OPC History

Pergamum · #1 (**permalink**) 05-05-2009, 05:10 AM

FROM ANOTHER THREAD:

"The OPC did not accept the 1903 additions "Of the Holy Spirit" and "Of the Love of God and Missions" and a Declaratory Statement softening the Confession's position on Election."

Can I have some history on this?

What was wrong with these documents, and are there links to these documents?

***toddpedlar*** · #2 (**permalink**) 05-05-2009, 06:16 AM

Here are the additions:

Quote:

Chapter 34. Of the Holy Spirit.

1. The Holy Spirit, the third Person in the Trinity, proceeding from the Father and the Son, of the same substance and equal in power and glory, is, together with the Father and Son, to be believed in, loved, obeyed, and worshipped throughout all ages.a

a. 2 Cor 13:14; John 15:26; Mat 28:19; Mat 3:16; Luke 1:35; Eph 4:30; Heb 10:29; 1 Cor 10:10-11; Rev 22:17; Eph 2:18-20; Eph 2:22; John 14:26; John 16:7; Gal 4:6; Acts 5:3-4; Acts 16:6-7; Mark 3:29; Rom 8:26-27; 1 John 2:20-27.

2. He is the Lord and Giver of life, everywhere present, and is the source of all good thoughts, pure desires, and holy counsels in men. By him the prophets were moved to speak the Word of God, and all the writers of the Holy Scriptures inspired to record infallibly the mind and will of God. The dispensation of the gospel is especially committed to him. He prepares the way for it, accompanies it with his persuasive power, and urges its message upon the reason and conscience of men, so that they who reject its merciful offer are not only without excuse, but are also guilty of resisting the Holy Spirit.a

a. Eph 4:30; Eph 5:9; Gen 1:2; John 3:5; Acts 2:1-21; Gal 5:22-25; John 16:8-11; 2 Pet 1:21; 2 Tim 3:16; 1 Cor 2:10; 1 Pet 1:11; John 16:13-15; Acts 7:51; 1 Thes 5:19; Eph 4:30; Psa 104:30.

3. The Holy Spirit, whom the Father is ever willing to give to all who ask him, is the only efficient agent in the application of redemption. He regenerates men by his grace, convicts them of sin, moves them to repentance, and persuades and enables them to embrace Jesus Christ by faith. He unites all believers to Christ, dwells in them as their Comforter and Sanctifier, gives to them the Spirit of adoption and prayer, and performs all those gracious offices by which they are sanctified and sealed unto the day of redemption.a

a. John 3:1-8; Acts 2:38; Luke 11:13; 1 Cor 12:3; John 7:37-39; John 16:13; John 16:7-11; Rev 22:17; Titus 3:5-7; 2 Thes 2:13; Gal 4:6; 1 John 4:2; Rom 8:14; Rom 8:17; Rom 8:26-27; Eph 4:30; 1 Cor 2:13-14.

4. By the indwelling of the Holy Spirit all believers being vitally united to Christ, who is the head, are thus united one to another in the Church, which is his body. He calls and anoints ministers for their holy office, qualifies all other officers in the Church for their special work, and imparts various gifts and graces to its members. He gives efficacy to the Word and to the ordinances of the gospel. By him the Church will be preserved, increased, purified, and at last made perfectly holy in the presence of God.a

a. Eph 2:14-18; Eph 4:1-6; Eph 5:18; Acts 2:4; Acts 13:2; 1 Cor 12; 2 Pet 1:19-21; 1 Thes 1:5-6; John 20:22-23; Mat 28:19-20.
Chapter 35. Of the Gospel of the Love of God and Missions.

1. God in infinite and perfect love, having provided in the covenant of grace, through the mediation and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, a way of life and salvation, sufficient for and adapted to the whole lost race of man, doth freely offer this salvation to all men in the gospel.a

a. Rev 22:17; John 3:16; 1 John 2:1-2; Acts 2:38-39; Mat 11:28-30; 2 Cor 5:14-19; Titus 2:11; Heb 2:9; Luke 24:46-47.

2. In the gospel God declares his love for the world and his desire that all men should be saved; reveals fully and clearly the only way of salvation; promises eternal life to all who truly repent and believe in Christ; invites and commands all to embrace the offered mercy; and by his Spirit accompanying the Word pleads with men to accept his gracious invitation.a

a. Mat 28:19-20; Acts 4:12; John 6:37-40; John 17:3; Acts 16:31; Acts 2:38; Gal 2:16-20; Rom 1:16-17; Rom 4:5; Acts 13:38-39; Acts 13:48; 2 Pet 3:9; Mat 11:28-30; Mark 1:14-15; Acts 17:30; Rev 22:17; Ezek 33:11; Isa 1:18; Luke 13:34.

3. It is the duty and privilege of everyone who hears the gospel immediately to accept its merciful provisions; and they who continue in impenitence and unbelief incur aggravated guilt and perish by their own fault.a

a. Heb 2:3; Heb 12:25; Acts 13:46; Mat 10:32-33; Luke 12:47-48; Heb 10:29.

4. Since there is no other way of salvation than that revealed in the gospel, and since in the divinely established and ordinary method of grace faith cometh by hearing the Word of God, Christ hath commissioned his Church to go into all the world and to make disciples of all nations. All believers are, therefore, under obligation to sustain the ordinances of the Christian religion where they are already established, and to contribute by their prayers, gifts, and personal efforts to the extension of the Kingdom of Christ throughout the whole earth.a

a. Acts 4:12; Mat 28:19-20; Acts 1:8; Rom 10:13-15; Heb 10:19-25; Gal 3:28; 1 Cor 16:1-2; Mat 9:36-38; Acts 13:2-4; Col 3:16; Rev 22:17; Col 1:28-29.

Also important in 1903 was the addition of the following Declaratory statement, which quite literally eviscerates some key portions of the WCF's teaching on election and God's sovereignty:

Quote:

The following statement was also added to the Confession by the PCUSA in the year 1903,(156) and is included in the Confession as adopted and published by the UPCUSA in 1958 and the PC(USA) in 1983.

Declaratory Statement.

While the ordination vow of ministers, ruling elders, and deacons, as set forth in the Form of Government, requires the reception and adoption of the Confession of Faith only as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures, nevertheless, seeing that the desire has been formally expressed for a disavowal by the Church of certain inferences drawn from statements in the Confession of Faith, and also for a declaration of certain aspects of revealed truth which appear at the present time to call for more explicit statement, therefore the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America does authoritatively declare as follows:

First, with reference to Chapter 3 of the Confession of Faith: that concerning those who are saved in Christ, the doctrine of God's eternal decree is held in harmony with the doctrine of his love to all mankind, his gift of his Son to be the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, and his readiness to bestow his saving grace on all who seek it; that concerning those who perish, the doctrine of God's eternal decree is held in harmony with the doctrine that God desires not the death of any sinner, but has provided in Christ a salvation sufficient for all, adapted to all, and freely offered in the gospel to all; that men are fully responsible for their treatment of God's gracious offer; that his decree hinders no man from accepting that offer; and that no man is condemned except on the ground of his sin.

Second, with reference to Chapter 10, Section 3, of the Confession of Faith, that it is not to be regarded as teaching that any who die in infancy are lost. We believe that all dying in infancy are included in the election of grace, and are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who works when and where and how he pleases.

***toddpedlar*** · #3 (**permalink**) 05-05-2009, 06:17 AM

Here are comments by D. G. Hart and John Muether on these additions:

Quote:

Turning Points in American Presbyterian History
Part 8: Confessional Revision in 1903
D. G. Hart and John R. Muether

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, industrial development and technological progress promised to usher in an age of unprecedented opportunity for America. Northern Presbyterians, recently reunited, were prepared to serve the spiritual needs of the nation with a spirit of self-confidence.

The greatest apostle of Presbyterian progress was Charles A. Briggs (1841�1913). As professor of Hebrew and cognate languages at Union Theological Seminary in New York, Briggs actively promoted higher-critical approaches to the Bible. He was also a leading advocate of Protestant church union. Both of these causes were in the interest of religious progress. "Progress in religion, in doctrine, and in life," he wrote, "is demanded of our age of the world more than any other age."

But there was an obstacle that prevented Presbyterians from fully embracing the spirit of the age, and that was their rigid commitment to a theology of the past. So Briggs also went around promoting revision to the Westminster Confession of Faith, especially in his 1889 book Whither? A Theological Question for the Times.

Briggs's argument was twofold. First, he claimed that the contemporary supporters of the Confession had actually distorted the spirit of its teaching. "Modern Presbyterianism," he charged, "had departed from the Westminster Standards" and a "false orthodoxy had obtruded itself" in its place. That false teaching�what he labeled "orthodoxism"�was coming from Princeton Seminary, principally in the defense of biblical authority championed by A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield. Briggs wrote:

Orthodoxism assumes to know the truth and is unwilling to learn; it is haughty and arrogant, assuming the divine prerogatives of infallibility and inerrancy; it hates the truth that is unfamiliar to it, and prosecutes it to the uttermost. But orthodoxy loves the truth. It is ever anxious to learn, for it knows how greatly the truth of God transcends human knowledge.... It is meek, lowly, and reverent. It is full of charity and love. It does not recognize an infallible pope; it does not bow to an infallible theologian.

Although critical of the alleged innovations from Princeton Seminary, Union Seminary's Old School rival, Briggs did not advocate merely removing a supposed Princetonian gloss from the Westminster Confession. Presbyterians, he argued, must also acknowledge the inadequacies and errors of the Confession. Since progress was of the essence of genuine Presbyterianism, the Confession itself encouraged its adjustment "to the higher knowledge of our times and the still higher knowledge that the coming period of progress in theology will give us." Failure to take this step would be to retreat to the errors of Rome and to abandon the very principles of the Reformation.

Briggs was tapping into a growing consensus in the church, which had begun to form no later than the reunion of 1869, that the harder Calvinistic edges of the Confession needed to be softened. In the words of Benjamin J. Lake, "Some of the time-honored rigidity in the Westminster Confession seemed obsolete to many Presbyterians." Typically, Presbyterian rigidity was spelled p-r-e-d-e-s-t-i-n-a-t-i-o-n.

At the same time, former Old Schoolers feared the rise of "broad churchism" and anticonfessionalism. But if Briggs's proposals outraged conservatives, the spirit and the terms of the 1869 reunion discouraged efforts to discipline him. That reticence ended in 1891, however, when Briggs delivered an address on "The Authority of Holy Scripture." Given upon the occasion of his induction to the chair of biblical studies at Union, immediately after his solemn resubscribing to the Westminster standards, this lecture was a broadside against the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture taught in them. "I shall venture to affirm that, so far as I can see, there are errors in the Scriptures that no one has been able to explain away; and the theory that they are not in the original text is a sheer assumption."

Conservative reaction was swift. Sixty-three presbyteries presented overtures to the General Assembly, calling for action. The 1891 Assembly voted overwhelmingly (449 to 60) to veto Briggs's appointment at Union, and the 1893 Assembly found him guilty of heresy and suspended him from the ministry. Union's board of directors refused to accept the decision, and so it "divorced" itself from denominational oversight and retained Briggs on its faculty.

The Briggs trial prompted the defeat of a plan for confessional revision in 1893. Briggs himself eventually left for the Episcopalian Church, but the push for revision continued. Thirty-four presbyteries sent overtures for revision to the 1900 Assembly, and that Assembly appointed a study committee of fifteen, which included a former U.S. President (Benjamin Harrison) and a sitting Supreme Court justice (John Harlan). One who was invited, but declined to serve, was Princeton's Benjamin B. Warfield. "It is an inexpressible grief," he wrote, to see the church "spending its energies in a vain attempt to lower its testimony to suit the ever changing sentiment of the world around it." Warfield's lament would persuade few. In an era when change was a sign of health, his dissent sounded, in the words of an opponent, as a call for the "harmony of standing still." Briggs may have left the church, but clearly his spirit lived on.

Despite some support for a major overhaul, a compromise prevailed that effected minor revisions to the Confession. In 1903 the church added two chapters on "The Holy Spirit" and "The Love of God and Missions." Both were crafted with language that was vaguely biblical and not distinctively Reformed. In addition, the church revised chapter 16, article 7, which described the works of the unregenerate. Where these works were formerly described as "sinful and cannot please God," the revised language described them as "praiseworthy." Perhaps of greatest significance was the inclusion of a "Declaratory Statement" that sought to explain the Confession's doctrine of election. In words that many accused of being deliberately ambiguous, the statement offered an "avowal ... of certain inferences" about predestination, softening the doctrine for those who found it offensive and contradictory to the doctrine of human freedom.

Presbyterians for the most part reacted enthusiastically to these changes. It was a preservation of "generic Calvinism" in the judgment of many. Henry Van Dyke carefully framed the results within the mainstream of Calvinist orthodoxy: "These two truths," he wrote, "God's sovereignty in the bestowal of his grace, and his infinite love for all men, are the hinges and turning points of all Christian theology. The anti-Calvinist decries the first. The hyper-Calvinist or Supralapsarian decries the second, holding that God creates some men on purpose to damn them, for his glory. The true Calvinist believes both and insists that they are consistent." The Philadelphia Public Ledger echoed Van Dyke's sentiments. The revisions to the Confession left its basic Calvinism intact while managing "to render it instantly so much more congenial to the modern mind."

Years later, Princeton historian Lefferts Loetscher was more candid when he described alterations as a "change to Arminianism." By these revisions, he wrote, "the Remonstrants of the Synod of Dort ... finally won recognition" in American Presbyterianism. Evidence for Loetscher's interpretation can be found in the reunion that took place on the heels of revision, when the Arminian prodigals of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church reunited with the Northern Presbyterians in 1906. Two years later, Presbyterians were leaders in the formation of the Federal Council of Churches, the institution that would emerge as the voice for mainline or (as evangelicals called it) "liberal" Protestantism.

Confessional revision, then, opened the church to an ecumenical age. But that was not its only consequence. Equally significant was the effect it generated among conservatives, who began at this time to adopt new strategies for fighting the rise of liberalism in the Presbyterian Church. Beginning with the Portland Deliverance, which was adopted by the 1892 Assembly and affirmed the verbal inspiration of Scripture in opposition to the heresy of Briggs, resistance to modernism in the Presbyterian Church took the form of defending the "necessary and essential" elements of the church's teaching, especially the so-called fundamentals of the faith. In the Portland Deliverance and other declarations that followed in 1910, 1916, and 1923, conservative Presbyterians sought to italicize certain doctrines as the Bible's truly nonnegotiables, rather than the Confession itself as containing the system of doctrine found in the Scriptures. In one sense, then, the progressives were right: the Confession was becoming obsolete for many Presbyterians, and confessional identity was vanishing, not only quickly on the left, but also gradually on the right.

Dr. Hart is the director of fellowship programs and scholar in residence at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, Del.; Mr. Muether is the librarian at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Fla., and the historian of the OPC; both are OP ruling elders and members of the Committee on Christian Education. Reprinted from New Horizons, August/September 2005.

yeutter · #4 (**permalink**) 05-05-2009, 06:38 AM

As a result of these changes to the confession of faith of the Presbyterian Church USA union with the majority of the white Cumberland Church was achieved. This further weakened the Reformed character of the Presbyterian Church USA.

***NaphtaliPress*** · #5 (**permalink**) 05-05-2009, 08:06 AM

Murray and Stonehouse on the 1903 changes:
Articles on the 1903 Revisions of the Confession of Faith by Murray and Stonehouse - The PuritanBoard

jwithnell · #6 (**permalink**) 05-05-2009, 08:14 AM

These changes are still part of the confessions used by the mainline church -- confessions plural because in the late 1960s, it adopted a pantheon of confessions from which members and clergy may choose; pick a confession, any confession.

Scott1 · #7 (**permalink**) 05-05-2009, 08:40 AM

Quote:

Westminster Confession of Faith

Chapter XVI
Of Good Works

Works done by unregenerate men, although, for the matter of them, they may be things which God commands, and of good use both to themselves and others; yet, because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith; nor are done in a right manner, according to the word; nor to a right end, the glory of God; they are therefore sinful, and cannot please God, or make a man meet to receive grace from God. And yet their neglect of them is more sinful, and displeasing to God.

Quote:

Revision

The revised form as adopted by the Presbyterian Church, in the U.S.A. reads: “Works done by unregenerate men, although for the matter of them they may be things which God commands, and in themselves praiseworthy and useful, and although the neglect of such things is sinful and displeasing unto God; yet, because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith; nor are done in a right manner, according to His Word.; nor to a right end, the glory of God; they come short of what God requires, and do not make any man meet to receive the grace of God.”

Mr Murray's summary of the purpose in revision (link post#5):

Quote:

The revision says that the works done by unregenerate men come short of what God requires, yet that the neglect of them is sinful and displeasing to God. But it refrains from saying what is really the central point of the indictment urged by the original Confession, namely, that they are sinful and cannot please God, and therefore that the neglect of them is not simply sinful, but “more sinful and displeasing unto God.” The purpose and effect of this revision is to elevate the works of unregenerate men to a position not accorded them in Scripture, or at least to refrain from bringing to bear upon them the full measure of the divine condemnation. So there has been successfully eliminated from the Confession at least one emphatic assertion of the doctrine of total depravity,

So, one of these changes was to "water down" or bring ambiguity, and thus invite subjectivity, to the doctrine of total depravity.

Yet Scripture calls us to have it definitively settle what we are to believe and what is true (I Timothy 3:16), to have faith (and ask for it) that it is true (Hebrews 11:6), to seek clarity and order (I Corinthians 14:33), and to ask God for understanding (James 1:5).

This is one of the effects of "modernism," whether understood completely by its adherents or not, it tends to bring ambiguity, subjectivity and confusion either because they do not understand the doctrine in the first place, do not believe it, or somehow believe it a virtue not to definitively believe it.

It's a difficult doctrine of Scripture to accept that works that seem "good" to us outwardly are in fact "evil" if not done with an inward heart of obeying and loving our God. The reformers called these outward good deeds, works of "civil virtue."

Our fallen nature wants to assign intrinsic value and thus at least imply some merit toward salvation in doing them, reasoning that our assessment of the outward working of the "good" work should count. But the Confession is summarizing doctrine of scripture, and the spiritual nature of good works.

One might ask, are ambiguity, subjectivity and confusion qualities to be sought for God's people?