I am particularly interested in hearing what our resident elders/pastors have to say on this, but by all means let the laymen be heard as well.

In a recent board poll, Do you view your respective confession as functionally infallible?, members here expressed their various positions on the confessions they hold to. How do our church leaders here feel about "loose subscription?" And if you hold a "strict subscription" position, what advice do you have for members (or potential members) who struggle with a point or more of your congregation's confession?

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Michael Turner, husband to Krystal and father of Jack
Brookwood Presbyterian Church, North Georgia

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Loose subscription is the way to lose a denomination in liberalism. Of course, that is not what "good faith" subscription is in the PCA, contrary to FV sympathizers. Here are the various terms, and what they mean. Strict subscription means that no exceptions are allowed. Good faith subscription means that all exceptions must be declared, and then the Presbytery trusts the candidate that there are no other exceptions. Loose subscription means that there is a confession within the confession ("as long as someone holds to the basic system within the confession, that's okay"). Now, do remember that in most Reformed churches, the members are not required to hold to the doctrinal standards. For instance, if someone believed in credobaptism, that would not necessarily be a bar to membership in a church which I was pastoring. It would be a bar to holding office, however. If someone were struggling with such a doctrine, they should examine the confession closely to see exactly what it says. Then they should ransack Scripture to see what Scripture says. Lastly, they should see what other godly men might have to say about it. They should struggle with their understanding, and especially talk with the pastor.

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Rev. Lane Keister
Teaching Elder, PCA, North Dakota (working out of bounds in a CRC and an RCA church)
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Loose Subscription? Then why subscribe at all? Its similar to being lukewarm i guess.

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Brian E
Attending Christ Reformed Baptist Church
Milwaukee, WI

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.

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Scott Roper
Member, Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA): "A bunch of hippie Calvinists"
Winston-Salem, NC

Is there is a requirement to record and report exceptions in the PCA at presbytery exams? i.e. review and control over all exceptions being made at presbytery level?

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Chris Coldwell
Lakewood Presbyterian Church (PCA), Member
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When heresy rises in an evangelical body, it is never frank and open. It always begins by skulking, and assuming a disguise. Its advocates, when together, boast of great improvements, and congratulate one another on having gone greatly beyond the ‘old dead orthodoxy,’ and on having left behind many of its antiquated errors: but when taxed with deviations from the received faith, they complain of the unreasonableness of their accusers, as they ‘differ from it only in words.’ This has been the standing course of errorists ever since the apostolic age. Samuel Miller, Introductory essay, The Articles of the Synod of Dort (1841).

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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.

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R.Vic Bottomly
Providence Reformed Baptist Church, Tacoma, WA

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OK, so I had the legal definition correct. What I don't get is why it's called "good faith subscription." Is it because the candidate with exceptions says, in effect, "here are my exceptions to the Standards, and I accept any consequences that might come from my exceptions"?

I think that is basically how it is supposed to work, and it is up to the Presbytery to decide whether or not the candidate indeed subscribes to the system of doctrine found in the standards or if his exceptions are such that they are inimical to the system of doctrine.

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Chris Poe--Attending Grace Community Baptist Church, Mandeville, LA

"There never was a man in the world without a creed. What is a creed? A creed is what you believe. What is a confession? It is a declaration of what you believe. That declaration may be oral or it may be committed to writing, but the creed is there either expressed or implied."—B.H. Carroll

"Good faith subscription" sounds like what we've generally termed "system subscription" (ie: we subscribe to the system of doctrine contained in the confession, though we might have some disagreements with particular points).

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Rae W. | Elder @ Grace Central Presbyterian Church | Columbus, OH
not another blog, v2.0

Hmmm. I know my church has a fellow officer who doesn't hold to paedo-baptism, but then others who "do", in that they simply don't care. I'd rather have the credo-baptist on board with me, promising not to make an issue out of it, than 5 folks that are just luke-warm and aquiescent on all issues.

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Andrew DeShazo, Deacon, Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Memphis, TN
"All of us stumble in many ways, but if anyone is never at fault in what he says, then he is mature, able to control his whole body."(James 3:2)

That raises an interesting question: should deacons be required to fully-subscribe to the standards since they are not in a teaching or ruling position? I do not see how someone being a Baptist, for instance, would be a hindrance to him carrying out the duties of a Deacon in a Presbyterian church.

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

To answer Raekwon, good faith subscription is not the same as system subscription, which is actually the same as loose subscription.

To answer Chris, an amendment was just passed last GA requiring all presbyteries to judge all differences as to whether they were exceptions or merely verbal differences.

Sounds like I've heard a different definition of system subscription, then. Are these somehow "official" definitions?

There's a lot of confusion out there, with some people using "system" to mean "loose," while others use it to mean "good-faith." I take it to mean that a person is subscribing to the system of the WCF, without detailing what is important about it and what isn't. In other words, a loose subscription. I don't there is any official description of system subscription anywhere, but the good faith subscription is definitely there in the minutes of GA, if you want to go scrounging around for it! ;-)

Charles Hodge addressed this issue from an old-school perspective. An article entitled What is the System of Doctrine? consists of Hodge's opinions from his book Church Polity edited by Machen and published in The Presbyterian Guardian in 1936.

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John T. Dyck
Pastor, Edmonton Bible Presbyterian Church
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