When was the last time you described someone as “absolute”? I’ll guess it’s been a while. So it has probably been a while since you pondered why the Westminster Confession of Faith describes God as “most absolute.” 

Today, we might say it this way: God doesn’t need anyone else’s power or permission to be who he is. He is who he is even if we don’t realize it or acknowledge it, and yet he graciously makes himself known to us through the world he made, Scripture, and ultimately through his Son, Jesus. What a glorious God! 

As it summarizes the teaching of Scripture, the WCF says so many beautiful things about God and the gospel. But many contemporary readers are not comfortable with 17th-century English and have not been trained to navigate technical theological writing. Others are so familiar with the Confession that they speed past significant details, hardly noticing the wonders hidden in a two-word phrase. 

What if we could learn to dig more deeply into all the beauty of biblical doctrine and in the process learn to communicate it to a wider audience?  

I like the phrase “most absolute” (from WCF 2.1). It’s short, punchy. But until I slowed down to give it more attention, it was just one more phrase in a long paragraph, like a very convenient handle that let me pick up a suitcase I had never opened. Restating its meaning in everyday language helps me appreciate both the contents of the suitcase (the meaning of our biblical doctrines) and the helpfulness of the handle (the original language of the Confession). 

Conversion, Composition, Confusion — And Communication

In WCF 8.2, for instance, we read that Christ’s human and divine natures are joined together in one person, “without conversion, composition, or confusion.” Even though these words might be familiar to most adults, their significance in this context is not. Here’s another way to clarify what the Confession is teaching: 

Jesus’s two natures were not joined together

• by converting one nature into the other,
• by merging them together so that they don’t constitute one true person, 
• or by mixing the two together in such a way that they form a third thing that is neither fully divine nor fully human.

This is one example of why I have worked, with the help of my good friend Sean Lucas, to create “The Westminster Confession of Faith in Everyday Language.” I wrote this book hoping that many people would benefit from a tool that provides more insight than they would get from reading the Confession alone. 

But what if you don’t need this kind of help because all of this content is already clear to you? 

Over more than 20 years serving on committees that examine men seeking ordination as pastors, I have seen many candidates who can recite the Confession verbatim. But many times an examiner will ask, “How would you say that to a 10-year-old? To a Muslim neighbor? To a brand-new Christian?” It is a glorious thing when pastors and all Christians, know how to communicate biblical truths to a wide range of people. I hope this tool will help many of us to do just that. 

Of Passions and Paraphrase

Consider another example from WCF 2.1, which tells us that God is “without… passions.” At first glance, modern English speakers may interpret this phrase to mean that God doesn’t have strong emotions or doesn’t feel things deeply. Is there a way to avoid the impression that God is cold or distant without implying that he has the same kind of emotional life humans do? Yes, but to achieve this clarity for a modern reader, we need more than two words: God doesn’t have emotions that dominate him so that they are beyond his control. 

Re-stating the original language keeps us from misunderstanding the Confession and, more importantly, from assuming that this misunderstanding accurately reflects Scripture’s teaching.  

These concepts aren’t new, of course. Editions of the Confession that update the language and clarify its sentence structure already exist. But these resources tend to offer single-word synonyms (“most absolute” becomes “completely absolute” or “thoroughly absolute,” for example) or to replace a phrase with a phrase of similar length (such as expanding “without conversion, composition, or confusion” by only one or two words). The resulting brevity reflects the rhythm of the WCF’s original text, but it sacrifices the clarity of a longer paraphrase. 

When I taught Greek, I used to tell students it is much easier to be a Bible teacher than a Bible translator: where a translator is limited to a word or a phrase, a teacher can take as much time as is needed. In this new tool, I’ve taken the approach of the teacher. One kind of helpful tool exists; I’ve tried to provide a new one, for a different kind of work.

Help and Encouragement for People We Love

I undertook this project to help people I love treasure Scripture’s teaching, with the WCF as a summary and guide. 

When our children were younger, my wife and I wanted them to have a clear understanding not only of the Bible but of what the Bible is. Chapter 1 of the WCF is the best summary I know of the Christian doctrine of Scripture, but its vocabulary and sentence structure are not suited for young children. I created a file on my computer called the “Westminster Daddychism.” 

Years later, I was helping a friend whose first language isn’t English work through the Confession. The language barrier was a struggle, so we got a good translation, yet the struggle continued. I realized that the translation reflected the unfamiliar style and sometimes-complex structure of the original Confession; we needed a translation that overcame these barriers. 

Consider WCF 1.5. 

We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture. And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.

This paragraph consists of two sentences: a shorter one (22 words) that is fairly clear, and a much longer one (105 words, including an 8-part list). The two sentences make two very distinct points. Readers who are working hard to keep track of all this content may miss the main point, which comes at the end of this longer sentence. 

A newer Christian might find phrases like “infallibly true” to be unfamiliar. Or what does it mean for the Spirit to work “by means of” and “with” God’s Word? Here’s an attempt to translate and simplify this rich paragraph:  

• The testimony the Church gives is one factor that might cause us to have high regard and reverence for Scripture. 
• Several other factors can also provide convincing evidence that Scripture is the Word of God. These include:
  • the spiritual beauty of its contents;
  • the persuasiveness of its teaching;
  • its beautiful literary style;
  • the harmony among all its parts;
  • the vast scope of its overall goal—which is to give to God all the glory He deserves; 
  • the fact that it fully unveils the only way for human beings to experience salvation;
  • all its other positive qualities, which are beyond comparison;
  • and the fact that it is entirely perfect. 
• But despite all this, what fully convinces and assures us that Scripture is infallibly true and has divine authority is the work of the Holy Spirit in us, giving his testimony in our hearts. The Spirit does this work by means of God’s Word and with God’s Word. 

That doctrine is carefully and beautifully stated in the Confession’s original language. But some of the people we love need help and encouragement to appreciate that care and beauty. Perhaps, with God’s blessing, we can use this new tool for that kind of result.   

There is a third kind of person who needs help and encouragement. A pastor friend recently reminded me that many people — Christians as well as non-Christians — feel deep shame that they are not as far along in their understanding of the Bible’s teaching as they “should be.” 

If you or others you love are in that place, I hope the approach described here reminds you that God’s love for you isn’t rooted in what you know. He doesn’t love anyone more or less because they are comfortable reading a particular kind of language. Instead, “God vouchsafeth, in and for his only Son Jesus Christ, to make [us] partakers of the grace of adoption” (WCF 12.1). Said another way, our Father includes us in his gracious work of adoption … because we are united to his only Son, Jesus Christ.

Jimmy Agan is the senior pastor of Intown Community Church (PCA) in Atlanta, Georgia and the author of “The Westminster Confession of Faith in Everyday Language.”