Five Points & Five Sacrifices
Here’s something James Jordan writes in the latest Biblical Horizons newsletter (no, it isn’t online yet). The article is entitled “Misusing the Westminster Confession”:
… it is important to realize that to a large extent the Standards were intended for pastors, for ordained clergymen. The writers knew that what laymen need is the Bible, the whole Bible. The Confession set up standards for the guardians of the Church. But there are churches today that are full of people who know the five points of Calvinism, but who cannot tell you the five basic “sacrifices” of the Bible, because these laymen have been indoctrinated primarily in the Westminster Standards rather than in the Bible. That was not the intention of the writers, though of course they expected pastors to teach the content and theology of the Standards along with teaching the Bible.