The Upper Register Blog

In a previous post I wrote:

Those who reject system-subscription in favor of strict subscription are not truly Reformed or Confessional, since they have a non-Reformed and a non-Confessional view of the Reformed tradition and the Reformed Confessions. 

I’m having a little bit of a pang of conscience about putting it so strongly. I think I was being unnecessarily provocative and unfair when I said that strict subscriptionists are not truly Reformed or Confessional. Strict subscriptionists (or quia subscriptionists), please accept my apologies. I want to apologize for three reasons:

(1) It is factually the case that those in the Continental Reformed tradition (who subscribe to the Three Forms of Unity) are Reformed by any historic definition, and yet that tradition has never officially adopted system subscription, as far as I know. Similar considerations probably apply to various Scottish Presbyterian denominations. As far as I know, system subscription is an American Presbyterian tradition. I don’t want to excommunicate all but the American Presbyterian churches from the worldwide family of Reformed churches.

(2) As Lane Keister reminds me, every communion that has strict subscription also has a mechanism for revising its confessional documents. Such revision has actually occurred in some instances. And even though such revision hasn’t happened in a long time, it can be done, at least in theory.

(3) As Scott Clark recently clarified, he is advocating full subscription to Reformed confessions as received and adopted by any given Reformed communion, not to the confessions in and of themselves. This is his answer to the apparent contradiction between his rejection of exception-taking/granting (as practiced in the American Presbyterian churches) and his admission that ministers in his communion aren’t required to hold to Pauline authorship of Hebrews. In other words, although the words are still technically on the page, Pauline authorship of Hebrews is not really in the Belgic Confession “as received by” his communion. I totally understand this argument, and have used it myself in regard to “in the space of six days.” The original intent of the framers of the confession is irrelevant in such cases, since, to use the Presbyterian vow, we receive and adopt “the confession of faith and catechisms of this church.” Okay, fair enough.

I would, however, like to revise my claim in a milder form:  system subscription is more in harmony with the Reformed and Confessional commitment to sola scriptura. It does a better job of upholding and maintaining the formal principle of the Reformation, not as a dead letter, but as something that we live out in practice.  

The fact that any given communion may revise its confession is surely helpful in making a theoretical distinction between the authority of Scripture (as infallible and incapable of being revised) on the one hand, and the authority of confessions (which are fallible and capable of being revised). Lane’s point is well taken, and so I want to back down a tad.

But I don’t want to back down all the way. My concern is that any other approach takes the self-critical, always-reforming, Berean task out of the hands of the individual minister of the gospel and puts it in the hands of the church as a corporate body. This is dangerous for two reasons:

(1) If the individual minister of the gospel is discouraged from reflecting critically on the confessional documents in light of his own personal study of Scripture, then no one will do so and there will never be enough momentum for any particular communion to consider revising its own confessional documents. If one has to take an oath binding oneself to that particular communion’s confession in toto, without any scruples or exceptions, in order to enter the ranks of ministers and elders, the very ones who vote at general assemblies and synods, then from the very outset one has eliminated any source of potential concern about any statements in the confessional documents. “Yes, we can theoretically revise our confession; but in order to get in, you have to agree up front that our confession is perfect and doesn’t need to be changed.” It becomes pretty circular!

(2) If the individual minister of the gospel is encouraged always to defer to the judgment of his communion as a whole, then there is a danger that ministers of the gospel will refrain from freely preaching what they believe to be the teaching of the word of God on any given point, leading to a preaching ministry that is essentially a continual restating of the confessional documents rather than a conscientious exposition of the mind of God in Scripture. In other words, we must never get to the place, as ministers of the gospel, where sola scriptura is something that we need not bother our little heads with, since that is only for general assemblies and synods to worry about. To quote the slogan, “If not us, who? If not now, when?” If it is only general assemblies and synods, if it is only ”the church,” that may study the Word of God and critically examine our tradition, then have we not unloaded the burden that ought to lie with each one of us individually onto someone else’s shoulders? Have we not shirked our own responsibility of attempting to determine what we personally believe about doctrine and ethics on the basis of the Scriptures themselves? Yes, there is a role for the corporate church to make doctrinal determinations through study committees and so on. But we must not continually defer to yet another study committee, which will then report back to yet another general assembly, which will then consult some inter-church relations group and so on ad infinitum. You’ve got to get up in that pulpit this Sunday. And you’d better be able to say “Thus saith the Lord” with a clear conscience.

Now, of course, we have to be careful. There are limits to the individual’s right to study the Bible and come up with new ideas. But the limits are well-known and have to do with established things such as the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, justification by faith alone, imputation, etc. We must do our exegesis and tradition-testing within the circle of the system of doctrine that Hodge so clearly delineated. If our exegesis leads us to step outside of those bounds, then we should honestly resign and seek fellowship in a different communion. But within the bounds of the system, there are lots of details that are confessed in the Reformed confessions - as well as topics that aren’t touched upon or are under-developed - that may be valid areas for careful exegetical scholarship and theological refinement on the part of godly scholars committed to Reformed orthodoxy. 

Even on the points that we all receive, there is room for improving on the formulations of the Reformed confessions. For example, the teaching of the Reformed confessions on the ordo salutis could use a healthy dose of Vos’s two-age construction of eschatology to bring about greater conceptual clarity and exegetical faithfulness.

Or, to use the example that was at the root of my controversy with the OPC, the three-fold division of the Mosaic Law is a medieval formulation that is (a) exegetically questionable (Paul never appeals to it when attempting to decide whether the Mosaic Law or what parts of the Mosaic Law are still binding), (b) historically questionable (no writer of Second Temple Judaism employs such a division but thinks of the Mosaic Law as a seemless unit), and (c) logically questionable (can one really make such a strong distinction between the Decalogue and the total redemptive historical and covenantal context in which it is imbedded, such that one can extract the Decalogue as if it were nothing but eternal moral law?).

I could go on. But the point is, we need ministers (and elders and lay people) who practice sola scriptura and believe it applies to themselves in terms of their own individual walk with the Lord and personal commitment to following Christ. What we don’t need is to encourage the already well-established tendency to shift the responsibility of Scriptural study on to some nameless corporate entity, thereby enabling the individual to take the easy way out and piously call it ”submitting to the church.” System subscription not only encourages the individual to take on this demanding element of Christian discipleship, it also has the added benefit of encouraging consistories, sessions, presbyteries, and classes to do the same, because every time they are presented with a candidate who has exceptions they now have to crack open their Bibles, listen to his exegesis, and then deliberate to decide whether the exceptions undermine the system of doctrine or not. Not a bad exercise. It keeps everyone on their toes and it ensures that our commitment to Reformed theology is one that flows from a genuine submission to Scripture rather than allowing it to degenerate into a dead orthodoxy that we recite by rote while our hearts are far from God.

One of the issues that has come up in the discussion of confessional subscription is the fact that the Belgic Confession counts Hebrews among the epistles of Paul. I thought it would perhaps be a valuable exercise to review the reasons why contemporary scholars (and even many ancient ones) doubt that Paul wrote Hebrews.

First, given the fact that Paul explicitly states his identity in the other 13 epistles, it seems unlikely that he would have omitted it in Hebrews. The sender-identification portion of the typical Pauline salutation is always placed right up front, with “Paul,” in fact, as the very first word. For example, his letter to the Romans begins with these words: ”Paul, a bond servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle.” Clement of Alexandria (150-215), an early advocate of Pauline authorship, argued that Paul left his name off because he was writing to Jews who were suspicious of him. But this seems unlikely given Paul’s inclusion of his name in letters like Galatians and 2 Corinthians which were also addressed to churches that harbored factions vocally opposed to his ministry. From the picture of his character that we form on the basis of the 13 epistles that bear Paul’s name, it seems unlikely that Paul would be the sort of person who would attempt to conceal his apostolic identity in any situation, much less in the face of opposition. 

Second, for those who read Greek, there is a significant difference in style between the 13 epistles that bear Paul’s name and Hebrews. Paul’s Greek often has a lively oral quality to it, whereas the Greek of Hebrews is much more polished and literary. Now it must be admitted right away that the analysis of vocabulary as a tool for determining authorship is notoriously unreliable, as its (ab)use in the arguments against the Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles shows. This is because vocabulary is the most variable element of an author’s style, depending on numerous factors such as the topics and audience being addressed. But there are unconscious aspects of Greek style that are more likely to be stable across time and in spite of variation in subject matter, such that it is possible to make somewhat more reliable judgments about authorship on the basis of Greek style. Hebrews is undeniably written with a degree of syntactical and rhetorical sophistication rarely seen in the 13 epistles that bear Paul’s name. In fact, of all the New Testament writings, Hebrews probably has the most sophisticated Greek style, revealing its author to be someone who received a very good Greek education. This is not to say that Paul had no Greek education, but whatever his exposure to Greek literature was, it was probably not to the same level as that of the author of Hebrews.

Third, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to believe that Paul would classify himself as among the second generation of Christians who did not know Jesus personally but who had the message confirmed to them by the disciples. The author of Hebrews writes: “This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him” (Heb 2:3). It is hard to imagine the same apostle who defended his gospel as something that he received not from humans but directly from Christ himself (Gal 1:1, 11-12, 16) making such an unqualified statement as that. It is true that Paul was not a follower of Jesus during Jesus’ earthly, pre-resurrection ministry, but since he received a call/commission from the exalted Christ on the road to Damascus, he would not have placed himself on the same level with those Christians who received the gospel from the first generation. It is also true that Paul did spend two weeks getting acquainted with Peter (Gal 1:18), but Paul takes pains to show that the Jerusalem pillars “added nothing” to his message (Gal 2:6) so that whatever he gleaned about the words and deeds of Jesus from Peter it was only corroborative, without substantially contributing to the content of his gospel message.

Fourth, it seems unlikely that the author of Hebrews would be Paul since Hebrews places such great emphasis on Jesus’ role as high priest, in fulfillment of the priestly office of the old covenant, whereas in all the 13 epistles that bear Paul’s name there is only one passing allusion to this theme (”who also intercedes for us,” Rom 8:34 - and note that the term “high priest” itself is lacking). There are references to the death of Christ in cultic terms (e.g., Rom 3:25; 1 Cor 5:7; Eph 5:2), but I’m not aware of any passages other than Rom 8:34 that speak of Christ as a high priest or describe his present session at God’s right hand in priestly terms. It’s possible I’ve overlooked some (please let me know if you find any) but, in any case, such references are sparse in comparison with the rich, sustained meditation on this theme in Hebrews. Assuming that all 14 epistles are by Paul, how could a theme that is so close to his heart in Hebrews be so neglected in all of his other writings?

These are the primary reasons that scholars regard Pauline authorship of Hebrews as unlikely. This does create a slight problem, though, since Hebrews was eventually accepted into the canon precisely because the Western church in the fifth century overcame its doubts and came around to the earlier position of the Eastern church that Hebrews was written by Paul. Does the recognition of Hebrews as canonical, then, mandate belief in Pauline authorship? I don’t think so. The church’s decision to recognize Hebrews was sovereignly superintended by the Holy Spirit, but that does not necessarily mean that the Holy Spirit endorsed all of the reasoning that went into that decision.

One final point, returning to the broader discussion of “Bible and Confession.” We have mentioned the Belgic Confession’s statement that there are 14 epistles of Paul, but I note that this was also stated by the Sixth Council of Carthage in 419, repeated by the Council of Trent in the 16th century, and remains a part of Roman Catholic dogma to this day. Some church traditions are extremely valuable, and we cannot reject them without rejecting the foundation of our faith (e.g., the list of canonical books, the Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian formula, etc.), but there are other church traditions which have also been elevated to the level of conciliar, ecclesiastical dogma, which we now deem to be mistaken and about minor matters that do not shake the foundation of our faith. In other words, Pauline authorship of Hebrews was not merely a private belief held by many church fathers in the past, but was (and for Roman Catholics still is) a dogma clothed with confessional, binding authority. But as both the Belgic and Westminster Confession state, even church councils can err, and many have erred. The key is having wisdom to be able to distinguish the things that are of central importance from the things that are less so.

It seems to me that this is one of the crucial differentiae that distinguishes us as Protestants from the Roman Catholic position on ecclesiastical authority. Roman Catholics do not have the right to critically examine the Council of Trent. We as Protestants do have the right to examine the Belgic Confession and compare it with Scripture. And though the particular question of the authorship of Hebrews may be a rather minor matter, the very fact that we can debate the question points up a most precious reality that we as Protestants have, namely, the right – yea even the duty — to subordinate our own ecclesiastical dogmas and traditions to the Lordship of Christ, which we do when we search the Scriptures and test all human traditions in light of his word. That is no minor matter, for ultimately it exposes our most basic and most fundamental loyalty. At the end of the day, is our loyalty to the Reformed Confessions or is it to Jesus Christ himself?

Matt Morgan weighs in. The entire post is excellent but I particularly appreciated these two paragraphs, for this is indeed the heart of the matter:

Old Princeton system subscription took seriously the notion that “All synods or councils, since the apostles’ times, whether general or particular, may err; and many have erred. Therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith, or practice; but to be used as a help in both.” (WCF 31.4). Machen might well have resonated with the Belgic Confession on this point: “Therefore we must not consider human writings– no matter how holy their authors may have been– equal to the divine writings; nor may we put custom, nor the majority, nor age, nor the passage of time or persons, nor councils, decrees, or official decisions above the truth of God, for truth is above everything else” (Article 7).

It seems to me that a Presbyterian’s 2nd ordination vow (i.e. where we subscribe to “the system of doctrine as contained in the Westminster Standards”) takes these Confessional qualifications cited here in Westminster and Belgic more seriously. That is, we want our subscription practice to reflect the Confession’s view of Scripture to the degree that we want to make absolutely clear the difference between our primary and secondary standards.

Those who reject system-subscription in favor of strict subscription are not truly Reformed or Confessional, since they have a non-Reformed and a non-Confessional view of the Reformed tradition and the Reformed Confessions. 

I also feel compelled to reiterate Matt’s challenge regarding the Belgic Confession’s assertion of Pauline authorship of Hebrews. How can Clark claim that the confession IS the system of doctrine, and then turn right around and permit scruples on this or any other minor point? I honestly don’t get it.

Scott Clark responds:

There is a great deal embedded or implied in Lee’s (I assume partial) list of things that compose the “system of doctrine” but it shares one serious flaw that all such lists posses: it is necessarily subjective. These are the things the Lee thinks are essential but what if a WTS prof defines “system of doctrine” differently? What if, by “system of doctrine” a WTS prof has a much shorter list, say, predestination? What if justification sola gratia, sola fide weren’t on the list or what if the Reformed doctrine of worship or what if the doctrine of the covenant of works (which the Westminster Confession mentions several times but which many contemporary “Reformed” folk have felt at liberty to reject) are not included? … A seminary board might hear a candidates (or, if his views change a prof’s) objection to the teaching of the Reformed churches on this or that point, but the idea that a person can decide for himself what is the system of doctrine is the path of anarchy and chaos. 

Clark opposes system subscription — even though it is the unanimous Old Princeton position as advocated by Charles Hodge, B. B. Warfield, and even Machen himself. He fears it is subjective and leads to anarchy and chaos. But these fears are misguided. Any given seminary or church body can decide whether any given exception is one that they consider to be about non-essential matters or about matters that strike at the fundamentals of the system of doctrine.  A professor doesn’t get to decide for himself whether his exceptions are acceptable or not. He is required to submit them to the judgment of his colleagues and the board (that’s even part of the pledge). If they deem his exceptions to be acceptable, that is, not inimical to the system of doctrine, then everything is okay.

Someone may object, “Then that leaves it up to the faculty or the board to keep a school orthodox.” But is there any other way? Even on Clark’s view it would still be up to the faculty and the board to police the confessional orthodoxy of its faculty. And even Clark admits that there are minor points — e.g., Pauline authorship of Hebrews — where he is willing to permit deviations from the Three Forms, so he himself is admitting that exceptions are possible and potentially acceptable.

I do not know what is going on behind closed doors in the faculty discussions at WTS/P. So I won’t speculate as to whether or not any given faculty member is within the bounds of the system of doctrine as defined by WTS or by Clark or by me or anyone else. That is up to the WTS faculty to figure out.

In addition, it must asked whether, on Clark’s view, Meredith Kline would be an acceptable faculty member at WSC (which, of course, he was). Kline was not a strict Sabbatarian. He held that the fourth commandment was a sign of the covenant between God and Israel, but not part of the universal moral law. In fact, in his latest book (God, Heaven, and Har Magedon) he advocated the Lord’s Day position. Kline also disagreed with WCF VII.1 which speaks of the Adamic covenant of works as a product of God’s “voluntary condescension.” He also would have scrupled the Larger Catechism’s seeming conflation of the covenant of redemption with the covenant of grace (”The covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed,” WLC 31). Furthermore, he argued that the “two tablets” of the law referred to two whole copies of the Decalogue, not to the two tables concerning our duty toward God and our duty toward man. Not to mention Kline’s framework interpretation which some strict confessionalists think contradicts the Confession’s “in the space of six days” language. I could go on. I wonder whether Clark would consider Kline to be sufficiently confessional by his strict subscription standards.

But wasn’t Meredith the very kind of orthodox, Reformed, Christ-centered, gospel-inflamed, conservative biblical scholar that we need? Someone who is devoted to the Reformed faith, a staunch defender of sola fide, the two-Adams, forensic imputation, classic covenant/federal theology, yea the whole panoply of the Reformed understanding of the gospel, and yet constantly engaging in exegesis and bringing forth new light from the Word in light of modern knowledge (ANE studies, modern cosmology, etc.)?

We don’t want to repristinate the Reformed orthodoxy of the 17th century down to the defense of the Masoretic vowel points and the textus receptus, do we? What about the fact that the magisterial Reformers held to a pretty severe view of the civil magistrate as obligated to enforce the first table of the law? To be orthodox Reformed must we reject the very foundation of modern democratic, pluralistic society? Do we really want to place these pre-modern vestiges of by-gone years and fashion them into a yoke about the neck of the disciples, telling them that if they want to embrace of the glorious, liberating gospel of grace as understood in the context of Reformed covenant theology, they ALSO have to check their brains at the door and swallow a whole raft of mistaken ideas that were vogue in the 17th century but now deemed to be pre-critical scholarship and just plain wrong? Do we not believe that a person is justified by faith alone, not by chopping off our legs to fit into the Procrustean bed of 17th century orthodoxy down to the last jot and tittle?

No, that was not the Old Princeton ethos. The two Westminsters claim to be the heirs of Old Princeton. But Old Princeton didn’t repristinate every out-dated notion of 17th century Reformed orthodoxy. Hodge, Warfield and Machen accommodated themselves to the new science of textual criticism, to modern geology and biology, and so on. All while staunchly defending the Reformed understanding of the gospel — the great system of federal, two-Adam theology, the imputation of Adam’s guilt to the human race, the imputation of Christ’s active and passive obedience to the elect, etc. — all in the face of the New School innovations of the 19th century. They loved and embraced and taught the Pauline, Reformational gospel. They proclaimed it from the rooftops. They suffered ignominy and ecclesiastical tyranny to defend and promote it. But they were not obscurantists. They were not fundamentalists. They welcomed and engaged critical scholarship. They did not bury their heads in the sand and let the rest of the world pass them by.

So if the Old Princeton vision is to be maintained, we must allow some degree of academic freedom. The system of doctrine contained in the Westminster Standards must be upheld. Faculty ought to pledge themselves to love it, to embrace it ex animo, to teach and impart it with zeal to their students. But at the same time they must be able to engage in scholarship. They must be able to follow the text where it leads. They must be permitted to engage in critical dialogue with the intellectual currents and scientific developments of the 21st century. Otherwise the gospel itself will become wedded to an outdated and ossified paper pope. We ought to be loyal to Christ and his word, not to a particular set of propositions that reflects more a cultural nostalgia than anything else (see Richard Muller’s awful book The Study of Theology where he essentially says that’s what he’s all about – maintaining and passing on the paideia of the Reformed culture).

Last week, Scott Clark wrote on the topic of Bible and Confession. He was reacting to a comment posted by Tremper Longman on Save Our Seminary and which had been reposted on the Puritan Board. Longman had written:

I like to say that there is no institution I love as much as Westminster Seminary [Philadelphia]. However one of the reasons why I left in 1998 was my perception that the seminary was beginning to change from the deeply Reformed but outward facing institution that it was from the time that I first knew it in the 1970’s to a more inward defensive institution. I remember talking to one colleague, for instance, who told me that if I felt the Bible taught something that the Confession did not that I had to side with the Confession. That’s not the Reformed approach to the study of the Bible that I know and love. However it is a perspective that I think has only grown with time.

A couple of posters on the Puritan Board were troubled by the comment of this unnamed colleague as reported by Longman. One said, “Frankly, it sounds like something that would come out of Rome.” I would have to agree. Accordingly, then, I did not find Clark’s defense of the unnamed colleague’s comments to be helpful. I will quote some of Clark’s statements and give my response.

First, Clark writes:

The question here is not whether the bible is normative. The question is whether one person’s reading of Scripture is normative for everyone else.

This is not a helpful way of framing the question. I doubt that Longman or any other WTS faculty member who has exceptions to the Westminster Standards is asking his views to be “normative for everyone else.” He is merely asking that his views be tolerated. There is a big difference. The official position of the seminary is stated in the Confession. But if an individual professor has an exception or scruple at a certain point – say on the Sabbath or the threefold division of the Law – he wants to have the freedom to teach his understanding of the Scripture on that point, thus respectfully disagreeing with the Confession’s interpretation of Scripture on that point, while acknowledging that his view is not the view taught in the Confession and thus not the official position of the seminary.  I do not understand how Clark can say that this makes the exception or scruple ”normative for everyone else.”

Now Clark does have a valid point in one sense. Clark’s valid point is that a confessional Presbyterian seminary has the right to ensure that its students are taught confessional Presbyterian doctrine. In other words, Clark is pointing out that a confessional seminary cannot allow unfettered academic freedom, otherwise it would cease to be a confessional seminary. This, of course, is true of all sorts of confessional schools, and is not limited to Presbyterian ones. He provides an example: 

In a previous post I quoted Andrew Sullivan’s insight that no one can escape the contingency of their upbringing, nor should we regard this as a bad thing. Technically, Presbyterianism isn’t the contingency in which I was born and raised. It is, rather, one that I have adopted when I was a young adult, and in which I have lived for the past 15 years. So the question naturally arises, how does the contingency of my childhood relate to the contingency of my adulthood? There was a break, to be sure, when I abandoned my dispensational, Arminian, higher-life, Plymouth Brethren background and became covenantal, Reformed, and Presbyterian. But there are also important areas of continuity:

(1) I continue to believe that the Bible is the only infallible rule of faith and practice, the touchstone of all that we do and believe. The church in which I was raised instilled in me a high regard for the Scriptures. It was certainly wrong in its interpretation, but right in principle. We were steeped in the Bible. We did Bible studies several times a week using the Navigator’s chapter summary method. When listening to sermons, we were exhorted to turn in our Bibles to every passage that the preacher read, and this often meant turning to what seemed like hundreds of passages every Sunday. And we took notes too, filling up reems of paper over the years. I did this as a child and so my mind was chock-full of Scripture.

(2) I continue to be an evangelical, that is, one who believes in the centrality of the cross and the necessity of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This is probably the most important thing. One can have all kinds of head knowledge, but without a personal, saving, intimate relationship with Christ such knowledge is vain. The leader of the church in which I was raised often railed against “dead orthodoxy” and emphasized a mystical form of higher-life piety. Unfortunately, the constant striving for this higher experience had an unintended consequence — it actually produced despair in those who could not achieve it, and hypocrisy and arrogance in those who thought they had. As a result, when I first joined the Presbyterian fold I reacted against that and embraced doctrinalism, which I perceived to be the only safeguard against subjectivism. I have now come full circle and realize that my old church was right — dead orthodoxy is a very real danger, especially for conservative Presbyterians. Doctrine and life must go hand-in-hand. It is absolutely vital to have a personal relationship with Christ as one’s personal Lord and Savior, and to commune with him in prayer. Paul put it best: “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil 3:8).The famous revivalist Presbyterian pastor Gilbert Tennent is remembered as having taught that ”We can preach the gospel of Christ no further than we have experienced the power of it in our own hearts.”

These, then, are crucial elements of the invaluable inheritance that I received from the church in which my parents raised me, and which I continue to carry with me into my Presbyterian context. Since Presbyterians (at least the ones I know) tend to be weak in these two areas, I like the idea of reaching back into my past and carrying forward these two elements into the present. We need a chastened Presbyterianism in which basic things like personal prayer and Bible reading are encouraged rather than set aside as bad ”evangelical” habits. Presbyterians of an earlier day knew that doctrine, in and of itself, is barren unless rooted in the soil of a vital relationship with the risen Christ.

Lane Keister has a further reply to my first follow-up. He writes:

The vow states that (each minister having already done his exegesis of Scripture (prior to taking his vows!) proving to himself that the Standards are an accurate summary of the Bible’s teaching!) the minister believes the Standards to be the accurate interpretation of the Scriptures on all matters on which the Standards speak. The minister’s vow does not state that the minister believes the Confession to be a correct interpretation of the Scriptures on what the Confession teaches … The minister takes a vow stating that he believes the WS to be the correct interpretation of the Scriptures on what the Standards teach. The grammatical difference between the indefinite article and the definite article is crucial to the interpretation of the vow. The vow explicitly states that the minister believes the Westminster Standards to be the system of doctrine taught in Scriptures.

He concludes by saying, “Lee has not answered this point yet.” Okay, I’ll try to answer it now. Perhaps it would be good to quote the actual wording of the vow of subscription which has a long history in American Presbyterianism going back to the Adopting Act of 1729. In the PCA it goes like this: 

Do you sincerely receive and adopt the Confession of Faith and the Catechisms of this Church as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scripture?

It’s pretty much the same in the OPC. The question is, what is meant by the phrase “as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scripture”? Lane places the accent on the definite article, “the system of doctrine.” On this reading, “the minister takes a vow stating that he believes the WS to be the correct interpretation of the Scriptures” (Lane’s words).

But this interpretation of the vow ignores the whole phrase in which the definite article occurs:  ”as containing the system.” The vow does not say that the Confession is the teaching of Scripture, but that it “contains” something taught in Scripture. And what does it contain? “The system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scripture.” If the Confession merely “contains” this scriptural system but is not equal to it, it follows that not everything in the Confession is essential to the system. In accordance with the Adopting Act of 1729, the vow presupposes a distinction between non-essential elements in the Confession and its essential system of doctrine. 

The PCA Book of Church Order (21-4) says:

Our Constitution does not require the candidate’s affirmation of every statement and/or proposition of doctrine in our Confession of Faith and Catechisms. 

One may disagree with specific statements in the Confession, or take issue with the manner in which certain doctrines are formulated, and still be in accord with the system of doctrine. The presbytery has the right to ordain a candidate who has differences with the Confession, as long as those differences, in the presbytery’s judgment, are not “hostile to the system” (BCO 21-4). This is the “good faith subscription” that the PCA adopted a few years ago.

Contra the PCA BCO’s statement that candidates are not required to affirm every statement and/or proposition of doctrine in our Confession, Lane thinks

The vow states that … the minister believes the Standards to be the accurate interpretation of the Scriptures on all matters on which the Standards speak.

Note the blanket statement in the last part of that sentence:  “on all matters on which the Standards speak.” There’s an ostensible tension here with the PCA BCO which “does not require the candidate’s affirmation of every statement and/or proposition.”

I’m further baffled that Lane objects to my statement: “If one is considering the Confession’s teaching on anything, one is considering a particular interpretation of the Scriptures, not the Scriptures themselves.” (Lane says this was the statement he was “primarily” responding to!)

But even if I took no exceptions to the Confession, even if I thought it was the best formulation of scriptural teaching ever seen on this planet, I would not want to forget this basic fact:  the Confession is not Scripture but an interpretation of Scripture. I fail to grasp why Lane would object to this.

Lane Keister has responded to my “Confession = Scripture” post with a red herring. In brief, he affirms that the Confession can be amended, at least in theory. But my post did not address this issue directly. I did mention, as a subordinate point, that I disagreed with his interpretation of the vow of subscription. (I thought he too strongly identified the system of doctrine with the Confession itself, thus binding an officer to never compare the Confession with Scripture.) But the meaning of the vow is distinct from the question of whether the Confession can be amended.  

So what was my primary point? Let me explain by reviewing the context of my post. The context was Lane’s defense of the PCA Ad Interim Report against Reggie Kidd’s criticism that the Report did not examine the FV on the biblical merits but only on whether the FV passes the confessional standard — a complaint I’m sympathetic with, even though I agree with the Report’s conclusions. Lane Keister responded by arguing that by examining the Confession, the Report did examine the biblical merits, since a consideration of the Confession is a consideration of Scripture. This bald statement, which I hope he retracts, is what prompted my original post.

My concern is threefold:  (1) this statement reflects a dangerous elevation of the Confession that should be unacceptable to Protestants; (2) it justifies laziness in combatting error, as if we can skip exegesis, quote the Confession, and then claim that we have thereby proved that an error is contrary to Scripture; and (3) it concedes the moral high ground by making it appear that our concerns with the FV are merely that it isn’t Reformed, rather than that it is contrary to the apostolic gospel.

Interestingly, PCA pastor Andy Webb understands my primary point, but objects to my call for exegesis when pursuing doctrinal discipline on the ground that it’s just too much work: 

whenever there was a doctrinal disagreement, we would need to form a study committee, have them create their own theological study of the subject and then we’d decide the matter based on what the majority at the moment thought of the study. Under this system, discipline cases would become few and far between simply because of the enormous effort involved with each case (not to mention the arguments afterwards).

Instead, the greater wisdom of our forebears was that we should have a Constitution that we agreed was an accurate summary of the doctrines taught in scripture. Thus, in a matter of discipline all we had to do was compare the teaching of the officer to our fixed standard.

Note the irony of his position. The very Confession he claims to uphold compels us to “determine” all controveries of religion by appeal to Scripture (WCF I:10). According to the Confession, then, it isn’t acceptable to simply compare an erroneous teaching with the Confession and be done with it — as I fear that the PCA Ad Interim Report did, and as Andy Webb recommends we do as a matter of policy. The Confession itself protests against making it the ultimate arbiter of our theological debates.

I’m not denying that the Confession can be used in a subordinate role as one of the tools in pursuing doctrinal discipline. I’m convinced the FV is contrary to the system of doctrine contained in the Confession, and I think the Ad Interim Report made that case well. My concern is that this not be the only case we make. If we are to be good Presbyterians, we have an obligation to do what Reggie Kidd and many FV men have requested, namely, to engage them on the biblical merits. 

This is precisely how Presbyterianism works, or at least how it ought to work. For example, both the OPC and PCA Book of Church Order state that

All church power is only ministerial and declarative, for the Holy Scriptures are the only infallible rule of faith and practice. No church judicatory may presume to bind the conscience by making laws on the basis of its own authority; all its decisions should be founded upon the Word of God.

(OPC Form of Government III:3; see PCA BCO, Preface II.7, for nearly identical language.)

The OPC Book of Discipline (IV.A.1) states that at the beginning of every trial the moderator shall announce:

This body is about to sit in a judicial capacity and I exhort you, the members, to bear in mind your solemn duty faithfully to minister and declare the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice, and to subordinate all human judgments to that infallible rule.

I don’t know if the PCA has a similar exhortation before trials, but it might as well, since BCO 29-1 clearly states:

Nothing, therefore, ought to be considered by any court as an offense, or admitted as a matter of accusation, which cannot be proved to be such from Scripture.

And, of course, there’s the teaching of the Confession itself that the Scripture is ”the supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined” (WCF I:10; quoted in PCA BCO 39-3) — a crucial Confessional directive that Lane Keister and Andy Webb have so far failed to address. The Confession won’t allow us to take any shortcuts. It directs us to engage error by means of biblical argumentation. It does so in order (1) to safeguard the principle that Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith and practice, and (2) to ensure that the exercise of our ecclesiastical authority is not legislative in character but ministerial and declarative of the Word of God.

Another reason it’s important to engage error by biblical argumentation (in addition to Confessional citation) is that the Confession was written at a particular time and in a particular place, and the errors it rejects are not necessarily identical to the ones we confront today. For example, there may be similarities between the FV and the Roman Catholic view of justification or the sacraments, but there are also important differences. In order to ensure that we are correctly applying the Confession, we have to examine the biblical exegesis that lies behind the Confession, as well as the exegetical arguments being put forward in support of the contemporary error we’re trying to address. Thus, even if we were convinced that we could do indirect exegesis of Scripture via study of the exegesis contained in the Confession, direct exegesis would still be unavoidable due to our historical distance from the Confession. 

When I was first introduced to the idea of confessional subscription in the early 90s I was reassured that Presbyterians did not regard the Confession as equal to Scripture, that they viewed the Westminster Confession and Catechisms as “secondary or subordinate standards.” But the more I got involved in confessional Presbyterianism, the more I began to hear some amazing statements that belied the pious claim of adherence to sola Scriptura.

Here’s a recent example. PCA pastor Lane Keister wrote these words on his Green Baggins blog yesterday:

Considering the oath that all ordained ministers take in the PCA that the Westminster Standards contain THE system of doctrine taught in Holy Scripture (BCO 21-5, question 2, emphasis mine), is it not fair to state that if one is considering the Confession’s teaching on certain issues that one is also considering the Scriptures?

Sorry, no. If one is considering the Confession’s teaching on anything, one is considering a particular interpretation of the Scriptures, not the Scriptures themselves. We may think the Confession’s interpretation on any point is correct, but to study the Scriptures one would have to actually … study the Scriptures.

Furthermore, when a PCA officer subscribes to the Confession “as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures,” he is not affirming that every proposition in the Confession is the teaching of Scripture, but that the Confession contains a system of doctrine — the historic Calvinistic system of soteriology, covenant theology, view of the sacraments, etc. – and that this system of doctrine is Scriptural.

Even then, there is always room for improving on the specific formulations of the Confession, without altering the fundamentals of the system of doctrine. If Lane Keister’s argument were correct, as soon as an officer takes the subscription vow he is, from that moment, relinquishing his right to compare and test the Confession’s formulations in the light of Scripture. By binding his conscience to the Confession, he in effect promises never to be bound by Scripture!

I’m with Lane Keister in opposing the Federal Vision, but I think we do ourselves a disservice by using the Confession as the primary tool for critiquing their views. Unless we appeal primarily to Scripture, our arguments will be less persuasive than they ought to be. What could be more important than the doctrines of free grace and the imputed righteousness of Christ? By making our appeal primarily to the authority of the Confession in support of these doctrines, we cheapen these precious truths to the level of mere human traditions. Is that really the best we can do? If the gospel itself is at stake — and I believe it is — we must appeal to the highest authority, the authority of Christ himself speaking to us through his appointed representatives, the apostles. 

In their theological debates, that is what the Westminster divines did. Clearly, they could not appeal to the Confession when drafting the Confession, but only to the Word! And we have not only their example but their express exhortation (WCF I:10):

The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.

So often we are content to rest in the words of the Confession. Let us determine to follow the godly example of the Westminster divines and rest in the sentence of the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture. That way, when we do finally get around to citing the Confession, it will be clear that it is indeed only a “subordinate standard.”

BTW, I think the OPC Report on Justification did a better job on this score than the PCA Ad Interim Report, but I agree with the conclusions of both.

Has this ever happened to you? You fall in love with a particular song you heard on the radio, so you buy the whole album. Naturally the album whets your appetite for more, so you buy all the other albums by the same band. 

Some people don’t stop there and believe that the band’s genius extends to other areas as well. If the lead singer is in favor of canceling third world debt, they adopt the same political views. If she’s into Kabbalah, before you know it, her fans are sporting red strings on their wrists.

This phenomenon doesn’t only apply to the MTV generation. It applies equally in the theological arena. We like Machen, so we invest his views on mountain climbing with theological significance. We like Vos’s biblical theology, so we start collecting his poetry.

These examples are relatively harmless, but what if we move closer to home? We think TULIP is right, so we’re eager to believe that the architects of TULIP had an inside track on everything else as well. Many Calvinists of yore practiced exclusive Psalm singing, used the King James Version, observed the Sabbath, and believed that the civil magistrate had a duty to enforce Christianity in society. But there’s no logical connection between the doctrine of predestination and the Textus Receptus, or between limited atonement and theocracy.

I call this “the fallacy of extended genius.” We recognize genius in one area and assume it extends to all other areas. We want to believe that our theological heroes had uncanny powers of perception and analysis that gave them superior wisdom regarding every other topic on which they happened to express an opinion. The truth is, it is rarely so. In the days before i-tunes, how often were you forced to buy an entire CD for one great song? The single was brilliant, but some of the other songs on the album … not so much.

If we really believe in sola Scriptura, we will use the Reformed tradition critically (1 Thess 5:21). We honor our Reformed forebears, not by being antiquarian collectors of their outdated vinyl records, but by selecting the tracks that harmonize best with Scripture. After all, that is what they would have wanted.