The Story Behind the Heidelberg Catechism with R. Scott Clark

This transcript has been lightly edited from an automated transcription for clarity and readability. While we've worked to preserve each speaker's words faithfully, errors may remain.

1. 00:00

   R. Scott Clark

   However shocking it might be in our culture to people such as I, and I think you, you know, young Christians maybe, or have you been raised in a sort of Arminian remonstrate culture, this might sound a little bit shocking. It was to me when I ran into it. But that only shows how far we've drifted from really just basic Christianity.

2. 00:25

   Michael Horton

   If people have only encountered, you know, broad evangelicals or anybody else has only encountered a kind of mean, cocky, self-satisfied, self-confident, arrogant Calvinist, they should read the Heidelberg Catechism. Truly pastoral, but it's also a fulsome statement of what it means to be Reformed, not this online guy or whatever.

3. 00:53

   R. Scott Clark

   That's what I was thinking. So, the weirdo anonymous quote-unquote Reformed guy who may not even be a part of an actual church, He doesn't get to define Reformed Christianity, and I'm sorry for your bad experience. I've had them too.

4. 01:08

   Michael Horton

   We don't want to live in the Village Green at the end of the day. We can all leave and return to our houses of worship, but our goal is to encourage conversational theology in the Village Green where we can rub shoulders with Christians from different traditions and expressions.

5. 01:32

   Michael Horton

   Hello and welcome to another Welcome to another edition of Know What You Believe. I'm MikeHorton , and I'm here with my good friend Scott Clark, who is professor of church history and historical theology at Westminster Seminary California. He has his own podcast, the Heidelblog, which is fantastic. I highly recommend you to check that out. And he's written a number of books, but this one is his newest, a commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, a 1,000-page commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism. Scott, why did you do it?

6. 02:09

   R. Scott Clark

   Yeah, I committed a crime against a lot of trees is what I did. So I was helping with a church plant in Oceanside, and Danny Hyde, who was the church planting pastor, had started a blog, and he said, would you write on this? And so I did. And then one thing led to another, and so I started the Heidelblog, and I thought I wanted to focus on the Heidelberg Catechism just to draw attention to it, to try to get people to read the catechism. And so I started writing about the Catechism, and I kept doing it. And then after a while, I thought, well, this is kind of turning into something. And so I got a little more serious about it and then gathered it up, and I sent it off to the then publisher, Brannon Ellis. He said, yeah, I'll publish this. And they worked on it a little bit.

7. R. Scott Clark

   They sent it back, and then I looked at it and I thought, oh, this is too much like what already exists. So they gave me grace to sort of rework it and to make it into what it is, because I thought we ought to have something that, you know, really grounds the catechism in history, in its history, the broader Christian history, and that, you know, does a number of things, applies it to, you know, where we are, the issues that we're facing now. So, you know, that's how it grew up.

8. 03:23

   Michael Horton

   So the Heidelberg Catechism isn't that long.

9. 03:26

   R. Scott Clark

   No, it's 129 questions and answers.

10. 03:29

    Michael Horton

    And some people would say, we don't need a catechism, much less a commentary, a 1,000-page commentary on the catechism. Why do you think the Heidelberg in particular is so important?

11. 03:39

    R. Scott Clark

    Well, I mean, personally, it's what I learned. That's how I came into the Reformed churches was essentially through the Heidelberg Catechism. And that was my introduction to the Reformed faith. So for me personally, it's very important. But millions of Christians have found it a really invaluable summary of the Christian faith. You know, it opens with a wonderful summary of the faith. And it does all the things that you need a little book of questions and answers, a little book of christian instruction to do. It even serves, you know, not just as an instructional book, but as a guide for devotions, a way to introduce your children to the faith.

12. R. Scott Clark

    It does so many things. As a guide to preaching, it was meant to be used as a guide for the evening sermon in the Reformed churches. So, you know, in the providence of God, a lot of things came together in the writing of the catechism, even though the principal authors and editors were fairly young, they drew on a lot of wonderful texts and did a very good job of synthesizing a number of things to make this, I think, a, if not uniquely, a particularly valuable articulation of the Christian faith that is accessible to almost anyone.

13. 04:53

    Michael Horton

    And you did your doctoral dissertation on one of the authors.

14. 04:56

    R. Scott Clark

    Yeah. So I worked on Caspar Olivianus, and he is a contributor. He probably wasn't a major author, but he contributed Question 80 most famously, and then probably one other question.

15. 05:10

    Michael Horton

    What's the historical background here? Zacharias Ursinus is a former Lutheran, right? He was trained by Melanchthon?

16. 05:17

    R. Scott Clark

    That's right. So he studied at Wittenberg and was with Melanchthon, one of his students, for about 7 years. And so really enmeshed in confessional Lutheran theology, piety, and practice. It's interesting, we don't entirely know everything that transpired as he became Reformed. But about the time Melanchthon died in 1560, he makes a break with his— in some ways with his Lutheran past, not altogether. And that's evident in the Heidelberg Catechism. He travels around a couple of different times. He even actually had a little autograph book, and he collected autographs from all of these famous figures whom he got to meet.

17. 06:27

    R. Scott Clark

    So he was aware that he was with a lot of, you know, Bullinger and Beza and lots of other influential people. And he'd obviously spent years, you know, with Melanchthon.

18. 06:13

    Michael Horton

    And he almost drowned the prince, right?

19. 06:14

    R. Scott Clark

    No, different story altogether. That's Olivianus and some of the boys. Frederick, who became the Elector of the Palatinate, the governor of a district in the Empire. So when Olivianus and the Elector's oldest son, were together at university in Bourges. Some of the boys went out drinking. And Olivianus wasn't drinking, but the prince was. And the manservant wasn't, the valet wasn't. And some of the boys got in a boat and had too much to drink. They started rocking the boat, boat tipped over. And Olivianus and the valet jumped in to save the prince, failed, but Frederick would later remember Olivianus's attempt to save his son. And that's ultimately how Olivianus got to Heidelberg. He was actually in jail, not for any criminal activity, but because he'd been preaching the Reformed faith. And when the Roman Catholic Elector came back to town— this is in Trier— he threw him in jail, he and his buddies. And then Frederick found out about it and bailed him out and brought him to Heidelberg.

20. 07:27

    Michael Horton

    So what was behind Frederick III's concern to have a distinctly Reformed catechism in his part of Germany?

21. 07:38

    Michael Horton

    R. Scott Clark) — So there were two legal religions in the empire, technically the Holy Roman Empire, but as Voltaire said, it was neither holy nor Roman nor empire, but otherwise it was great. So there were two legal religions. One is the Evangelisch or the Lutheran, and the other is Roman Catholic. Well, where do the Reformed fit? The Reformed kind of tried to hide behind the skirts of the Lutherans, and the Lutherans kept shooing him away, saying, get away from us.

22. 08:03

    Michael Horton

    Not much has changed.

23. 08:04

    R. Scott Clark

    Exactly. It's the same way. You're not one of us. Get away from us. And so that put Frederick in a difficult position. And it's interesting, his wife was a hardcore Lutheran confessionalist. So they had a divided house, and his children were sort of divided. Ultimately, the son who ended up— because the first son died, the son who ended up succeeding him was a hardcore Lutheran and in 1576 would kick all the Reformed out of the Palatinate.

24. R. Scott Clark

    So imagine this, you're just an average schmuck in the Palatinate in the 1520s. You're a Roman Catholic, everybody's Roman Catholic. Your religion is whatever the electorate is. And particularly after 1530, and through the 1550s. And then when Otto Heinrich becomes the Elector, now you wake up one morning and you're a Lutheran. And that lasts for a while. And if you live long enough, you wake up one morning and now Frederick is the Elector and now you're Reformed. That's pretty confusing. That's one of the curses of the sort of state-church complex. Your religion is not something you choose, it's something that's chosen for you, and everybody assumes that's just the way it is. So Frederick said, all right, we need to— we need a tool to people understand. It's very confusing in some ways, and particularly in the transition from Roman Catholicism to sort of a kind of broad kind of Lutheranism. It wasn't— because Melanchthon was his principal advisor in that period. And then after Melanchthon, you know, now the Palatinate is becoming Reformed. And so he needed something to explain to them the continuities and discontinuities. And so the emphasis on the catechism is on the continuities between what they were hearing now and what they'd been hearing, you know, just previously.

25. 09:56

    Michael Horton

    To get everybody on the same page.

26. 09:57

    R. Scott Clark

    Yeah.

27. 09:57

    Michael Horton

    Because it was confusing.

28. 10:00

    R. Scott Clark

    Exactly. And he wanted— and he really wanted to strengthen. I think Frederick was a pious guy, and he wanted people to trust in Jesus, and he wanted them to have confidence. And that's why the catechism starts the way it does, so that people would not be—

29. 10:15

    Michael Horton

    What is your only comfort in life and in death?

30. 10:17

    R. Scott Clark

    Yeah. You know, in Latin, it's consolation. In Dutch, it's troost. German, Dutch and German, it's troost. So comfort, consolation, trust. He really wanted them to know what gets you out of bed during the day and what allows you to go to sleep at night.

31. 10:33

    Michael Horton

    It's an interesting way for a catechism to begin, to really say everything.

32. 10:39

    R. Scott Clark

    That's right.

33. 10:40

    Michael Horton

    Summarize everything that the catechism is going to unfold in one question and answer.

34. 10:46

    R. Scott Clark

    Yeah, that's exactly right.

35. 10:48

    Michael Horton

    And comfort being the key.

36. 10:50

    R. Scott Clark

    Yeah, that's right. You know, life in the 16th century was hard. Thomas Hobbes said life without the state is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. And that's a pretty good description of life in the 16th century for most people. I mean, most people couldn't read. There's no healthcare. There are no analgesics, right? So there's no Neuprin or anything like that. Medical care is, you know, brutal for the most part.A lot of the times it involves bleeding, which is not great. So—

37. 11:22

    Michael Horton

    Go to your barber for surgery?

38. 11:24

    R. Scott Clark

    Exactly. You know, imagine going to the dentist and having all your dental work done without any pain relief, right? That was just life. And so life was really hard, and then you died. So what is the meaning of life? And the plague would come to town, and, you know, people would die, and people had to flee. So you know, we expect to live in air-conditioned comfort, at least in the West, most of the time. For most people in that period, life is a struggle. And the job that you were doing, you know, we say, you know, you should do something you love. Well, nobody has that choice. Almost nobody has that choice in the 16th century. In a sense, not even Frederick had that choice. So your decisions were largely made for you.

39. R. Scott Clark

    So it was important for him, to him, for people to know what is the core of your faith, you know, as you sort of struggle through life. And the core is that you belong body and soul, life and death, to Jesus. And no one or nothing can change that.

40. 12:31

    Michael Horton

    The second question, how can you live and die in this comfort? And it's essentially what is going to again be unfolded throughout: guilt, grace, and gratitude. I need to know the weight of my guilt, the goodness of God's grace, and what kind of gratitude comes out of that.

41. 12:54

    R. Scott Clark

    It's the book of Romans. I mean, they just gave a synopsis in one sentence of the book of Romans. And it's honestly, you know, I remember sketching that when I was teaching at a well-known evangelical college years ago, I just said, you know, one day, the Christian faith is guilt, grace, and gratitude. And I could see their minds being blown right there and then. And I think I just did, you know, extemporaneously 20 minutes laying out guilt, grace, and gratitude. I mean—

42. 13:26

    Michael Horton

    Why is that so important, that order, getting that order right?

43. 13:39

    R. Scott Clark

    Well, I mean, before you can appreciate grace, you've got to know your sin. And, you know, as the Catechism goes on to say, from where do you know your sin and misery? Out of the law of God. So you've got to get these fundamental categories in your mind, and you've got to know what you are. One of the first things Luther learned as he's becoming a Protestant is, no, we're not just a little sinful, we're really sinful. We're deeply corrupted by the fall. And so that grace, the grace that saves us, the grace that justifies us, the grace that preserves us, is truly unconditional. It's truly sovereign. It's truly powerful. It's truly efficacious. And it will never let me go. So that my Christian life isn't contingent on my performance. My salvation isn't contingent on my performance. These are essential Christian categories that had been, as you know well, had long been obscured before the Reformation. And the catechism captures them in that one, you know, in the second question and answer. And then what's the nature of the Christian life? It's not, I'll be okay if I do okay. It's, I'm seeking to obey, not in order to be saved, but because I've already been graciously, sovereignly, freely saved by Jesus.

44. 14:47

    Michael Horton

    You know, we're often told that this distinction between the law and the gospel is a Lutheran thing.

45. 14:53

    R. Scott Clark

    Yeah. I love that.

46. 14:56

    Michael Horton

    I do too.

47. 14:57

    R. Scott Clark

    That doesn't make my blood pressure rise at all.

48. 14:59

    Michael Horton

    No, not at all. Happily, it's dying down a little bit because I think people are reading.

49. 15:04

    R. Scott Clark

    We hope, yes.

50. 15:04

    Michael Horton

    Yeah. So that's good.

51. 15:06

    R. Scott Clark

    But if you still think that, it's not true.

52. 15:09

    Michael Horton

    Yeah.

53. 15:09

    R. Scott Clark

    This is a shared Reformation heritage. Right.

54. 15:12

    Michael Horton

    The first page of his commentary, his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, is, by the way, the whole message of Scripture is the law and the gospel.

55. 15:22

    R. Scott Clark

    Yeah, exactly. Ursinus says, you know, people say this catechism can be analyzed different ways. Well, let me tell you how it's supposed to be understood.

56. 15:32

    Michael Horton

    So maybe we should believe him. I don't know.

57. 15:33

    R. Scott Clark

    I mean, okay. And people will come back and say, well, the commentary is more complicated than that because there are multiple hands involved. And their student notes. All right, fair enough. But look at the stuff we know that he wrote without any editorial interference. And that's what he says. And Olivianus says, look, the whole book of Romans is about the law and the gospel. And he also says in his commentary on Galatians, the whole book of Galatians is about the distinction between law and gospel. So this is absolutely fundamental to the Reformation. Without it, you don't have a Reformation.

58. 16:03

    Michael Horton

    It's interesting too that the same people who say this is a Lutheran thing will say the third use of the law is a Reformed thing.

59. 16:12

    R. Scott Clark

    Yeah, which is crazy because Melanchthon invented the language tertius usus legis, the third use of the law. So no, I mean, Luther is battling the antinomians in the 1520s, and he's teaching the substance of the third use. And as I always—

60. 16:26

    Michael Horton

    Which again is the use for the Christian.

61. 16:29

    R. Scott Clark

    The use for the Christian, yeah, the norm of the Christian life. How do I live? And, well, I should love God and my neighbor. Well, what does that mean? And that's— so the law does not come in the third use to condemn us, even though, obviously, even when we're thinking of the use of the law in that sense, as we say in the Heidelberg, it still reminds us of our sins and in that sense drives us back to Christ. But obviously, now that we're in Christ, it doesn't condemn us anymore. And as Paul says, we're not under the law. We're not in the covenant of works anymore.

62. 16:58

    Michael Horton

    Speaking of covenant of works, Ursinus, where is he in the development of covenant theology? And how does it come out, especially in his Larger Catechism?

63. 17:09

    R. Scott Clark

    Yeah, he's pretty important. Now, there is some work being done that's just brand new on what's happening in Zurich. So caveat, I know it exists, and I have some idea of what's being said. And so the story is being revised a little bit. And it may be the case that there's more happening relative to the covenant of works in Zurich than I knew hitherto, but this is one of these many books that's on a stack to be read. You know all about that. Until, you know, essentially last week, I would have said that Ursinus is really pivotal. And I still think he's very important in the development of the covenant of works.

64. R. Scott Clark

    This idea that before the fall, God entered into a covenant with a sinless, perfect Adam as the representative of all humanity to say implicitly, obey and enter into a state of eternal blessedness, which, you know, the Heidelberg essentially says that we were not created fallen, we were created in righteousness and true holiness that we might rightly know God our Creator, heartily love him, and live with him in eternal blessedness. Ursinus called that the covenant of nature, and it comes to be called the covenant of works. And he says in his Larger Catechism—

65. 18:23

    Michael Horton

    People called it different things. Covenant of law, covenant of nature, covenant of works.

66. 18:28

    R. Scott Clark

    Law is the standard, works is the condition, nature is the place. So they're just different aspects of the same thing. And so he says in his catechism, when we say covenant of works, we mean the law. So he explicitly correlates the received universal Reformation distinction between law and gospel. He correlates those two categories with the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. And that's pretty basic. And so Heidelberg doesn't use technical language, but one of the things I wanted to do in the commentary was to help people see the connection between what we say in the Catechism, right, in a very popular way, with the sort of underlying subtext or the background. I drew heavily on the Compendium of Doctrine, which is the actual title of Ursinus's lectures. Which, you know, in the 19th century, we called it a commentary. Well, it kind of is, but he doesn't actually comment on every question in the catechism, which I thought might be helpful. But I drew heavily on the Compendium, and I tried to draw heavily on Olivianus, his exposition of the Creed, his Firm Foundation, and some of his commentaries.

67. 19:47

    Michael Horton

    Yeah. It's really hard to pick a winner when it comes to the question on justification in the Lutheran and Reformed catechisms. But man, it's hard to find anything that matches Question 60. Can you tell our folks what—

68. 20:08

    R. Scott Clark

    Yeah, I mean, Question 60 asks how you're right with God. And the answer begins, only by true faith in Jesus Christ, and goes on to explain the nature of justification. You know, that is by divine favor alone, on the basis of what Christ has done for us alone. And it ends, if only I accept such benefit with a believing heart. And it even acknowledges along the way the nature of our continuing struggle with sin. So it's very realistic. It's classically—

69. 20:37

    Michael Horton

    It's pastoral.

70. 20:37

    R. Scott Clark

    It's pastoral. It's classically Protestant. It's clear. It's encouraging. I mean, if you so what we used to do, we used to memorize the catechism. Children memorized it. And if you grew up with that stuff in your bones, you would know, you know, what the gospel is. If I tell a little story, I know of an older couple who had a minister who preached a pretty— what they regarded, and I think rightly so, as a pretty odd sermon. And all they really knew was the Heidelberg Catechism. And they knew the catechism, and they wrote to their elders and they said, we don't think that sermon agrees with the catechism. And they were right. They were exactly right. They had the catechism in their bones. And the short version of the story is they complained to their elders, and then they appealed to the regional gathering, and then they appealed to the international synod. And the synod said, you're right. And they did it on the basis of the Heidelberg Catechism. Because they knew what question 21 said. They know what 56 and 59 and 60 He said, and 114, 115. They knew all that. And that gave them the wherewithal to stand up. And they're the ones that gave us the impetus and really called us to account to speak up on the doctrine of justification at a crucial time in our history.

71. 22:01

    Michael Horton

    That’s great. And isn't it important to tell folks that they're hearing this language about on the basis of the catechism. And they're thinking, well, what about on the basis of the Bible? In our churches, we subscribe to the three forms of unity, including the Heidelberg Catechism, not insofar as it agrees with Scripture, but because it does. We don't have any business subscribing to anything but Scripture apart from it being scriptural, right?

72. 22:35

    R. Scott Clark

    So what we did in the catechism, and this is why In the commentary, I don't give proof texts because it's not that there's anything inherently wrong with them, but they are a little misleading because the answers are synthetic. We're gathering up a whole lot of Scripture and compressing them into a very short answer. So it's meant to be, as we say now, unpacked, explained. But if you look at the catechism and you pay close attention, It's biblical language, all— a lot of it throughout. It's not just a repetition of Scripture, and there's plenty of explanation of Scripture, but it's a synthesis of a great lot of scriptural teaching. So that's the beauty. It's not meant to compete with the Bible or to replace the Bible. J.I. Packer once said in my hearing in a class here, the Bible is a very big book. And that's right. And he was explaining why Calvin wrote the Institutes. But that's the same reason we wrote the catechism, was the Bible's a very big book, and it gives people a way to understand the scripture. This is what the Church says that scripture teaches.

73. 23:48

    Michael Horton

    Well, another thing I love about the Heidelberg Catechism and your exposition of it, you really highlight this aspect, is it's not only pastoral, but it's rich in piety. And I think that, you know, sometimes people who come out of Pietist backgrounds just bristle every time the P word is mentioned.

74. 24:10

    R. Scott Clark

    Yeah.

75. 24:10

    Michael Horton

    And I think you do a great job of showing the difference between Reformed piety and how is the Heidelberg Catechism especially an exhibit of the distinctiveness of Reformed piety.

76. 24:28

    R. Scott Clark

    So yeah, Pietism is not piety. I mean, those are two different things. Pietism was a sort of an inward turn to our experience. And it happened in the context of the state church. The very beginning stages actually start not too long after the publication of the Heidelberg Catechism. And now there's no connection between the two. And really, it begins primarily in the Lutheran state churches, and then sort of bleeds over into the Reformed churches. And so for a lot of Americans, Pietism represents a kind of legalism. You have to have this kind of experience, you need to have these kinds of disciplines, and it becomes kind of onerous and a quest.

77. 25:11

    Michael Horton

    If you do X, Y will result, kind of.

78. 25:15

    R. Scott Clark

    And it becomes a sort of seeking for a kind of religious experience. And if you don't have that quality of religious experience, you fail, right.And what I love about the Catechism is that it says implicitly, it's okay to be an ordinary Christian. You don't have to be a super Christian. You can love the Lord, you can love his people, you can love the Word, you can seek to die to self, live to Christ, and, you know, day by day. And here's what this looks like, here's what we believe, and here's how you live this out relative to God's moral expectations.

79. 25:51

    Michael Horton

    Yeah.

80. 28:10

    R. Scott Clark

    In the exposition of the law. And here's how you reflect this in your prayer life.

81. 25:56

    Michael Horton

    I love the balance, you might say, in its treatment of sanctification that I, you know, even the holiest in this life—

82. 26:08

    R. Scott Clark

    Have only a beginning.

83. 26:09

    Michael Horton

    Have only a beginning of the holiness that God requires. And so, in one sense, okay, that's a relief to to Christians who really are believers, that is a relief.

84. 26:22

    R. Scott Clark

    Especially for people with sensitive consciences. Yeah.

85. 26:24

    Michael Horton

    Yeah. But then it goes on to say, so we don't take that for license.

86. 26:29

    R. Scott Clark

    That's right.

87. 26:30

    Michael Horton

    But everybody who believes and trips and falls and yada, yada, yada, every one of us, despite that, is making a beginning in that holiness that God requires.

88. 26:46

    R. Scott Clark

    I mean, it's very clear that God is sanctifying us. And that's something on which you've been very, very helpful, is that, you know, sanctification is monergistic. It has results, right? And that's certainly true. And we are seeking to put to death the old man and be made alive in the new, but it's God who is doing that in us. And that's a huge comfort and relief. And then, as you know, you get to the end of the Catechism, the last section is on prayer. And that's, in a sense, It's the central place where that has worked out.

89. 27:22

    Michael Horton

    And so beautiful, the treatment of the Lord's Prayer.

90. 27:25

    R. Scott Clark

    You know, there are traditions, as you know, where you're not supposed to pray the Lord's Prayer because it's not for today. And the Heidelberg is a very classic, traditional Christian document in which it says, no, Jesus gave us the Lord's Prayer because he wanted us to use it, not because—

91. 27:40

    Michael Horton

    When you pray, pray like this.

92. 27:43

    R. Scott Clark

    When you get to the right place in the eschatological scheme, pray like this. No, Christians pray like this. And then we explain what that means. What does it mean to say, Our Father, who art in heaven, and so forth? And so it's eminently practical in that way. It's a great guide. You know, it's a wonderful place in which to do your devotions. You say, I just don't know what to do for devotions today. Well, the Catechism has a plan for your life.

93. 28:09

    Michael Horton

    Right.

94. 28:10

    R. Scott Clark

    There's something you could do every day.

95. 28:12

    Michael Horton

    And the fatherhood of God is— so as you bring up prayer, the fatherhood of God suffuses the catechism. He can take care of me because he's Almighty. He will take care of me, wants to take care of me because he's a loving Father. It's just—

96. 28:29

    R. Scott Clark

    He's favorable to you. You know, if we could— I think a lot of the Christian life is becoming convinced that God is not against you, right. And that he's favorable to you in Christ, that you are united to Christ. And he did that. He raised you from death to life. He united you to Christ. He's put his Holy Spirit in you. And he is in the process of conforming you to Christ. That's really happening. And, you know, as you read the catechism, you get the sense that you don't measure your sanctification on the basis of your experience. You measure your sanctification on the basis of the divine promises, which the catechism does a wonderful job of summarizing for you.

97. 29:11

    Michael Horton

    Yeah. Another question that comes up is a lot of people think that being Reformed means the TULIP: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints. And so if you're a 5-point Calvinist, that's what it means to be Reformed. And I often tell people, well, actually, that's the Canons of Dort that addresses that. Heidelberg and Belgic don't really talk about election predestination. It's assumed.

98. 29:45

    R. Scott Clark

    It's there, but it's not in the forefront, right? Because when the catechism was written, you know, the bondage of the will, which we're remembering this year, was a given. Right? All the Reformation churches, the Lutheran and the Reformed, Anglicans, we all said, hey, we're with Luther on the bondage of the will.

99. 30:08

    Michael Horton

    And unconditional election.

100. 30:09

     R. Scott Clark

     Which is, you know, that's a basic part of the Reformation. So the catechism assumes that largely, it hints at it. But when you look at Ursinus' lectures, he makes it clear, yeah, when we said you know, this, we meant that, right? You can't say what we say about providence without divine sovereignty. You can't say that God will never, in effect, turn loose of me in question one without divine sovereignty. So, it's always one of the, if you will, the supporting cast members to everything that's being said.

101. 30:48

     Michael Horton

     But what's great is the Catechism doesn't do all that work behind the scenes, if you will, because it's for children mainly. And they get the drift of the Christian faith. And then they could go hear his lectures or read his lectures or—

102. 31:07

     R. Scott Clark

     And the ministers were preaching this, right, on Sunday evenings?

103. 31:10

     Michael Horton

     Yeah.

104. 31:10

     R. Scott Clark

     You know, this is not anything that we invented, right?

105. 31:16

     Michael Horton

     No, it goes back to the early church.

106. 31:18

     R. Scott Clark

     We didn't write— there were no mean-spirited, narrow-minded Reformed guys writing the Apostles' Creed, right? We say, I believe in God the Father, semi-competent? No, omnipotent.

107. 31:32

     Michael Horton

     Yeah.

108. 31:34

     R. Scott Clark

     Almighty. So the idea that God is sovereign and that God elects, well, that's in the Apostolic Fathers. They regularly talk about election, not at great length, but it's very clear that salvation is by grace, and God is sovereign, and he freely chooses. And this isn't a disputed thing. I mean, look, Thomas Aquinas, nobody's clearer about unconditional election or reprobation than Thomas Aquinas.

109. 31:59

     Michael Horton

     Perseverance of the saints.

110. 31:59

     R. Scott Clark

     So, exactly. So however shocking it might be in our culture to people such as I, and I think you, you know, young Christians maybe, or have you been raised in a sort of Arminian remonstrate culture, some of this might sound a little bit shocking. It was to me when I ran into it. But that only shows how far we've drifted from really just basic Christianity.

111. 32:25

     Michael Horton

     I think if people have only encountered, you know, broad evangelicals or anybody else has only encountered a kind of mean, cocky, self-satisfied, self-confident, arrogant Calvinist, they should read the Heidelberg Catechism. Truly pastoral, but it's also a fulsome statement of what it means to be Reformed. Not this online guy or whatever.

112. 32:57

     R. Scott Clark

     That's what I was thinking. So the weirdo anonymous, quote unquote, “Reformed” guy who may not even be a part of an actual church, right? He doesn't get to define Reformed Christianity. And I'm sorry for your bad experience. I've had them too. So yeah, the Heidelberg and the Belgic and the Canons. And, you know, a lot of what is in the Heidelberg is just Augustine, really, in many ways. And certainly in the Belgic, and most especially in the Canons, the people who did the Canons at the Synod of Dort, as far as they knew, they were defending two things, essentially Augustine against Pelagius and the Reformation against sort of anti-Reformation theology.

113. 33:39

     Michael Horton

     It seems that this was generally true of both Lutherans and Reformed, and certainly of Ursinus, that they always had one eye on Rome and another eye on the Anabaptists.

114. 33:54

     R. Scott Clark

     Yes.

115. 33:55

     Michael Horton

     And there's like one mention of election under the church, but I forget how many, 12 questions on the sacraments?

116. 34:08

     R. Scott Clark

     Yeah, could be. I haven't counted them, so I'll take your word for it. They said there'd be no math for this interview.

117. 34:14

     Michael Horton

     But today, being Reformed is only about election. It has nothing to do with church and sacraments. Talk about that, because that's a concern that you have in this book, to just say, look, come and read. Come and see.

118. 34:29

     R. Scott Clark

     Tolle lege. Take and read. There's a lot more to being Reformed. I mean, soteriology is absolutely essential, right?

119. 34:37

     Michael Horton

     Doctrine of salvation.

120. 34:39

     R. Scott Clark

     It's so essential that without it, there's no Reformation. But for all the Protestants, the faith continues all the way into church and sacraments, and even in some ways implicitly into eschatology. But we spend probably a lot more time— I mean, as far as Calvin and the Reformed knew, they agreed almost entirely with the Lutherans on soteriology, on most things most of the time. time. Law and gospel, justification, sanctification.

121. 35:06

     Michael Horton

     And actually agreed more with Rome than the Anabaptists on doctrine of salvation.

122. 35:11

     R. Scott Clark

     That's right. No, that's right. The outliers, ultimately the Reformers positioned themselves in a sense with Rome against the Anabaptists because they were social disruptors, ecclesiastical disruptors, and they represented—

123. 35:24

     Michael Horton

     And Pelagians.

124. 35:25

     R. Scott Clark

     And Pelagians. People shouldn't think that the Anabaptists were just like us, with a few minor differences. No, they weren't with the Reformation at all. They weren't with the Reformation on soteriology, on law and gospel, you know, sola fide.

125. 35:41

     Michael Horton

     They opposed the doctrine of justification.

126. 35:43

     R. Scott Clark

     Exactly. They agreed with Rome that if you say you're justified by grace alone through faith alone, that will lead to licentiousness. You can't say that. So the Reformed, yeah, always when they write and when they confess, they always confess against two groups. Typically, we confess against Rome on these things, and we confess against the Anabaptists on—

127. 36:03

     Michael Horton

     It's like Calvin to Cardinal Sadoleto, “Your Eminence, we are assailed by two sects, the Pope and the Anabaptists.”

128. 36:11

     R. Scott Clark

     Exactly. No, that's right.

129. 36:12

     Michael Horton

     That was a spunky thing to say to a cardinal.

130. 36:16

     R. Scott Clark

     Well, I mean, I always tell my students, this is hyperbole, and I tell them this is hyperbole, but if you really want to understand Roman Catholicism, You mustn't impute it, no pun intended, to the ancient church or even to the medieval church. Rome as we know it is a 16th century Italian sect, right?

131. 36:33

     Michael Horton

     Invented at the Council of Trent, different from what it was before the Council of Trent.

132. 36:37

     R. Scott Clark

     I mean, a lot of things, there are some things that developed prior to Trent, but Trent really is the, in some ways, the final nail for what becomes Roman Catholicism. So there's like the seven sacraments. That isn't formally a thing in the Western Church until, well, you could say Fourth Lateran in the early 13th century, but really it's not made explicit until Second Lyon in 1274. So that's really late. I don't know anybody who's talking about seven sacraments in the ninth century. There's a big argument among some monks about election and the Lord's Supper and the Trinity and some other things. But when they're arguing about the nature of the supper, they agree. They both say explicitly, there are only two sacraments.

133. 37:26

     Michael Horton

     Last question. What would you like to see? What would success be for this book?

134. 37:32

     R. Scott Clark

     You know, that's a really interesting question. I don't know that I've actually—this is one of these things that I feel like I should have answered for the publisher.

135. 37:41

     Michael Horton

     The house on the lake?

136. 37:44

     R. Scott Clark

     Yeah, sure. Yeah, exactly. I would love it if this book stimulated people to take up the Catechism for themselves and to use the Catechism. And whether it's in Christian instruction or whether it's in the evening sermon or, you know, whether it's mom and dad teaching their children the faith, if, you know, whether it's catechism teachers strengthening their own grasp of the faith, you know, if it does those kinds of things, if it helps—so if it helps preachers, helps elders, helps catechism teachers, helps Christians, that would be great. I don't think I tried to do anything in this book that was new or novel. I just tried to paint as full a picture of the setting of the catechism and its broader context, in its immediate context, and then what it implies for us relative to some of the questions we're facing. And that's all I really tried to do.