For the Westminster
Shorter Catechism:
The Confession of Faith; the Larger and Shorter
Catechisms, etc. Edinburgh: Johnstone,
Hunter, & Co., 1876.
For both Catechisms:
The Constitution of the United Presbyterian
Church in the United States of America, Part I, Book of Confessions.
2nd edition, 1970. New York: Office of the General Assembly, 1970.
Secondary sources:
Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of
the American People. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1972.
Honders, A. C. “Remarks on the Postcommunio in
Some Reformed Liturgies.” In The Sacrifice of Praise: Studies on the Themes
of Thanksgiving and Redemption in the Central Prayers of the Eucharistic and
Baptismal Liturgies; In Honour of Arthur Hubert Couratin. Edited by Bryan D.
Spinks. Bibliotheca “Ephemerides Liturgicae,” 19. Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche,
1981.
Meeter, Daniel James. Meeting Each Other in
Doctrine, Liturgy and Government: The Bicentennial Celebration of the
Constitution of the Reformed Church in America. Historical Series of the
Reformed Church in America, 24. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993.
The Directory for Worship,
in Worship the Lord. Edited by James R. Esther and Donald J. Bruggink.
Grand Rapids: The Reformed Church in America and Eerdmans, 1987.
Schaff, Philip. The
Creeds of Christendom. 3 Volumes. Revised by David S. Schaff. Harper and
Row, 1931. Reprint. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983.
This article is the text
of an address given to the Mercersburg Society on June 3, 2003.
|
