Why the Westminster Confession Still Matters: A Conversation with Dr. Chad Van Dixhoorn

We’re joined by Dr. Chad Van Dixhoorn, professor of church history and theology at Reformed Theological Seminary and one of today’s leading Westminster Assembly scholars. Few men in our day have devoted more careful, sustained work to the Westminster Standards, studying both their historical setting and their theological substance. In this conversation, he offers a gracious and accessible presentation of the Confession and catechisms, while also pressing the importance of confessionalism for the life and health of the church today. Together, we explore why the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms still belong in the hands of ordinary Christians.

For more information on Dr. Chad Van Dixhoorn’s work, please see the following: Confessing the Faith by Chad Van Dixhoorn, available through Banner of Truth.

Dr. Van Dixhoorn is Professor of Church History and Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, and he is widely recognized as one of the leading experts on the Westminster Assembly. He has completed a five volume edition of The Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, 1643 to 1652, giving the church an unprecedented window into the work and debates of the divines. He is also currently working on a major monograph on the Assembly and serves as the editor of John Arrowsmith’s Plans for Holy War, as well as general editor of the Works of Samuel Rutherford. Ordained in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Dr. Van Dixhoorn has also served pastorally both in the United Kingdom and here in the United States.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Welcome to Catechizing Conversations, a podcast about the Reformed Confessions and Creeds of the Church, and a podcast intended to inform and encourage the reading of the Creeds and Confessions. And today I have a very special guest and just very privileged. The Dr. Chad Van Dixhorn is with us here at Catechizing Conversations. Thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Oh, it's delighted. Delighted to be with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

I know he's just gone through a long day of teaching here at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and so we're just really appreciative that you've taken this time. As an introduction, Dr. Chad Van Dixorn is professor of church history and theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte. And he is widely recognized as one of the leading experts on the Westminster Assembly. He's completed a five-volume edition of the Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, and it's given the church an unprecedented window into the work and debates of the Westminster Divines. Also currently working on more books from the Westminster Confession Standards, and he has served as the editor of the John Arrowsmith's Plans for Holy War, as well as a general editor of the works of Samuel Rutherford. It is just a great privilege to have you with us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

It's great to be with you, and your listeners should know that anytime somebody's described as like an expert, it often means they just never bothered changing their topic and didn't have the creativity to do something different.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Right. Well, I was listening to a lecture by I think it's Dr. Letham. Oh. And he was saying that you knew more about the Westminster Confession than Divine's.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

So that is both not true and very funny.

Why He Studied Westminster

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Yeah, it stood out to me. Can you tell us how you first became interested in the Westminster Assembly and its its documents? And what made it such a focus in your scholarship?

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Yeah. So so I guess there's two different sort of streams of experiences that led to studying the Westminster standards. The first is uh uh when I became a Presbyterian, my church fairly quickly put me in charge of teaching a little shorter catechism class. And that class required me to get acquainted with the shorter catechism quickly. It was wonderful. And uh I I told the kids that that I wanted them to learn the questions, but if I couldn't say the question and all the proof texts, then they didn't have to say it. So that was great. That was that was fun. And I also just came across some good study material, Thomas Watson's Body of Divinity, Ten Commandments, I mean, just his mother told him that he must never speak without a metaphor in his mouth. And so it it just was always colorful and engaging. So I love the short of catechism and the resources there. And then when I was uh a seminary student, my church, falling on hard times, asked me to teach the Westminster Confession each week for a few minutes, 15 minutes or so, and I did that. That was helpful. So that's the one stream I was teaching on it and saying, wow, this is useful for me and others. Uh the other stream is that I was uh a seminary student unable to organize my papers. I was doing an independent study for Westminster, I mean for uh Sinclair Ferguson on assurance of faith, and he just said, he he did not say in so many words, because he was too gracious, your paper has no direction or structure. He said, wouldn't it be great if your paper had the direction and structure of studying chapter 18? You know, what are the Westminster Divines saying about assurance of faith? And so that got me into studying the history and theology of the assembly and studying that that background. And so the teaching, that bit of studying, I thought, wow, there's a there's actually a lot I could maybe do here.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Yeah, so both the shorter catechism and your teaching that in Did you mention say that was a youth class?

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Yeah, it was a it was a that's right I was saying just just children in my little Canadian Presbyterian Church.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

And then being driven into the standards for greater substance and understanding in your own academic work.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Later on. So as a seminary student, and I just kind of kept saying, well, there's a lot more work that could be done here, and I kept doing some of it.

A Pastor’s Costly Courage

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Aaron Powell Yeah, and you've done a you've done a lot of it and have gone into the depths of the standards, and it's both its history beyond what many have done. Could you go back even a little bit further? Like how did you go come into ministry? And you've also spoken of the significance your pastor has had on your life.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I mentioned that in a sermon this morning. So one of my pastors, the pastors that I had for the longest as a child, was a Greek minister trained in England. He was an American citizen. He was called to a Dutch-Canadian church. No one saw that there could possibly be any kind of bumps along the road. That just that ministry didn't really work out. And he was asked to leave, started an independent church. My family went with the group that helped him start that church. But a big part of the group that started that church were discontents from a denomination that did not really believe that young people could come to know the Lord. And by young, they meant like 18. And I had struggled for many years trying to understand whether I was a Christian or not, had the Lord saved me, lots of assurance issues. And when I was around the age of 18, my uh my church asked me to lead a Bible study called How to Come to Faith in Christ. It's a little book we used. I don't recommend that you take people who aren't sure if they're Christian, make them lead Bible studies. But it was very helpful. I either came to faith in Christ or realized that I that uh I really did belong to the Lord. So I wanted to, I went to the elders and told them, I have I think I'm a Christian. They interviewed me. And about two-thirds of the church was of this sort of very conservative reformed stripe. And they also had all the money and they had the mortgage on the pastor's house. And they said, if you let that boy, if you let that young man profess his faith, we don't think he's a Christian. So we're gonna you're become you're you're basically, you know, this easy believism thing. You know, this you're you're really reducing Christianity if you let him in. And so we'll sell your house and we'll leave your church. And he wasn't bullied. The day I professed my faith, two-thirds of the church left. And uh he went home to a for sale sign in his front yard and they sold it in a whisker. So he was a he was a courageous man, but he never really fully recovered. You know, the we couldn't get a church. It was after that that we became Presbyterian. We thought this this kind of like being on our own thing as an independent church is not good. So we joined a Presbyterian church, but he had to start working full-time. The church couldn't quite provide for him. The quality of the sermons dropped, it made it a less attractional church. He was old, he was tired. And eventually he had to stop pastoring, he started pushing grocery carts, and he slipped on the ice, banged his head, never really recovered when he died. And I remember him. I mean, he paid a very high price for his faithfulness to a young sheep. He did what was right, even though he had nothing to win other than the approval of his father in heaven.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

Really speaks demonstratively, of course, in this situation, but really speaks to how the ministers that have gone before us and the generations that have gone before us have paid a great price for passing down what they have to us as good stewards, and then put it in our hands. And I imagine that that whole event has really impacted your whole ministry, your scholarship, your everyday life, and what you're doing now.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Francisco, I know what the I know what the answer needs to be to that question. The truth is he was also very critical of me. I think he had given so much up for me that he wanted me to be a pretty perfect person right away. I mean, i that is I shouldn't say that. When I went off to seminary, I think he was worried. So so he wanted me to succeed so well to be he wanted me to be faithful. He was so desperate for me to be faithful that he became very critical of me if I made the smallest error. And that that was actually really difficult. And uh it I didn't even enjoy coming back and meeting with him. It took some time for me really to look back and say, wait a minute, this man's not perfect. But he loved the Lord, he loved me. I owe him so much. I would have been crushed if my elders had gone back to me and said, actually, you're not a Christian. Like that would have been devastating. So it actually took me quite a while to reach the point where I just said, Chad, you you owe so much to this man and to his testimony. So it didn't, it did, it struck me right away at first, then it faded during seminary because of this criticism. I mean, he would criticize, I would finish preaching, and he criticized me right away. Hit hard in ways that I felt were unfair. And it took me a while to say, oh wait, I let me just step back and say this makes sense on some level. It's not great, but he's been a wonderful, if imperfect pastor.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Sounds like a mixture of pleasant and frowning providence, as I said.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Yeah. And f and f I mean he he really did give up a lot. And I'm very grateful.

Imperfect Shepherds And Gratitude

The Divines’ Training And Limits

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Speaking of giving up a lot, when you have studied the uh Westminster Divines and as we've mentioned, you've you've done tremendous work, very in-depth work in in not only the content but the history. These men too were imperfect. But I think sometimes we fail to realize the um tremendous competency that they had. Could you speak to help this the average person to know what was the competency of these men who wrote the Confession of Faith, the larger and shorter catechisms?

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Yeah. I mean I suppose I want to take that in two different directions. On the one hand, they had you know good education. They they could read classic works in theology and they did. They could read their Bible in Greek and Hebrew, and they did. Many of them had mentors who were giants in the world. But and you you can see that in the debates, you know, just able to give hour-long speeches on the spot, well organized, and so on. So everybody who was anybody in the English speaking world was invited to the Westminster Assembly. They didn't all come, but anybody of any provident uh prominence was invited. Uh if you were if you were a Calvinist, if you will, if you were Reformed, you were invited. But there was also people there who were more ordinary ministers, whose talents are kind of less obvious to history. And it takes more digging to find out, oh, so that's where he was a whiz-bang theologian. But some of them we still don't know. And, you know, gathered together without an audience, without a constituency, a fan club and supporters, they didn't always say the smartest things. You know, it's if you and I were just sitting together and and chatting for a while, you put us together in the room for five years to talk about theology. We're gonna say some pretty stupid things sometimes. And we're gonna be thankful to the Lord that our our worst ideas, or let me just speak for myself, Francisco. I would say some stupid things eventually, and maybe not that long, and I'd just be thankful for the input and the correction of others. It was the aggregate, the the the totality of them all listening to each other, working with each other, that let them come out with a document that was so series of documents that are so helpful.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Right. But for some of us, we may look at it and see it in a glorified way looking back. But you're saying I mean it was just the real meat and bones of the whole appearance.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Yeah, it took a lot of work, it took a lot of conversations. There's a couple of guys who, when they published the speeches of what they said in the assembly, the published speeches look a little bit better than the ones that the minutes say they actually gave. They might just sort of see not no need to retain the silliest of their comments or the least useful questions.

Hard Debates With Real Brotherhood

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Trevor Burrus That that's insightful for many of us about just the everyday working of the assembly during those years. What would be something else that would surprise most of us about the assembly, about what was taking place as they were hammering out this stock these documents?

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I I don't know how many people would survive, but if one were to, you know, sort of mortgage his life savings and end up with a set of the minutes and papers of the Assembly, which you seem to have done, and you read through, you could say, wow, these guys are pretty hard on each other. I mean, they are they are really at this, you know, hammering tongs. But I would say at the end of the day, there's a remarkable brotherhood as well. That these are hard debates. They they they cost something. But when when George Gillespie and Philip Nye, who did not see eye to eye in church government, uh refer to each other as the Reverend Brother, I'd say for five years of studying the Westminster Assembly's history, I thought it was sarcasm because they disagreed so much. Then all of a sudden it came to me. I'm just reading that in. I think they're because precisely because they disagree, they're working that much harder to be respectful. And I I've just thought about that so many times. When I disagree with somebody, I want to get closer to them. If I am having a hard time with somebody, I want to say, let's go out for breakfast. My natural instinct is to pull away, to offer negative spin, like I was doing in reading these guys. The right thing to do is to lean in and say, let's remember the communion of saints. Let's remember that we're all, we might be disagreeing about some important things. We are brothers in Christ. Let's let's respect each other. Let's do extra lifting here.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Right, right. So you're saying that this can't be done on X or or uh YouTube or Twitter and whatever else is out there in the social media where we're not going uh we're not trying to get to know our flattering tweets are not the same as getting in the car and driving over or or picking up the phone if it's the the drive is implausible.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

That's something we can gather from these divines in our current debates.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

I I think so. I mean, again, they're they're men. The divines were human.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

That's right.

Why The Pew Should Care

SPEAKER_02 16:28

And uh just if someone's uh wondering, Dr. Van Dixhorn is referring to the volumes of the Westminster papers that I have a copy of right here before us that he worked through and are very hard to find. So this is a that was a goal the day I acquired them, and this is uh another goal that we're sitting here today. But speaking about what the assembly can teach us, what about just that? The Christian in the pews, why should they care about the Westminster Confession of Faith, the shorter and larger catechisms in the Westminster the Westminster Assembly?

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Well, th this is gonna sound self-serving, but I'm just trying to be efficient. Maybe put a link in the show notes to the lecture tonight. I'm gonna give it the old college try uh to convince people in one probably too long lecture that the Westminster Confession of Faith really is useful, not just for pastors, but for Christians. But but here's here's the cliff notes for the people who don't have time to go watch. First of all, the idea of summarizing biblical truth, of packaging up some main points, it's already in the Bible. You know, the Shema in Deuteronomy chapter six, the Apostle Paul's summary of his gospel at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15. The instinct to say, here are the main points, this is what we believe. It's a biblical instinct, and it's a it's also a basic Christian instinct to be honest. Cults hide things, Christians tell things, we share things, we say this is what we believe. You can get in on this. And uh, one of the instincts of a creed or a confession is to say, look, there's a there's a lot to learn in the Bible. Some people disagree about what it's teaching. Let me let me let us tell you what we think it means and why it's important. That's a good instinct. It's also something that brings Christians together. Yes, you and I have the same Bible, but I know that we can have a fairly thick working relationship together because we've we've both said that confession of faith with those 33 chapters, that's a fantastic summary of who God is, what he's done, what the gospel is, how we're to live. When we've got that much in common, it really helps with church unity and meaningful cooperative work. The five solas are not enough for us to decide that together we could go plant a church. Right? Because it doesn't touch on how we're gonna worship. It doesn't touch on what we think the biblical priorities are for real shepherding care and accountability. So but we've got that. We've got that. So so we've got this this thick ecumenicity, this robust platform for doing cooperative work. I'd also say, and by the way, everybody needs to care about that. That's not just a minister thing. We all want that to happen. And then congregations also, when we can say, like, this is what we think this church believes, it helps with the dating relationship when you're trying to find a pastor or an elder, right? I mean, there is this kind of thing that goes on, right? You're like, do you like us? We like you, that's good. We can all talk in complete sentences about Jesus. But we also want to be able to say, do we have the same doctrine? I mean, we might not be compatible for some other reason, right? We we just we just don't click together at all. That could that can be a thing. But uh there's no sense really clicking together personally and realizing you don't believe the same thing. So so it helps in that. And then finally, really briefly, doxology, a doctrine is great for doxology. So so when we learn doctrine, yeah, we can learn doctrine to show off. We can learn truth in order to sort of puff ourselves up. But just because people can abuse it, doesn't mean we want to not learn truth, not have a robust understanding of who God is. Instead, we need to pray that we'll have a doctrine that leads to praise, a doctrine that leads to deeper prayers, thicker songs, more joy, more usefulness, a doctrine that leads to doxology to praise. That's what it's there for. And while it's glorious to have a Christian pray, Lord, thank you for saving me. That's good. That's wonderful, it's enough. You kind of want a Christian who's known the Lord for 10 years to be able to say, Lord, thank you for reconciling me to yourself. Thank you for paying the price for my sins. Thank you for bearing the wrath that I deserve. Like feeling out what Christ has done. Right. That's one part of saving. And then also say, Lord, thank you that in you, in your son, I'm justified. I'm adopted, I'm sanctified. So we're thankful when someone just knows how to say, Lord, thank you for saving me. Right. But boy, you've got a lot more to sing and pray about and preach about. When you can unpack redemption accomplished and applied, when you can unpack the various facets of what it means to understand what Christ has done for you, what God has planned for you, what the Spirit's doing in you.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

I don't I don't know much about Jesus. I know a blind man now I can see. Yeah. But a pastor would want to come along and say, Let's learn more about Jesus. Yeah, and the confession puts meat on the bones.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

It's a glorious start. But you just don't want people to still be there 30 years later. And there are people who are just they want to grow, but they just don't know how much they can grow. Right. And they think once they've kind of mastered that, they've they've sort of got most of it. Yeah. I'm I'm exaggerating for a fact, but you get the idea.

Turning Doctrine Into Daily Life

SPEAKER_02 22:27

Yeah, well, maybe maybe 16 points. But uh that's so well said. Uh I have so many follow-up questions, but we're limited on time. Let me ask you this. Our our church in Lebanon, Pennsylvania is a PCA church plant in its fifth year, and we're currently in officer training, and we're working through your book, Confessing the Faith, which is a wonderful commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith. What advice would you give to these men as they study the Westminster Confession?

SPEAKER_01 23:01

So uh I would encourage them after each section has been studied to say, if this is true, how am I gonna live? How does this impact the way I worship and pray? I know when I'm reading, I'm picking up a book, any Christian book. I want to start by saying, Lord, I don't know what you have in this for me. I know it's not the Bible, but uh I I bet there's something here for me to learn and apply. Help me not to miss it. And we Emily's study guide sometimes my commentary gives prompts. By no means exhaustive and not probably not always helpful. So if I believe this is true, what's what's a change about my life? The way I think about God, the way I the way I raise my kids, the way I help people in the church, the way I interact around the water cooler.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Right. And and Emily is your wife.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Yes, Emily's my wonderful wife who wrote, Oh, what's it called?

SPEAKER_02 24:01

It's it's the companion to the confessing the faith hardcover.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Yeah, it's like a study guide. That's right. The study guide to to confessing the faith.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

But it sounds like that's that's about getting just out of our heads and into our hearts.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

You know, from doctrine to doctrine and piety. Yeah, her her her study guide takes each section of the confession and says, What's it mean? Where does the Bible teach this? And how does it impact the way I think, pray, worship, live? Yeah, that's so good. Yeah, that's good.

Catechism Habits For Families

SPEAKER_02 24:35

So we have so much content, we have so much doctrine, but how is this going to impact my life? Yeah. Speaking of children, what advice would you give to mothers and fathers who want to instill in their children a love for not only the shorter catechism, but in time as they grow, the the the confession and the larger or longer catechism.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Yeah. So I mean, first off, if if you've got ten minutes or five minutes for family devotion, you know, start start small, maybe trying to pick a time after a meal when you can read a few verses and sing a verse or two of a hymn you know or a psalm. You know, maybe ask a question or two, memorize the Bible together. But if you have the bandwidth, I think it's a great idea to add like a catechism question to help people think systematically about the Bible, kind of bring the different truths of the word together. I think there's a lot of value in that. Uh we've uh we've used car rides. We've told our kids, you know, you you don't get to listen to what you want to listen to in the car until you've done so many minutes of catechism. In fact, my wife would say, first we read the Bible, then we just say, you know, what's it about? What's it teach us about God? What's it teach us about ourselves? Now we do some catechism, then we pray, then you can listen to your music. Yeah. The kids are like, let's just get into this. Let's go. So we we do believe in I I guess coercion and bribery. You know, we we we do not reward our children for saying yes, mom, uh, but for achievements. We'll say, like, yeah, there's this are there's a real reward if you learn so many questions, uh, if you memorize so many verses of the Bible. These achievements we'll give awards for, and not just obedience.

Is Confessional Interest Growing

SPEAKER_02 26:28

But yeah, that's right. No, it makes it reminds me in COVID. Uh we have twin boys. Okay. And during COVID, uh, one of them took us uh on our uh our challenge that if he memorized the shorter catechism, he would get a Nintendo Go, I think it was called something like that. Yeah. So he did it. He did it. That's fantastic. We have little footage of his sweet little voice, though. That's lovely. Yeah. So these are wonderful truths that are often ignored. And you mentioned in in one of your seminars, uh one of your uh lectures, that there's many who have been ignorant of these things and then they come to find them and then say, like, where has this been all my life? And I'm speaking of Christians, that's kind of my testimony. I've grown up in a Christian home, but that was not privy to these wonderful documents. Are you seeing a resurgence of interest in the confessions and creeds?

SPEAKER_01 27:25

I mean, I am, but I'm a somewhat self-selecting audience, right? So if someone really comes to love the confession catechisms, I think the odds are higher that I'm gonna hear about this than maybe some other people.

SPEAKER_02 27:37

They're gonna come and tell you they could maybe get a reward. Maybe they want a Nintendo.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

You know, when a new denomination starts and I get to hear about it, I think I'm often getting to hear about it because I've sort of worked on this stuff for a while. And so I think I'm more likely to hear about it. So I'm seeing a resurgence, but but I think I've got a front row seat. So I'm I'm I'm not sure I can really describe a broader phenomenon. Sure, sure. Yeah.

Upcoming Rutherford Volumes And Projects

SPEAKER_02 28:07

Well, this has been an amazing opportunity and privilege to uh have you sit down and and talk with us and talk with our our listeners, and and we trust that it leads to picking up a shorter catechism, confession of faith, and and diving in. As we wrap this up, it could you share about any books you're currently working on, anything coming out that we should be keeping an eye out for?

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Well, thank you. It's just been a real privilege to uh spend this time with you, get to know you, uh share, share moments with your listeners. I am the, as you mentioned earlier, very kindly, the editor of the works of Samuel Rutherford. The two's two first volumes of those 21 volumes are coming out this summer, I think in July. I'm pretty excited about that. This is be really helpful for reformed pastors, seminary students, and seriously real and nerdy uh church members. Um and I you could everyone has lots to pray about, but I'm I'm trying to put uh the I'm in the final stages, I like to think, of finishing a history of the Westminster Assembly. I've been working on this for far too long. I'd like to finish that. I'm hoping it'll be helpful. And I've got other things to do that are sort of on hold until I get that done. So I would I would love to be able to kind of get in the headspace and do the hard work of putting that together and reviewing and researching. It's not always fun, but it's I think it's worth doing and I need to do it.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

99% perspiration, one percent inspiration. Well, thank you for how you're blessing the body of Christ with these important works. And again, thank you for taking this time today to talk to us.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

Thank you, gracious brother, and blessings in Lebanon.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

Thank you. Well, we appreciate you listening to Catechizing Conversations. Dive in to these beautiful works that have been passed down to us, the confessions, the creeds that have been placed in our hands. May they be used for his glory. Thank you for listening, and the Lord bless you.