Assembly Lines: Theology in Tumultuous Times

Thinking Theologically with Lewis, Nazianzus, Webster - and the Westminster Divines

The Westminster Standards were composed between 1646 and 1647. The rare person familiar with the finer contours of English history understands the context of these dates and their significance. For the rest of us, upon whom the significance would likely be lost: these years are in the middle of upheaval and chaos of the English Civil War. Even before January 4 of 1642, when Charles I unconstitutionally entered the chambers of the House of Commons intending to arrest five members of Parliament who were opposed to his rule, instability had been simmering in England. That early instability climaxed on August 22 of that same year, when Charles raised his standard at Nottingham and called his supporters to rally to him against Parliament, an act considered the symbolic beginning of the English Civil War.¹

That conflict carried on for some time. The details, like most things in that chapter of English history, are quite complex, but it’s enough to know those were dark days. The times involved seismic events like the execution of the monarch (Charles I was tried and then beheaded in1649), at least two more distinct armed conflicts pitting neighbor against neighbor, and ultimately the restoration of the monarchy to the Stuart dynasty in 1660. At a distance it’s difficult to imagine just how chaotic those times were. But suffice it to say, the mid-seventeenth century was not the most auspicious times for the work of theology. And yet, somehow and someway, in the midst of all of this tumult the Westminster Assembly gathered and composed this document that has endured for now almost four centuries and, expanding far beyond its beginnings on the British Isles, provided multiple communions around the world with the confessional framework that sustains and supports their work of ministry.

That brief and incomplete synopsis of the historical background of the Westminster Assembly is worthy of our attention not just because it allows us to take a first necessary step towards placing Westminster in its context, but also because it provides some food for thought about the possibilities and conditions of theological work. The Divines were not apolitical men; among those who helped compose the Confession there were a number of different convictions about political theology that were articulated because each man believed those things were important elements of discipleship. And certainly the task of writing the Confession was not the only task they devoted themselves to in the times given to them. But nonetheless, alongside preaching and pastoral counsel and faithfulness to their difficult moment, they composed the WCF.

In considering that context, three passages about theological work came to mind; one each from from C.S. Lewis, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Webster. Lewis, Gregory, and Webster each provides a different perspective on the conditions, virtues, and challenges to the work of theology.

First, Lewis:

“There are always rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come.” - C.S. Lewis, “Learning in Wartime”

There is always a reason not to do this work. There is always a reason not to attempt to read that book that will be exacting and time-consuming and that is seemingly irrelevant to the pressing challenges of the day. Why not instead doomscroll the timeline? There is always a reason not to take the next step in understanding the theological tradition we’ve inherited. Why not instead do something more “practical'‘? There is always some reason not to attend to the deeper work that is a part of our calling as pastors, elders, and ministry staff. Why not instead numb our anxiety with some frivolous pursuit? “Favourable conditions never come.” Better to understand that, and then to get to the work anyways.

Gregory:

“What is the right time? Whenever we are free from the mire and noise without, and our commanding faculty is not confused by illusory, wandering images, leading us, as it were, to mix fine script with ugly scrawling, or sweet-smelling scent with slime. We need actually ‘to be still’ in order to know God, and when we receive the opportunity, ‘to judge uprightly’ in theology.” - Gregory of Nazianzus, Theological Oration 27

There is a a certain posture that belongs to the one who wants to know God. We all know the tyranny of the urgent and the strange attractiveness of distraction. If we want to enjoy the deep things of God, then we must also understand that we must from time to time break ourselves free from hypervigilant focus on the latest update or the current hot take. And we must at the same time cultivate the kind of patience, and studiousness that characterizes all lasting theology - including the Westminster Divines - in its worship attention to the things of God. Gregory reminds us that this kind of work “is not for all people, but only for those who have been tested and have found a sound footing in study, and, more importantly, have undergone, or at the very least are undergoing, purification of body and soul.”²

And finally, Webster:

“What of the vices which stand opposed to patience? Most obviously, impatience, refusal to endure affliction with composure. Impatience is manifest as restlessness: feverish excitement, frenzy, distraction, instability, irritability, those attitudes and behaviours which erode steadiness of spirit and longanimity. Impatience harms us more than any affliction to which it responds intemperately. This is because its fury so fills us that we become incapable of following suffering to its term, and we forsake the good in which affliction issues: ‘the impatient’, Augustine tells us, ‘while they will not suffer ills, effect no deliverance from ills, but only the suffering of heavier ills.’” - John Webster, “Intellectual Patience”

Sometimes the days given to us bring with them afflictions of uncertainty, anxiety, or other suffering. A temptation in such conditions is impatience; we try to act to bring what is outside of our control under it through any number of illusory gestures. Webster’s list is revealing and convicting: “feverish excitement, frenzy, distraction, instability, irritability.” These are gestures that diminish the integrity of the work we’ve been given as those who seek to know God and make him known. It is not that we cannot speak to our times; indeed, we must. But we can only do so as those who seek to bear patiently the days given to us. “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes through it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:6-7). Webster reminds us that our work will always be threatened by conditions within our own souls. We can only work in the days that are given to us, and bear patiently whatever they hold.

The Westminster Confession is one demonstration from the Church’s tradition of the lasting fruit that is possible when we listen to the counsel of Lewis, Gregory, and Webster.

1. Robert Letham, The Westminster Assembly: Reading its Theology in Historical Context (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2009), 29-30.

2. Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius (Crestwood, NY: St Vladamir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 27.