The OPC’s New Modern Version of the Westminster Standards

I’ve written before about the EPC’s modern language edition of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and noted several years ago that the OPC had in 2018 created a study to modernize all of the Standards. Well, the OPC finally finished this work — in summer 2025! The OPC never does anything quickly. True presbyterians are they.

The OPC had previously in 1993 published a modern language, study version of the Westminster Confession, and I had thought that perhaps this new effort would change their actual constitutional documents. The changes were limited to morphological adjustments, replacing archaic pronouns, replacing obsolete and/or archaic words, substituting a modern translation of the Scriptures for the text of the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, and doing all in a way that preserved the cadence, memorability and dignified style of the standards. Like the previous study version, these are very conservative changes that don’t touch the substance of the Standards’ grammar, much less its doctrine. My hope was that if the OPC formally made such a modernized constitutional change, that not only would there be a new, solid modern language version (rather than a modernized version that also lowers the reading level of the documents, as in the EPC), but also something could be pointed to as a future constitutional option for the EPC and other churches. Such an update could be a solid ecumenical foundation for modernized confessionalism. If the conservative OPC did it, why not us?

Alas, the OPC kept these updates purely in the role of “study versions”. The 2025 versions of the Confession and Catechisms can be found here, along with the older 1993 version of the Confession and documents that compare the 2025 editions to the OPC’s constitutional edits. The 2025 edition of the Confession is very close to the 1993 edition, with one notable exception (h/t to Howard Quach for bringing this to my attention). Of God’s Covenant with Man, 7.1 says in the original “yet they could never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward”, which the 1993 edition changed to “yet they could never experience any enjoyment of him as their blessing and reward”. This was reverted back to the original in the 2025 edition; fruition is a technical theological term from Augustine that hones in on ultimate enjoyment. Simply replacing fruition with a modernized synonym is an insufficient translation. I missed this in my assessment of the EPC’s modern language version, which reads “they nonetheless could never realize any blessedness or reward from him”, which is closer to fruition, but still a different meaning, loses the inherent idea of enjoyment embedded in fruition, and shifts God from being the object of blessing to the dispenser of blessing. Fruition is also used in WLC 90 about the righteous on the day of judgment, “but especially in the immediate vision and fruition of God the Father”, which is maintained in the OPC’s 2025 version. Here the EPC has “particularly blessed in the visual presence and enjoyment of God the Father” which is better than in the Confession by its inclusion of enjoyment, though visual here is probably not the most helpful translation of immediate, especially regarding the beatific vision.

Other notable changes or comments in the OPC’s 2025 versions include,

• Of God’s Covenant with Man, 7.6, this original line “Under the gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited” is not only updated but has this new, explanatory footnote added: “In the new testament, Christ is set forth, who is the substance of the covenant of grace, which is more fully dispensed through the Word and sacraments.” Evidently, modernizing the sentence was insufficient to be grammatically clear, and so additional commentary, but still kept outside the confessional text, was warranted. This footnote was also included in WLC 35.
• Of Adoption, 12.1, “vouchsafeth” became “graciously guarantees”. I’m not sure where “graciously” comes from.
• Of the Sacraments 27.3 & 27.5 and Of Baptism 28.6 have this footnote added to the term “exhibited”: “The word exhibit suggests that the grace signified and sealed by the elements of the sacrament is truly communicated and applied to worshippers who partake of them by faith.” It’s strange that they used the British spelling of “worshipers” for the modern (American) English version. This footnote was also included in WLC 163.
• The Catechisms had the language of “estate” changed to “state” (e.g. “The fall brought mankind into a state of sin and misery”).
• An odd choice is WLC 131, “What are the duties of equals?” taught in the fifth commandment. The original says that the duty of equals consists “in giving honor to go one before another” while the modernized version says “in honoring and preferring one another”. This answer is trying to communicate that you should place the interest of others before your own (the EPC’s version here says “honoring each other above themselves”) but “and preferring” instead communicates two separate actions (the honoring and then the preferring) and the terminology of preference indicates favoritism of an equal’s peer above other parties, not a preference for the peer above oneself.
• A wrong choice is in WLC 138 on the seventh commandment, where “the gift of continency” is updated to “the gift of celibacy”. Continency in 17th-century English is about self-restraint and self-control, typically applied to sexual urges. This is a rare example where the EPC’s version is superior in translating the force of the original, “Those who cannot control their sexual desires”. Theologically, continence and celibacy are different things and the OPC missed it here.
• WLC 139 updated the notorious example “keeping of stews” to the far more intelligible “tolerating prostitution”.
• WLC 163 and WSC 92 on the parts of the sacraments includes this footnote, “Sensible means they can be sensed by the five senses: sight, hearing, feeling, taste, and smell.”