Theopedia

Helvetic Consensus Formula

Definition

The Helvetic Consensus Formula is a 1675 confessional statement of the Reformed churches of Switzerland, composed by John Henry Heidegger of Zurich together with Francis Turretin of Geneva and Lucas Gernler of Basle.1 Its full title, “Form of Agreement of the Helvetic Reformed Churches Respecting the Doctrine of Universal Grace, the Doctrines Connected Therewith, and Some Canons,” names its target: a modified Calvinism taught at the French Reformed academy of Saumur by Moses Amyraut, Josué de la Place, and Jean Daillé.1 Nearly all the Swiss churches subscribed it, but it lost public confessional authority in 1722.2

Historical Development

The controversy the Formula answers predates it by decades. Johannes Piscator denied that Christ’s active obedience to the law, as distinct from his suffering, could be imputed to believers for their justification; French Reformed synods judicially repudiated this view in 1603, again at La Rochelle in 1607, and again in 1612 and 1613.3 A second and larger dispute grew out of the academy at Saumur. Moses Amyraut taught that God’s motive in sending Christ was a general benevolence toward the whole human race, that Christ’s death made salvation possible for all on the hypothetical condition of faith, and that God then gave efficacious grace to a definite number to secure their actual salvation, a scheme Charles Hodge summarizes as “universalismus hypotheticus.”4 From the same school, Josué de la Place argued that Adam’s first sin is not imputed to his descendants directly, but only mediately, through the corrupt nature each person inherits from him, a distinction A. A. Hodge notes “never emerged till the time of Placaeus.”5

The Swiss churches answered all three departures at once. Heidegger, assisted by Turretin and Gernler, composed the Formula at Zurich in 1675, and it took a clear position against Piscator’s own view as well: Charles Hodge writes that “the Swiss churches in the ‘Formula Consensus Helvetica,’ which received symbolical authority in Switzerland, pronounced clearly in favour of the old doctrine” of imputed active obedience.3 The Formula circulated and was subscribed throughout Switzerland, but its authority proved short-lived by confessional standards: it “ceased to have public authority as a Confession since A. D. 1722.”2

Content of the Formula

The Formula’s twenty-six canons address three distinct controversies.

Scripture and the Hebrew Text

The opening canons defend the verbal inspiration and providential preservation of the biblical text, extending the claim further than most Reformed confessions do:

The Hebrew Original of the Old Testament, which we have received and to this day do retain as handed down by the Jewish Church, unto whom formerly “were committed the oracles of God” (Rom. iii. 2), is, not only in its consonants, but in its vowels, either the vowel points themselves or at least the power of the points, not only in its matter, but in its words, inspired of God, thus forming, together with the Original of the New Testament, the sole and complete rule of our faith and life.6

The following canon rejects emending the Hebrew text against readings found in the Greek Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, or the Chaldee Targums.7

The Covenant of Works and the Imputation of Adam’s Sin

The Formula states the covenant of works plainly: God, having made Adam “upright, wise, and just,” then “put him under the Covenant of Works, and in this Covenant freely promised him communion with God, favor, and life, if indeed he acted in obedience to His will.”8 It further insists the promised reward was heavenly, not merely earthly, life, against those who “do not admit that the promise of the Covenant of Works was any thing more than a promise of perpetual life… in an earthly Paradise.”9

The Formula’s twelfth canon rejects mediate imputation directly, without naming Placeus:

We can not, without harm to Divine truth, give assent to those who deny that Adam represented his posterity by appointment of God, and that his sin is imputed, therefore, immediately to his posterity; and under the term imputation mediate and consequent not only destroy the imputation of the first sin, but also expose the doctrine of hereditary corruption to great danger.10

Turretin’s own resolution of the underlying question, quoted by A. A. Hodge, distinguishes two senses of imputation rather than rejecting mediate language outright: the privation of original righteousness is imputed immediately, as its direct effect, while temporal and eternal death “may be said to be mediately imputed, because we are not obnoxious to that, unless after we are born and corrupt.”11 The Formula’s own canon, by contrast, treats “immediate” and “mediate” as rival accounts of the same imputation and sides with the former.10

Hypothetical Universal Grace and Definite Atonement

The Formula names the position it rejects with some precision:

We can not give suffrage to the opinion of those who teach: (1) that God, moved by philanthropy, or a sort of special love for the fallen human race, to previous election, did, in a kind of conditioned willing… purpose the salvation of all and each, at least, conditionally, i.e., if they would believe; (2) that He appointed Christ Mediator for all and each of the fallen; and (3) that, at length, certain ones whom He regarded, not simply as sinners in the first Adam, but as redeemed in the second Adam, He elected.12

It then states definite atonement in equally direct terms, answering the Amyraldian position without naming it:

We can not approve the contrary doctrine of those who affirm that… of His own intention, by His own counsel and that of the Father who sent Him, Christ died for all and each upon the impossible condition, provided they believe; that He obtained for all a salvation, which, nevertheless, is not applied to all… All these opinions, and all that are like these, are contrary to the plain Scriptures and the glory of Christ.13

Comparison with the 1689 LBCF

Theopedia’s confessional standard, the 1689 London Baptist Confession, agrees with the Formula on the substance of both major disputes it addresses. On Scripture, the 1689 states that the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament, “being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentic,” the same providential-preservation claim the Formula’s opening canons make.14 The 1689 stops short of the Formula’s further claim about the inspiration of the Hebrew vowel points themselves. On imputation, the 1689 agrees with the Formula’s immediate-imputation canon against Placeus: Adam and Eve, “being the root… of all mankind, the guilt of the sin was imputed, and corrupted nature conveyed, to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.”15

The clearest point of difference is terminological rather than doctrinal. Where the Formula states the pre-fall arrangement with Adam explicitly as a “Covenant of Works,”8 the 1689’s own chapter on the fall and the covenant of grace omits that term, introducing the covenant of grace instead with “man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall.” Samuel Waldron notes that the 1689 “removes the reference to the covenant of works” found in the Westminster Confession and Savoy Declaration at this point, but observes that the confession retains the term elsewhere (19.6, 20.1), which he argues means the omission cannot simply be explained as discomfort with the concept itself.16

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), 656. ↩ ↩2

  2. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 127-28. ↩ ↩2

  3. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Volume III: Chapter XVII, Justification (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 183-84. ↩ ↩2

  4. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Volume II: Chapter I, The Plan of Salvation (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 319-20. ↩

  5. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 360-61. ↩

  6. Formula Consensus Helvetica (1675), canon 2, in Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 656-57. ↩

  7. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, canon 3, 657. ↩

  8. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, canon 7, 658. ↩ ↩2

  9. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, canon 9, 658. ↩

  10. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, canon 12, 658-59. ↩ ↩2

  11. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 360, quoting Francis Turretin, Institutio Theologiae Elencticae, Locus 9, Question 9, sec. 14. ↩

  12. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, canon 6, 657-58. ↩

  13. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, canon 16, 660. ↩

  14. Second London Baptist Confession (1677), 1.8. ↩

  15. Second London Baptist Confession, 6.3. ↩

  16. Samuel Eldon Waldron, Faith, Obedience, and Justification: Current Evangelical Departures from Sola Fide (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005), 134, note 150. ↩