☩ Ecclesiology & Worship · Censures & Synods

Excommunication-Only

Discipline collapses into a single degree (excommunication) — a more lax practice rejected by WCF XXX.4.

This is a contested or rejected alternative.

The Westminster baseline on Censures & Synods is Three-Degrees-With-Graded-Synods. Personas and schools listed below hold this alternative position instead — either because they argued for it at the Assembly (like the Erastians on polity) or because they represent a receiving tradition that departed from the Standards on this point.

Cruxes on this attribute

The Assembly navigated 1 crux that bear directly on Censures & Synods.

The Erastian Question July 1645 – November 1645 Does ecclesiastical jurisdiction belong to the church or to the civil magistrate?

Other positions on Censures & Synods

Three-Degrees-With-Graded-Synods WCF Admonition, suspension from the sacrament, and excommunication (WCF XXX.4); synods and councils as a regulative ordinance of Christ for the better government of the church (XXXI.1–2). Civil-Discipline-Only Discipline belongs to the magistrate — the Erastian view rejected by XXX.1.

Cite this position

Study Reformed, “Excommunication-Only” (Position), Westminster Standards Atlas, version 79a5f9880ac1, https://studyreformed.com/atlas/cite/position/ecclesiology_worship/censures_and_synods/single_degree/.

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Ontology version 79a5f9880ac1 — the state of the Atlas you are reading, so a citation stays checkable when the ontology is revised.