The Dordrecht Confession of Faith
Dordrecht, the Netherlands · adopted April 21, 1632, and signed by fifty-one Flemish and Frisian preachers · eighteen articles · the principal confession of the Mennonites.
Fifteen years separate this confession from the Westminster Confession of Faith. They are the two most influential Protestant confessions of the seventeenth century in the English-speaking world, they were written by men who both claimed the authority of Scripture alone, and they have almost nothing in common structurally.
Setting them side by side is the quickest way to see what the radical Reformation actually was — not a more thorough version of the magisterial Reformation, but a different kind of project altogether.
Three Dordrechts. This confession is Mennonite. It has no connection to the National Synod of Dordrecht of 1578, which produced the Dutch Reformed church order, or to the Synod of Dort of 1618–1619, which produced the Canons. The city simply hosted a great many assemblies.
What It Is
The Dutch Mennonites had spent decades fracturing — Flemish against Frisian, and both against the Old Flemish — largely over how strictly discipline and shunning should be applied. The confession was drafted by Adriaan Cornelisz, elder of the Flemish congregation at Dordrecht, as a basis of union, and it worked. Its eighteen articles were adopted on April 21, 1632, and signed by fifty-one preachers.
It moves through creation, the fall, the promise, the incarnation, the gospel, repentance, baptism, the church and its offices, the Lord's Supper, the washing of the saints' feet, marriage, civil government, revenge, the swearing of oaths, church discipline, the shunning of the separated, and the resurrection.
Notice how much of that list concerns practice rather than doctrine.
Set Beside Westminster
Shape. Dordrecht has eighteen articles and runs to a few thousand words. Westminster has thirty-three chapters and is a compact system of divinity. Dordrecht narrates the story of redemption and then describes how a congregation lives; Westminster analyzes doctrine under topical heads.
Baptism. Westminster 28 administers the sign to believers and their infants, on the ground that the covenant promise runs to households. Dordrecht 7 admits only those who can hear, believe, and request it for themselves.
The Lord's Supper. Westminster 29 teaches that believers really and truly, though spiritually, feed upon Christ by faith. Dordrecht 10 treats the Supper as a memorial of Christ's death and a sign of the communion of the body.
The magistrate. Westminster 23 holds civil office to be a lawful calling for Christians, who may wage just war. Dordrecht 13 honors magistrates, prays for them, and pays taxes, while Article 14 forbids the believer to take revenge or use the sword at all.
Oaths. Westminster devotes a whole chapter, 22, to defending lawful swearing. Dordrecht 15 forbids oaths outright.
Discipline. Both require it. Dordrecht goes further in Article 17, requiring that the excommunicated be shunned in eating, drinking, and ordinary intercourse.
Footwashing. Dordrecht 11 makes the washing of the saints' feet an ordinance Christ instituted and commanded.
What Is Not There
The differences above are real, but they are not the deep one. The deep one is visible only in what Dordrecht never takes up.
There is no article on the decree of God, and none on election or reprobation. There is no doctrine of covenants. There is no chapter on Scripture — its authority, canon, and sufficiency are assumed rather than argued. There is nothing on effectual calling, nothing on the perseverance of the saints, nothing on assurance, and no ordo salutis of any kind. Westminster gives a chapter or more to every one of these.
Its Impact
Alsatian Mennonites adopted it at Ohnenheim on February 4, 1660, and the Palatinate and North German Mennonites followed. The Swiss Mennonites never accepted it, probably because of the shunning required in Article 17 — which the Swiss Amish practiced and the Swiss Mennonites did not. That article was at the center of the division that produced the Amish in the 1690s, and it remains in force among them.
In 1725 sixteen ministers of southeastern Pennsylvania, under the influence of the Dutch Mennonites at Germantown, signed a statement adopting it. It is still the official doctrinal summary of a number of conservative Anabaptist bodies in North America — making it, nearly four centuries on, one of the few seventeenth-century confessions still governing the practice of living congregations without revision.
