When most people think of the Reformed confession of the Christian faith they probably think about predestination. This is the minimalist definition that is often used. When evangelicals say, “I’m Reformed” what they often mean is, “I’ve adopted the doctrine of election” (and perhaps reprobation). One hardly gets the impression from the self-described Young, Restless, and Reformed movement that what animates their new enthusiasm for Reformed theology is its Christology (e.g., the so-called extra Calvinisticum) or its doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. Those who take a slightly more expansive view of the Reformed confession might think of substitutionary atonement or other aspects of the doctrine of salvation (soteriology). Certainly the doctrine of the church (e.g., the three-offices of Christ and its reflection in the offices of the church) is remote from their view Remarkably, however, here we are at question and answer 24 of the Heidelberg Catechism and though we have spent considerable time already on aspects of the doctrine of salvation and the catechism certainly teaches a doctrine of divine sovereignty implicitly we haven’t really seen much of what many outside the Reformed churches have considered our “central doctrine” explicitly. This is, of course, because the Reformed faith has no “central dogma” (Zentraldogma) from which everything else is deduced.

The catechism has distinguished between law and gospel, explain our fall into sin and depravity, the uses of the law, the federal headship of Adam and Christ, his substitutionary atonement, and the nature of true faith. The structure within which all these doctrines fall, however, is not the doctrine of predestination. Contrary to the frequent caricature of the Reformed confession, nowhere in the catechism does is the system of Christian teaching deduced from the doctrine of predestination.

Instead, the doctrine that structures the teaching of the catechism is the catholic (universal) doctrine of the Trinity:

24. How are these Articles divided?

Into three parts: the first is of God the Father and our creation; the second of God the Son and our redemption; the third, of God the Holy Spirit and our sanctification.

We have established that there are three parts of the Heidelberg Catechism. This is clear in Q/A 2. Believers must know three things: the greatness of our sin and misery (law), how we are redeemed from all our sins and misery (gospel), and how we are to be thankful for such redemption (sanctification). We know this is the correct interpretation because this is how Zacharias Ursinus, the principal author of the catechism and its authorized expositor, intended the catechism to be understood. This is how he explained the catechism in his lectures, published as the Corpus Doctrinae. Now, however, the catechism adds a correlate structure. The teaching of the Christian faith is organized according to the economic Trinity: the Father as Creator and sustainer, the Son as Redeemer, and the Spirit as sanctifier.

To be sure, the acts that the Holy Trinity works ad extra, i.e., with respect to creation and redemption, are Trinitarian acts. Nevertheless, we may also speak and think of the Trinity in administrative or economic categories. Thus, in broad terms, we are entitled to think of the Father as Creator and sustainer, the Son as Redeemer, and the Spirit as sanctifier without saying or thinking that the other Trinitarian persons are absent in those works.

The Christian Faith is a Trinitarian faith. That doctrine is as fundamental as any of our doctrines and it has a unique role in that it also structures the way we think about and explain the faith. For example, Christology is also a catholic (universal) doctrine clearly confessed in the most ancient ecumenical creeds but it does not structure the way we teach the faith in the way that the doctrine of the Trinity does. The Apostles’ Creed and Nicene-Constantinopolitan (381) Creed are Trinitarian in structure. The Athanasian Creed is bipartite: Trinity and Christology. The Definition of Chalcedon (451) is focused on Christology.

The doctrine of the Trinity is essential to the Christian faith and fundamental. That is why the Athanasian Creed twice says, “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith….” The first half of the Athanasian summarizes the doctrine of the Trinity. According to the catholic (universal) Christian faith, “He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.” So, when we teach the faith, we teach the catholic, Trinitarian faith. WE do not begin with a generic doctrine of God and append the Trinity to it or at least we should not proceed that way. When we engage other religions (e.g., Islam, Judaism, and Mormonism), the Trinity is essential to that faith we are defending. If it is marginalized in our confrontation with them, then we are defending something other than Christianity. If evangelicals reach agreements with Mormons without Mormon repentance of their heretical doctrine of God, then those agreements are worthless. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not esoteric. It is not for elites or the illuminati. Christians, ministers and laity alike, are meant to know this doctrine and teachers and ministers are meant to teach and preach it.

The Creed is in three parts. The Christian faith is in three parts and thus, the Heidelberg Catechism is in three parts. The temptation is to downplay one part or the other. Our Young, Restless, and Reformed friends are excited about the sovereignty and glory of God and the substitutionary atonement, and those are good things but insofar as they are mainly Edwardseans they don’t have much time for our theology of the cross or our doctrine of that, in the Supper, we are fed by the “proper and natural body, and the proper blood of Christ” (Belgic Confession, Art 35) or our doctrine that God is to be worshipped only in the way he has revealed and not according to what thrills us. They usually tend to a theology of glory. This is especially true of so-called “Christian Hedonism,” which is about as remote from the eschatology and ethos of Calvin and Luther as one can get and still have them anywhere in view. Clearly the mainline Reformed churches (and increasingly in the borderline churches) the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God (“I believe in God the Father almighty“) is a little embarrassing and hard to square with feminist egalitarianism. In some segments of the evangelical and Reformed worlds, there are moves to downplay the uniqueness of Christ’s life and death or to marginalize the teaching of the Synod of Dort regarding the atonement. In the 19th century there was an idiosyncratic movement that influenced both Karl Barth (d. 1968) and some very conservative German Reformed pastors (as well as some in the Netherlands) initiated by Herman Kohlbrugge (1803–75) that emphasized a purely forensic doctrine of sanctification. His followers in North America tended to downplay or ignore the third part of the catechism and were suspicious of the historic Reformed doctrine of progressive sanctification.

The confession of the Reformed churches, however, is a catholic confession. It has a doctrine of creation (which is less interested in the length of the creation days than it is in the Creator/creature distinction), redemption, and sanctification. It isn’t idiosyncratic. It isn’t novel. Strangely, that’s what makes it stand out today: its enduring   trinitarian character. The early church would understand our catechism much more than they would understand the  quest for an immediate encounter with God. In a sense, all that we have done thus far in the catechism is prologue. Now we have come to the exposition of the faith proper: The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. There are not three Gods but one (and, contra some bizarre quite modern revisions, not one person but three). Each of them has a distinct (but not absolutely so) role in the outworking of creation, redemption, and glorification. Our faith is not lopsided. It’s just catholic Christian teaching as construed by the Reformation in light of our renewed appreciation for Scripture and the history of redemption (covenant theology).