What exceptions to the WCF are significant enough to constitute disqualifying a man from service as an officer in the PCA? Would for example, a man that denied a limited atonement be disqualified? How about total depravity? What about a man that affirmed the entire Arminian system? Are those questions as to suitability left to each presbytery to decide?

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Steve
PCA
Dallas, TX

No, the Bowen case is currently the standard in the PCA. A man who denies limited atonement cannot be an Elder or Deacon. Some Presbyteries like the Northern California Presbytery have ignored this rule, but if a member files a complaint the local Session has to enforce it.

I recently forced our church to stop ordaining Baptists and Arminians even though the Session disagreed with me.

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Tim Vaughan
Member, Redeemer Presbyterian, OPC,
Santa Maria
California

Oh, how I love our NorCal Presbytery


Adam

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Adam B., Wine Country, California, PCA

"I fear not to hold with Junius, de Politia Mosis cap. 6, that he who was punishable by death under that Judicial law, is punishable by death still; and he who was not punished by death then, is not to be punished by death now."

I'm surprised that someone who denied LA would even be considered as a candidate for elder.

What is the Bowen case referred to above?

What of exceptions to 6 day creationism or exclusive psalmody, for example, or heterodox views on the Sabbath? What does the PCA regard as automatically disqualifying?

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T W Hopper
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church
Currently between churches since PRC closed here - attending Crossroads Christian Church.
Canberra, Australia.

You can get it emailed you by the Stated Clerk's office in Atlanta.

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No.

Actually for some Presbyteries in the PCA 6-day creationism is required. I know of several churches that have put it on their Pastor Search form as a requirement.

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Benjamin P. Glaser, M. Div, Licentiate, Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church
Member Fairmount ARP Church
Pittsburgh, PA

Deo Vindice

I think, though I don't know for sure, that exceptions on the Sabbath are tolerated. Exceptions on TULIP generally are not.

Why would an Arminian want to serve? There are Arminian churches, after all.

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The man who is disposed to think of his sin as a great calamity, rather than as a heinous crime, is not likely either to reverence God or to respect His law. - John Kennedy, 1873
Meg
Blog
Member, Intown Presbyterian Church,PCA, Portland, OR

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

Good question, Meg. And also why a particular Session would want them as well.

Hi Benjamin

Individual Sessions can be more picky than the denominational minimum standards. For instance, a Session may not allow theonomists as officers, even though the denomination as a whole allows them. A good reference for things like that is the PCA historical section, which has an area for position papers. The position papers for Creationism are good reading:

PCA Historical Center: Index to the Position Papers of the Presbyterian Church in America

Quote: What of exceptions to 6 day creationism or exclusive psalmody, for example, or heterodox views on the Sabbath? What does the PCA regard as automatically disqualifying?

Exclusive singing psalms is not generally viewed as required by the WCF or the Bible in either the PCA or OPC.

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JWithnell
Member Bethel OPC
Virginia
http://learningyesican.blogspot.com/

This is left up to each individual presbytery to decide what man is fit for the office by deciding what is and what is not the FUNDAMENTALS of the Westminster Standards.

NOTE: Good faith subscription is the worst thing that has happened, oh how I abhor it!

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Rev. Andrew J. Barnes
Husband of Dena
Father of Oliver
Master of Bruce
Pastor of Tchula Presbyterian Church

What can I say, I like blogs!

That's actually not true. Case like the Bowen case serve as denominational standards. No Baptist or denier of limited atonement can hold office in the PCA. Those ordained for whatever reason otherwise are termed "officers out of conformity" and it's left to the individual Session and Presbytery to decide how to handle the case.

That's why you get the "unordained Deacon" position, so Baptists, women and Arminians can be officers but not officers.

Yes, they should require a minister to hold to this.

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Stephen Welch
PCA Teaching Elder
Nova Scotia :cheers:

Yes you are right. A candidate cannot take an exception to the system or vitals of the faith. As a PCA elder I subscribe to full subscription. I find the PCA system subscription problematic and it opens the door for these kinds of exceptions.

Amen, brother. This good faith position that was passed by the GA a few years ago was one of the worst rulings I have seen. I am glad to see other PCA men like myself that oppose this.

Andrew,

YOu hate it because you have functioned in MS Valley PResbytery, and are thus on the "safe" side. I don't mean you are prejudiced against it because you're in a safe presbytery. I mean that you don't see how it actually has caused loose presbyteries to become more conscientious.

Now, thanks to Don Clements and others, presbyteries who grant exceptions have to explain why they granted it, and why it doesn't strike at the vitals. Previously, all that could simply be disregarded.

It also removes the liberty of the candidate from saying, "I don't consider this an exception," and (ideally), makes him state all his differences, and then allow the presbytery to declare what are exceptions, and whether or not they can be taught.

So, good faith actually tightens subscription in many settings.

As far as not ordaining non-six-dayers. Were Warfield, MAchen, Hodge, and Augustine faithful ministers in the invisible church? What gives us the right to deny them ordination if they were to appear before our courts today?

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Kenneth A. Pierce
Senior Minister
Trinity Presbyterian Church (PCA)
5301 Old Canton Rd.
Jackson, MS 39211
(601)977-0774
www.tpcjackson.org

The fact that godly men have held wrong opinions should not mean that the church should be required to continue tolerating these wrong opinions as greater light is obtained. This line of reasoning would make it difficult to exclude errors from the past simply because godly men have held them (like episcopacy, for one).

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Rev. Adam King
Minister in the RPCNA
Pastor,Trinity Reformed Church
Wichita, KS

I guess it leaves open the question if greater light has, necessarily, been obtained.

I have a lurking suspicion that we are still victims of thinking of time as a constant, which it is not: it is a function of relative velocity. And, certainly the timelessness of God is a factor we cannot understand. So, it may be literally true that a day is like a thousand years with the Lord.

Could the universe have been moving at such rapid speed that days themselves slowed to Millennia? Is this outside the realm of possibility?

This is why I do not like loose subscription. If something in the WCF is no longer considered essential for church officers to hold to, then the denomination should revise it. Otherwise strict subscription should be enforced.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

The RPCNA Testimony is the way to go IMHO. Use the 1646 edition and go from there. The Americans should have never "deleted" and "revised" sections of Westminster.

Yes, that is probably the best thing to do. A church should clearly state in an additional document which sections of the WCF it no longer adheres to and why. Strictly speaking, we cannot revise the WCF, as we are not the original authors.

If you're actually implying or stating that the PCA is a "loose" subscription denomination, then, according to the WLC, you are violating the 9th commandment.

Loose subscription would have accurately described the old Southern Presbyterian Church, where even among conservatives you had Arminians, charismatics, and dispensationalists.

The PCA achieved something astounding --to take the very diverse evangelicals in the Southern church, and meld them into a denomination that actually took the Confession seriously, particularly on matters of soteriology.

Thus, you will not find ARminians or dispensationalists in PCA pulpits today, some scant 35 years later.

The PCA is a subscriptionist denomination --every bit as subscriptionist as the OPC. But, it does allow men to hold differences with the WCF, as Professor Murray did.

LEt me ask a question: Do you believe the covenant of grace is made with believers (affirming a separate pactum salutis), or with Christ (seeing the pactum salutis as unnecessary)? To which of those positions do you subscribe? The confession says both. Which is the subscriptionist position?

Actually, this is one of the worst things to do. It is perhaps the greatest weakness of the RPCNA.

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Fred Greco
Senior Pastor, Christ Church PCA (Katy, TX)
Christ Church Blog

"The heart is the main thing in true religion...It is the hinge and turning-point in the condition of man's soul. If the heart is alive to God and quickened by the Spirit, the man is a living Christian. If the heart is dead and has not the Spirit, the man is dead before God." (J.C. Ryle)

Why do you say that Rev. Greco?

It is a backwards amending of the Standards without amending the Standards, and it actually has more authority to bind the conscience of all RPCNA ministers than the Confession itself.

If a man takes an exception to the Confession, that does not affect me. The RPCNA Testimony binds all RPCNA ministers, and I do not find that a good, or Confessional, or Biblical thing.

Also, I fail to see the difference between modifying the WCF or Catechisms and saying the constitutional documents "as modified by" and having a dual standard/commentary that effectively does the same thing, such as "rejecting everything after the colon" as the RPCNA does at CF 33.3.

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Chris Coldwell, Lakewood Presbyterian Church (PCA), Dallas, Texas.
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I am not sure about that, because as far as I am aware, the office bearers in the RPCNA are allowed to hold to the original, but not all office bearers have to.

Moreover, the RPCNA's testimony is a confessional-type document. This is perfectly legitimate, as the church has the authority to add to its confessional standards.

The difference is that we are not the authors of the Westminster Standards, so how dare we take it upon ourselves to edit them. After all, if I came along in 300 years time and edited Chris Coldwell's PB comments I am sure you would not be pleased.

Brother, I am not violating the ninth commandment as the PCA cannot be described as a strict subscriptionist denomination in any sense of the term. Okay, I am glad that the office bearers agree with the standards on soteriology, but there is no way that they are strict subscription denomination when it comes to worship. If you don't believe me, then listen to a recent sermon I posted by PCA minister Dr. Carl W. Bogue.

I have not looked into your last point enough to comment.

It should also be noted that when you allow individual ministers to take exceptions - without amending the Standards themselves (either by revision or commentary in an additional document - you have fundamentally undermined the authority of the church, as every man now gets to determine what is right in his own eyes with respect to confessional subscription. This also becomes a form of false advertising, because the denominations which allow for it claim to subscribe to the Westminster Standards, yet they permit office bearers to disagree with the official testimony of their church - which it is their duty to uphold.

Well, the difference in your analogy is that my writings are not binding doctrinal standards or public documents to boot. Again, at the point they are edited to change them they are no longer the Westminster Standards. They are the "WS as adopted by" or "doctrinal standards of xyz church"; if one wants to quibble over whether a denomination has the right to modify the original instead of creating one from whole cloth, have at it. I think by WCF 31.4 the divines imply their permission. Any way, I have better things to do than argue this since it is by default the American approach. All I'm saying is a testimony doesn't necessary give different results than cutting out sections wholesale.

Just my as a former officer (deacon) in the RPCNA - I took numerous exceptions to the Testimony and none to the original WCF.

The Testimony's authority supersedes that of the Confession in the RPCNA, which I find generally regrettable.

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Andrew

Andrew, your second point seems contrary to your first (not saying it is, just appears that way to me), because if the RPCNA allows you to hold to the original WCF, but take exceptions to its testimony, then how is it setting the testimony above the confession?

I would agree with your basic point, though I can see why a commentary in a testimony is a better approach.

The Testimony itself states that when the Testimony and Confession conflict, as they do in a number of places, the Testimony's authority has greater weight.

That said, the exceptions I took to the Testimony included positions which conflicted with the Confession directly, and matters which were not specifically addressed by the Confession.

The exceptions were made for me personally, but on a denomational level, it is the Testimony which outranks the Confession when the two conflict.

Spoken like a true Presbyterian Yes, why claim we hold to the Westminster Standards if we start taking exceptions to it.

That would mean that for the denomination, the teaching of the Testimony is to be preferred to the (original) Confession when the two conflict. However, this is no different from any denomination which revises the confession, as the decisions of a more recent church court take precedence over the confession as originally written.

I am starting to believe you misunderstand on purpose. Every man does NOT get to determine. Presbyters sitting in courts determine, as they have always done, throughout the whole history of the Christian church.

Once again, Daniel, nobody said the PCA was strict subscriptionist. There are more than two possibilities here, obviously, from the discussion. The point was we are not loose subscriptionists, as you accuse us of being.

YOu are an unabashed theonomist. Sinclair Ferguson and others have shown that theonomy is, at most generous of estimations, an exception. To be quite fair, I believe it strikes at the vitals of the system --Ferguson said if the first words out of your mouth about the civil law are not "It is abolished," you have turned Westminster on its head.

If you were honest about your subscription, you have to admit that you believe 19.4 to be erroneous, do you not?

Actually Sinclair Ferguson has been refuted by Martin Foulner's Theonomy and the Westminster Confession an annotated sourcebook of 60 pages of Theonomic quotes from early Reformed authors. Moroever, if you read the footnotes of the original Westminster Standards you will find that the penology of the Older Testament is quoted as part of the unchanging moral law of God.

Furthermore, WCF 19:4 does not say that all Biblical civil law has been abolished, instead it says that "sundry judicial laws" have "expired" as they cannot be literally applied outside of Israel (note the use of 1 Cor. 9 in the proof texts), nevertheless, even the general equity (justice or fairness) of these laws continues to bind all (and it appeals to Matt. 5:17 to establish this). Having said that, I would not have a problem agreeing with the statement (if you wish to express it this way) that the judicial laws of Moses (referring to ALL civil and social laws) has expired, except for what is applicable to all nations. It should be kept in mind that modern Theonomists do not teach that ALL of the judicial laws are to be applied today, as many of them were peculiar to Israel or expressed in circumstances which means they cannot be literally applied today.

I suggest looking into the matter further before accusing others of being unconfessional. If Theonomy is unconfessional, then the WCF is unconfessional. The idea that a particular view of the civil law strikes at the vitals of the system of the Westminster Standards is a clear over-statement.

So how can you claim your church believes "X" even though its office bearers do not believe "X". If the Presbyteries do not believe certain things are essential to holding office, then they should amend their standards.