The Three Forms of Unity

The Westminster Standards are the confessional documents of the English-speaking Presbyterian churches. The Three Forms of Unity are their counterpart on the European continent. These three documents, the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort, are the doctrinal standards of the Reformed churches of the Netherlands and Germany. They were written between 1561 and 1619, and the same Reformed faith runs through all three. Each one came out of a different pressure: teaching the young, confessing under threat of death, and settling a fight over the nature of grace.

Where the three came from

The Belgic Confession (1561) is the oldest of the three. Guido de Bres wrote it in the Low Countries while the Reformed there were being hunted by Catholic rulers. He meant it partly as a defense: a statement handed to the authorities to show that the Reformed were not rebels or anarchists but Christians who believed the Scriptures and meant to live as peaceful subjects. A copy was thrown over the wall of the castle at Tournai, sent to the authorities with a petition addressed to King Philip II of Spain. It did not spare its author. De Bres was captured and hanged in 1567.

The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) was written in the Palatinate, in Germany, at the request of Elector Frederick III. He wanted a catechism to teach the young, to guide the preachers, and to bring unity to his territory amid the disputes between Lutheran and Reformed parties. It pursues that unity without softening its doctrine: it teaches the Reformed faith plainly. It is the most personal of the Reformed confessions. It speaks to the reader directly as “you,” and it is built in three movements: guilt, grace, and gratitude. It begins not with a doctrine but with a question put to the reader:

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death? A. That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

The Canons of Dort (1618-1619) came last and out of conflict. After the death of the Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius, his followers, the Remonstrants, pressed the view that God’s choice of who would be saved rested finally on foreseen faith, on something God saw the person would do. Critics answered that this made faith itself a kind of work and made salvation depend, at the last, on the sinner rather than on God. To settle the matter, the Reformed churches called an international synod at Dordrecht. Delegates came from England, the Palatinate, Switzerland, and elsewhere. Its rulings became the Canons of Dort.

What they confess

Each document carries its own weight. The Belgic Confession sets out the authority of Scripture, the being of God, and the marks of the true church, the things by which a real church can be told from a false one. The Heidelberg Catechism walks a believer through the whole of the faith under those three headings of guilt, grace, and gratitude, so that doctrine is never far from the comfort it is meant to give.

The Canons of Dort answer the Remonstrants point by point. Their verdict is that salvation is the work of God from first to last. God chooses his people not because of anything he foresees in them but out of his own mercy; Christ’s death is of infinite worth, more than enough for the whole world, and it surely accomplishes what God sent it to do for his people; the Spirit brings the dead to life; and God keeps his people to the end.

The five heads of Dort are often summarized today by the English word TULIP. It is worth knowing that the acronym is a later convenience for English readers, not the synod’s own order or language. The Canons themselves are pastoral as much as they are precise. They were written to comfort God’s people with the certainty that their salvation does not finally hang on the strength of their own grip.

How this compares with much of what is common today

A common assumption now is that salvation finally turns on a person’s own decision, and a great deal of teaching is aimed at felt needs and immediate results. The Reformed churches looked at the same Scriptures and concluded that grace goes all the way down. If any part of salvation rested on the sinner, then no one could be sure of it. Because it rests on God, it holds.

The Heidelberg shows the same instinct from a different angle. It opens with comfort rather than performance. Before it asks anything of the reader, it tells him whose he is. That order is deliberate. The faith these documents confess starts with what God has done, and the response of the believer follows from it.

Why this matters at MRC

Midland Reformed Church is a Presbyterian congregation; our own confessional basis is the Westminster Standards. But we belong to the Vanguard Presbyterian Church, a body with room for the churches that hold the Three Forms of Unity, and we confess the same grace they confess. We stand with those churches gladly. These documents are part of why we can tell a sinner, plainly, that the whole of salvation is God’s gift and not his own achievement.

If you want to read one of the three, start with the Heidelberg Catechism. It is short, plainly written, and built to be read a little at a time. From there the Belgic Confession and the Canons of Dort fill in the rest. All three are linked below.