Commenting on the Westminster Confession of Faith (and the Larger Catechism), Reformed theologian R.T. Kendall noted the lack of assurance one can have if they subscribe to the theology thereof, and how, ultimately, the ground of one’s assurance they are in a saved state was one’s good works:
REPENTANCE: THE CONDITION OF THE NEW COVENANT
The Westminster
divines do not explicitly state that repentance is the condition of the new covenant.
But they should have; for this is virtually what they finally say. While the
Westminster divines never intended to make works the ground of salvation, they
could hardly have come closer. Since having faith is defined as ‘yeelding
obedience’ to God’s commands, the ‘principall Acts’ of faith being of the will,
this seems to make the claims of ‘free grace’ suspect. This is being
illustrated by looking at the federal theology of these documents.
While the old
covenant (of works0 was promised ‘upon condition of perfect and personall
obedience’ (VII.ii), the ‘Covenant of Grace’ is promised to sinners, ‘requiring
of them Faith’ (VII.iii). In the ‘second Covenant’ God ‘freely provideth and
offereth to sinners a Mediator’; the sole requirement: ‘Faith as the condition’
(Larger Catechism, 7). God requires ‘nothing of them for their
Justification, but Faith’ (Ibid. 16). But while this faith is said to be God’s
gift (Larger Catechism, 16), we also know it is an act of the will. And
since we may believe—indeed, wait long—without assurance that our faith is saving,
we must still turn elsewhere before we know we have truly met the ‘condition’.
Thus ‘free’ justification has a price after all before it can be enjoyed: our
perseverance in repentance and good works. The old covenant was promised upon
the condition of ‘perfect and personall obedience’; the new is promised upon
the condition of faith—‘yeelding obedience to the Commands’ (XV.iii). The
difference seems to be that perfect obedience was required under the old covenant
and doing our best is required under the new.
Indeed, although
repentance is not the cause of our being pardoned, ‘none may expect pardon
without it’ (XV.iii). Being repentant means that one ‘so grieves for, and hates
his sins, as to turn from them all unto God, purposing and endeavouring to walk
with him in all the ways of his Commandments’ (CV.ii). Men should not be
contended ‘with a generall repentance, but it is every means duty to endeavour
to repent of his particular sins, particularly’ (XV.v). Sanctification is
described in much the same way, stressing mortification of lusts and the
universality of sanctification ‘in the whole man; yet imperfect in this life’
(XIII.ii). Furthermore, ‘good works’ done in obedience to God’s commandments ‘are
the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith’, and by them believers ‘strengthen
their assurance’ (XVI.ii).
Although Westminster
theology posits that ‘faith’ is the condition of the new covenant, by describing
faith as an act of the will it comes quite close to making justification, or,
at least, the knowledge of it, the reward for doing our best to be holy and
good. While the predestinarian structures of Westminster theology are undeniable—making
salvation utterly the gift of God—its doctrine of faith none the less tends to
put the responsibility for salvation right back on to man.
Furthermore, once having
obtained the assurance, the believer may lose it.
True belieevers may
have the assurance of their salvation divers wayes shaken, diminished, and
intermitted; as, by negligence in preserving of it, by falling into some speciall
sin, which woundeth the conscience, and grieveth the spirit; by, some sudden,
or vehement temptation, by Gods withdrawing the light of his countenance, and
suffering even such as fear him to walk in darknesse and to have no light . . .
(XVIII.iv)
While such are ‘never
destitute of that seed of God’ (XVIII.iv), inasmuch as believers ‘can neither
totally, or finally, fall away from the state of Grace’ (XVII.1; cf. XII), they
seem to lose their assurance because it was grounded in a good conscience in
the first place. Thus the loss of assurance is possible because the ground of
assurance is not a solid rock but shifting sand; it may fluctuate in proportion
to how one’s conscience witnesses by reflection.
We are told, moreover,
that our ‘good works are accepted in Him’ (XVI.vi), not because they are
perfect but because God ‘is pleased to accept, and reward that which is sincere’
for the sake of Christ (XVIII.iii). This seems to bring us back to Perkins’s
idea that God accepts the will for the deed (cf. Larger Catechism, 50:
one who does not have assurance but who ‘unfainedly desires to be found in
Christ, and to depart from iniquity’ should come straight to the Lord’s Table).
Assurance, then, is grounded in the reflection of our sincerity. This is
the line so often seen in the experimental predestinarian tradition. Such a
conclusion seems to be an inevitable consequence of imposing a voluntaristic
doctrine of faith upon a theology of double predestination. One the other hand
such a doctrine is likely indeed to be very far ‘from inclining men to
loosenesse’ (XVIII.iii). One of the offices of Christ the King is not only
bestowing saving grace upon the elect but ‘rewarding their obedience, and
correcting them for their sins’ (Larger Catechism, 10).
A good conscience,
which must be maintained by good works, repentance, and perseverance, does not
seem to be motivated by sheer gratitude to God for free salvation but by one’s
keen interest in salvation itself. While Calvin’s doctrine of sanctification
can be seen as thankfulness, Westminster theology lends itself to making
sanctification the payment for the promise of salvation. Presumably the loss of
assurance means that the unhappy subject in such a time does not know but that
he is reprobate after all. The only way to recover assurance is to till the
ground—conscience—by measuring up to the Law . . . such insurance to protect
the Church from Antinomianism and to preserve godliness costs, the cost that
Calvin warned against—endless introspection, the constant checking of the
spiritual pulse for the right ‘effects’, and, possibly, legalism. (R.T.
Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 [Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1979], 205-8, emphasis in bold added)
