The past couple of weeks I have been vacationing with extended family
and doing more reading and thinking than writing here.  I finally had
time to concentrate on the book Seeking a better country:  300 years of
American Presbyterianism by D. G. Hart and John R. Muether (2007,
P&R Publishing).  As a GA Junkie, I have found it a fascinating read
that fills in a bunch of details about events that I’m generally
familiar with.  It provides an expanded version of Hart and Muether’s
great series of articles in New Horizons, a publication of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.  (I was not the only one reading this on vacation this summer.)

As they trace American Presbyterian history and get closer to the
modern day their OPC perspective becomes a bit more significant in both
an obvious protagonist as well as one basic thesis of the work.  They
do a good job of developing this thesis and (spoiler alert) I’ll
mention it in my discussion below. (Don’t read on if you want it
developed their way.)

So, in tracing our history they show how we
Presbyterians are still involved in the same types of dysfunctional
behavior, if not necessarily arguing over the same issues, that have been part of our collective history for over 300 years now.  For them, the root problem can be summed up as “Presbyterian Identity” and if we have any now, and maybe whether we every really had it.

Part I of the book deals with American Presbyterian History from 1706
to 1789.  If those years don’t immediately register with you, 1706 is
the establishment of the first presbytery, and 1789 the first meeting
of the General Assembly.  But Presbyterian history in this time period
is dominated by the Adopting Act of 1729, a document which still casts
a long shadow even today.

If the Adopting Act does not ring a bell, it may surprise you that the
PC(USA)’s current controversies have a direct lineage back to the
Adopting Act.  It is the originating document for the concept of
“scrupling” which was recommended by the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity and which the PC(USA) has been trying to
figure out the last few years.

The Adopting Act of 1729 dealt with the need for doctrinal unity
through subscription to the Westminster Standards at a time when the Presbyterian church was looking for something to unite them.  Throughout the book it is Hart and Muether’s argument, at least as I read it, that the Westminster Standards are central to our “Presbyterian Identity” so that departing from them is to confuse or blur, if not abandon, our identity.  It is interesting
to note that within American Presbyterianism today I think that almost all the other
American Presbyterian branches, other than the PC(USA), still has subscription to the Standards, or one of the American revisions (that is another topic).

So where does “scrupling” fit in?  The Adopting Act says:

All the Ministers of this Synod now present, except one, [list of ministers deleted] after proposing all the scruples that
any of them had to make against any articles and expressions in the Confession
of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Assembly of Divines
at Westminster, have unanimously agreed in the solution of those scruples,
and in declaring the said Confession and Catechisms to be the confession
of their faith, excepting only some clauses in the twentieth and twenty-third
chapters, concerning which clauses the Synod do unanimously declare, that
they do not received those articles in any such sense as to suppose the
civil magistrate hath a controlling power over Synods with respect to
the exercise of their ministerial authority; or power to persecute any
for their religion, or in any sense contrary to the Protestant succession
to the throne of Great Britain.

The Synod observing that unanimity, peace, and unity, which appeared
in all their consultations and determinations relating to the affair of
the Confession, did unanimously agree in giving thanks to God in solemn
prayer and praises.

While the Task Force report mentions this as the origin of scrupling, it does not point out that what was scrupled were not sections dealing with what we usually think of as central Christian doctrine, but were clauses dealing with the civil magistrate and church and state relationships, something that was more attuned to the state church environment the Westminster Standards were written in than colonial America.  But the book also makes clear that ever since the church has been arguing over what is “essential.”

It is important to note that the content of these passages was pointed out at the time of the release of the Task Force report by, among others, Toby Brown on Classical Presbyterian.

Another interesting note is that the very next year the Synod (at that time the highest governing body) was overtured for clarification of what could be exceptions, and their response was that they understood the clauses that were open to exception “in the same manner, and as fully as the members of Synod did, that were then present.”  In other words they pointed to their exceptions from the year before.

Now I am nowhere close to being an expert on the Adopting Act, but Hart and Muether, while acknowledging disagreements and ambiguity in strict subscription, seem to hold up these limited points of departure as what was acceptable to the original 1729 Synod and reaffirmed by the 1730 Synod.

But the outward unity of the American Presbyterian church only lasted another decade until 1741 when there was the Old Side/New Side split over “experiential” requirements for ordination in some New Side presbyteries.  These presbyteries were looking for “spiritual zeal” demonstrated in, among other things, having a conversion experience.  This was brought to a head by the arrival of George Whitefield and the “Great Awakening.”  (Note: Don’t confuse this with the much more serious and prolonged Old School/New School division of the next century.)

But one of the issues that was heavily debated was the role of Synod in ordaining candidates.  While New Side leaders passionately argued for presbytery sovereignty, Old Side members wanted some assurance of doctrinal consistency in the process.  (Sound familiar?)

Interestingly, after the division the New Side instituted creedal subscription and presbytery adherence to synod decisions.  The Old Side and New Side were really not too far apart and for much of the 17 year division were in correspondence about reunion.  While not exactly the same, there may be a modern echo here in some of the renewal groups calls for “parallel” churches, or as the PFR statement says “remaining engaged but distinct.”

One of the interesting results of reunion was that in places the two Sides did remain engaged but distinct with the perpetuation of Old Side and New Side presbyteries.  In particular there was the New Side Philadelphia Presbytery and the Old Side Second Presbytery of Philadelphia.  To anyone following the last two PC(USA) General Assemblies it is interesting to note that there is a precedent for the affinity presbyteries for which there have been overtures.  And it is also interesting to note that Second of Philadelphia continued almost right up to the Old School/New School split of 1838.

Finally, there are multiple echoes of the theological education controversy of that time period.  There was an on-going discussion and dispute over the “Log College” in Pennsylvania.  While it is an indirect predecessor of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), the Log College itself was a small theological training institution tied to the New Side and revivalism.  The discussions held then about the educational depth of ministers trained at the Log College versus the larger institutions like Harvard, Yale or European Universities sounds almost exactly like the discussions currently happening in the Church of Scotland over whether ministers can be trained at the Highland Theological College or whether they must get their education at the larger established universities like Edinburgh or Glasgow.

But the subscription question related to theological education that was present in the controversy around the Log College is also present today in the controversy related to Prof. Peter Enns departure from Westminster Theological Seminary.  In a current article on the WTS web site, Carl Trueman, Vice-president for Academic Affairs discusses the idea that academic freedom does not trump confessional standards and the need for a seminary to adhere to denominational norms.  (H/T: Heidelblog)

Now, I have been intentionally brief in summarizing these controversies because my focus here was simply to note that in my reading the book it struck me that “there is nothing new under the sun.”  In any one of these controversies there is a lot more depth and complexity that I did not touch upon.  Further investigation of those is left as an exercise for the reader.

But across different Presbyterian branches today we are sill engaged in discussions about theological, doctrinal, and polity tensions that have been with us since the founding of American Presbyterianism.  “Reformed and Always Reforming According to the Word of God”