Westminster Confession

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September 19: On This We Should All Agree

19 September, 2013 in September 2013 by archivist | No comments

The Westminster Standards are the Standards of the Presbyterian Church

We have already considered the meeting which took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania which stopped an impending schism in the infant Presbyterian Church by The Adopting Act of 1729, as was presented on September 17. But there was another important commitment made by the infant church as part of this multi-day meeting on this day, September 19, 1729.  And it was the adoption by the presbyters of this American Presbyterian Church of the Westminster Standards (together, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger Catechism and the Shorter Catechism) as their subordinate standard, behind that of Scripture itself, as their required standard for ordination.

The exact words as taken from the Minutes of that Presbytery meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, were the following:  “we are undoubtedly obliged to take care that the faith once delivered to the saints be kept pure and uncorrupt among us, and so handed down to our posterity; and do therefore agree that all the ministers of this Synod, or that shall hereafter be admitted into this Synod, shall declare their agreement in, and approbation of, the Confession of Faith, with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, as being in all the essential and necessary articles, good forms of sound words and systems of Christian doctrine, and so also adopt the said Confession and Catechisms as the confession of our faith. And we do also agree, that all the Presbyteries within our bounds shall always take care not to admit any candidate of the ministry into the exercise of the sacred function but what declares his agreement in opinion with all the essential and necessary articles of said Confession, either by subscribing the said Confession of Faith and Catechisms, or by a verbal declaration of their assent thereto, as such minister or candidate shall think best.”

It might surprise our readers to think that a full twenty-two years after the first Presbytery in 1707, finally such a doctrinal commitment was made by the infant Presbyterian church.  But this is not to say that the ministers who made up this church did not automatically confess this subscription. Remember, the first page of the 1707 minutes were lost to history.  It well might have been part and parcel of that document.  Further, while not found in subsequent recorded minutes, all of the ministers had confessed their faith in the mother countries by subscription to the Westminster Standards. Up to this time in the colonies, their attention was taken up with church extension and government.  But finally, the historic creed which had fed the faith of the Presbyterian Church for three hundred years is made the foundation of the infant Presbyterian church in America.                                                                                      

WCF_adopted_1729

Words to live by:
A historic document is made the subordinate standard of an infant church.  All ministers, past, present, and future, are to receive and adopt it before they can be ordained.  The young church is placed on a Reformed foundation.  While members must hold to a credible profession of faith, they know  that the preaching and teaching will be the depth and historical content of  the greatest theological statement ever produced by godly men. This is why we have included the Confession and catechisms in this historical devotional guide.  Read and ponder its words. Memorize its shorter catechism answers.  This writer has done so, and it has enabled him to stand in the test of perilous times.

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July 12: The League of Faith

12 July, 2013 in July 2013 by archivist | No comments

Just What Purpose Did They Serve, Really?

Recently in another post, mention was made of an organization called The League of Faith. This group seems largely forgotten now, some eighty years later, but it was a conservative renewal group established to work within the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.  The history of this organization was played out in two stages, as described in Chapter 14 of The Presbyterian Conflict.

League_1931_buswellThe League of Faith was originally organized in 1931, and was centered around the leadership of the Rev. Dr. Walter D. Buchanan, D.D. An initial membership of 150 included such prominent conservatives as J. Gresham Machen, Samuel G. Craig, Paul Woolley, Clarence E. Macartney, and many others. Judging from records preserved at the PCA Historical Center, the Rev. J. Oliver Buswell, Jr. was another founding member of the League, at witnessed in the Certificate of Membership pictured at right.

The objects of the League, as listed in Article 2 of its Constitution, were as follows:

1. To maintain loyalty to the Bible as the Word of God in opposition to denials of its full truthfulness.
2. To maintain the Reformed or Calvinistic system of doctrine as it is set forth in the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as it appears in 1931 in opposition to all plans of church union which would either break down that system or relegate it to a secondary place.
3. To oppose changes in the historic formula of creed subscription required of candidates for the ministry and the eldership.
4. To oppose the attack made by the document commonly called the “Auburn Affirmation” upon the doctrinal pronouncement of the General Assembly of 1923, and to insist, in opposition to that affirmation, that the full truth of the Scriptures, the Virgin Birth of Christ, the Substitutionary Atonement, the bodily Resurrection and Miracles of our Lord are essential doctrines of the Word of God and our Standards.
5. To warn men everywhere that salvation is to be obtained not by human merit or human effort to please God, but only through the redeeming work of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as He is offered to us in the Gospel.
6. To encourage the vigorous defense and joyous propagation of the Gospel in its fullness as it is set forth in the Westminster Confession of Faith on the basis of Holy Scripture.

But apparently the organization never actually did anything. It met regularly, and its members talked, but no plan of action was ever adopted, much less acted upon.

Finally, as noted in The Presbyterian Conflict, “When the members of the Independent Board were suspended from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in the USA and the Presbyterian Church of America was organized in 1936, the League was reorganized and continued by a group of ministers led by Dr. C. E. Macartney, who were imbued with the idea that the Presbyterian Church in the USA was still fundamentally sound.”

It was this 1936 reorganization of the League that we find documented in a news clipping in one of the Rev. Henry Welbon’s scrapbooks. The newspaper was The Philadelphia Record, and the brief coverage of the League’s reorganization was described in this way:

CLERGYMEN FORM LEAGUE OF FAITH

Conservative clergymen within the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. have formed a league of Faith, with Dr. Clarence E. Macartney, of Pittsburgh, as their president.

More than 1000 attended recent organization meetings in New York. They declared that liberals and Modernists now dominate the Presbyterian Church although they represent but a small portion of its membership.

Dr. Macartney was elected Moderator of the Presbyterian Church more than a decade ago and was a leader in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy with Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, of New York. Dr. Macartney was then pastor of the Arch Street Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia.

Dr. Samuel G. Craig, Dr. David DeForrest Burrell, and Rev. John H. McComb are vice presidents of the new league.

Then in 1937, just four short years before the United States entered the Second World War, the League subsequently led a successful fight in opposition to a proposed amendment to the 23d chapter of Westminster Confession of Faith, an amendment which would have put the Presbyterian Church on record as opposing all wars as sinful and unchristian. This appears to have been the League’s one victory, and eventually the organization simply disappeared off the pages of history.

We Might Wonder:
While the Presbyterian Church was but one of many denominations, what might have been the effect of such an amendment to the Confession, particularly at such a crucial moment in the nation’s history? Would other denominations have followed suite with similar pronouncements? Would the United States conceivably have then been kept out of the War, or perhaps delayed its involvement till some months or years later? Was the League of Faith a providence from God? Did their humble efforts leave this nation ready to enter the War at just the right time? This is all dangerous territory for any historian. Had that amendment been adopted, the rest of our national history might not have changed in the least. It is all too speculative, and we cannot read history in that way. In the end, we can only affirm with the Scriptures that God is indeed sovereign over human history. Nothing happens that is outside His plan, and everything is working toward the glorious culmination that He has in store for His elect children. But all too often . . . the Lord works in the most unexpected ways.

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February 10: Milo F. Jamison

10 February, 2013 in February 2013 by Wayne Sparkman | 2 comments

To Tell the Truth

Milo Fisher Jamison proves to be an interesting figure in Presbyterian history. He and his father were both founding members of the Presbyterian Church of America in 1936 (the PCofA was renamed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1938). Then little more than a year later, both father and son left to become part of the Bible Presbyterian Church.

Milo Jamison was born in Richmond, Kansas in 1899, studied at Princeton Seminary and was ordained by the Presbytery of Monmouth (PCUSA) in 1924. He was the pastor of churches in New Gretna, New Jersey and Hollywood, California before founding the University Bible Church in Los Angeles. While serving as an associate pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood, he was engaged in campus ministry at UCLA and it was here that his conservative theology ran afoul of modernists (aka, theological liberals) in the Los Angeles Presbytery of the PCUSA. That in turn eventually led to his departure from the PCUSA.

We could talk at length about the controversy with the Los Angeles Presbytery, but Rev. Jamison’s role in the OPC and the BPC is perhaps more interesting. To examine that role, we turn to the text provided by Dr. Gary North in his book, Crossed Fingers. It turns out that Milo Jamison was the inspiration for that book title.

In the year before his death on February 10, 1985, I spoke on the phone with Rev. Milo F. Jamison, who in 1933 became the first pastor to be thrown out of the denomination because of orthodoxy. [Without a trial, the Presbytery erased his name from their rolls.] He told me the story of a fellow graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary who had just been ordained in the mid-1920’s. Jamison knew that the man did not believe in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Jamison asked him: “How could you tell the examining committee that you believe in the Westminster Confession when you really don’t?” The man answered: “I kept my fingers crossed.” Jamison repeated the man’s statement again, as if to affirm it categorically with a double witness.

But Jamison himself did not believe this historic Confession of Presbyterianism, nor had he believed it when their exchange took place. He was a premillennial dispensationalist. When, in 1937, he was defeated for Moderator at the second General Assembly of the year-old Presbyterian Church of America, he immediately departed with Carl McIntire’s secessionist group. He joined McIntire’s Bible Presbyterian Church, founded in 1938, which revised the Westminster Confession’s section on eschatology in order to make it conform to premillennialism, although the denomination was not formally dispensational. Jamison left the Bible Presbyterian Church in 1968, but in fact he spent his post-1933 career as the pastor of an independent Bible church that taught the Scofield Reference Bible. He did not discuss the Westminster Confession in the pulpit. [Dr. North notes that his own parents were members of this church in the 1960’s] He was not a Calvinist. He had crossed his fingers early.

This was Machen’s dilemma: everyone on all sides of the Presbyterian conflict had his fingers crossed. The strategically relevant question was: On which issues?

Words to Live By:
I think Dr. North overstates his case when he says, “everyone on all sides,” but you get his point. “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Where there is no fear of God—where men tell lies to promote their own agenda or to serve their own purpose—then the Church is likely under its gravest threat. Resolve to be forthright and honest in all your dealings. Your prayers first and your example second are your only hold on the behavior of others. The Lord will bless those who stand for the truth.

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