Dear Pastor,
What does the phrase, “General Equity,” such as we find in the Westminster Confession Of Faith in 19:4 mean?
As I understand it, the General Equity answers the question as to how the Old Testament civil law is to be applied in the Nations today and perhaps the best analogy for understanding it is the metaphor of kernel and husk. The general equity advocates the idea that the husk of the Old Testament civil law is discarded but the kernel of the matter remains. So, in the classic example, the requirement of fences being built around roof tops in the OT finds the husk of the requirement expired while the kernel of protecting your neighbor remains in a law, for example, that insists on building a fence around your pool. So, “general equity” means to find valid and obligatory the principle articulated in the civil law, keeping in mind that the civil law was nothing but God incarnating His moral law into every day life.
Remember, the conviction is that the civil law was merely the case law of the moral law. Much as our Supreme Court makes decisions applying the Constitution to the cases that comes before it, God’s given civil law was God applying His Constitution (i.e.– The moral law — Decalogue), in concrete ways, to the society in which His people lived. Now, obviously we no longer live in an agrarian B.C. culture, and so much of the husk of the civil law remains behind, however, what the case law was aiming at in principle remains… and it remains only because it was a true flowering of God’s Moral Law. When we advocate for the general equity we are advocating for God’s own application of the moral law, as He revealed it in the OT Civil Law, for our era.
