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Originally Posted by SRoper  Is "good faith" used in the same sense as the legal term? I don't have any legal training, but they seem different.
Doesn't good faith subscription reduce to loose subscription? Presbytery is still deciding which exceptions strike at the system of doctrine contained in the Standards and which ones don't. |
Good faith, as a legal term, simply means without duplicitous intent. It gives the idea that you intend to honor the spirit of the law or the contract involved, without looking for loopholes or other ways out.
A loose interpretation, on the other hand, could include such loopholes, etc., especially if you do not have good faith.
As a stupidly extreme example, suppose a contract says of one party: "he shall pay $__ by the end of each month."
The good faith person would simply make the payment: he'd arrange his affairs so it will happen. If circumstances occur later that prevents the payment, he still entered into the contract in good faith and would be honest about either fulfilling the contract or honest about accepting the consequences of breaching it.
The "loose" contractor might say, "well, end of the month, the beginning of the next month, whatever, I'll pay when I have the money." If the other party tolerates that, the contract has become much looser and the person to whom money is owed has a harder time later enforcing timely payment.
And the "bad faith" contractor may say, "well, the contract says 'he' shall pay. I'll just have a sex change operation and become a 'she' so I won't be bound by it."
A homely example, no doubt, but I think the same thing goes for confessions too.