LITMIR.BIZ

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I. THE PROPOSAL TO REVISE THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION.^[1]

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      If we may judge by the comments of the secular and undenominational press, the recent action of the Presbyterian General Assembly in inquiring of its presbyteries whether they desire a revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith, is likely to be much misapprehended by those who are insufficiently acquainted with all the circumstances of the case. It may seem natural to infer from such an action, that the Presbyterians, speaking through their highest court, are proposing to themselves a rather thorough-going revision of the doctrinal basis on which they have so long stood; that such an agitation could not arise save in response to a wide-spread, spontaneous movement in the Church, by which a large body of its ministers and adherents have drifted into a position of opposition to ​the doctrines taught in the Westminster Confession of Faith, or at least of dissatisfaction with the way in which they are taught in it; and that the movement thus begun is sure to issue in extensive changes of the mode of statement or of the doctrines themselves of the Westminster Standards, if not in the total discarding of them as antiquated relics of a past age and the substitution for them of a new creed more accordant with the living faith of the Church. Nevertheless, no one of these inferences is justified by the facts. The sole legitimate deduction is rather that the Presbyterian Church is so true to its profession that God alone, speaking in His Word, is "Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men," and so jealous of the rights of the Church as over against its subordinate standards, which are its creation, not its mistress: that it keeps constantly before itself the expression of its testimony to doctrine, and thus secures that that testimony shall always remain the living voice of the Church bearing its witness to the truth of God, as it apprehends and lives by it.

      I.

      The present overture does not contemplate change of doctrine, and does not explicitly propose change even in the statement of doctrine. In its preamble it recites as the ground on which it bases itself:

      "Whereas, Overtures have come to this General Assembly from fifteen Presbyteries … asking for some revision of the Confession of Faith; and whereas, in the opinion of many of our ministers and people, some forms of statement in our Confession of Faith are liable to misunderstanding, and expose our system of doctrine to unmerited criticism."

      Here no dissatisfaction with the doctrine itself is recited; rather it is suggested that criticism of the doctrine is ​unmerited and the fruit of misunderstanding, and may be remedied by a more careful and better statement of the same doctrine. It is only revision of "forms of statement," then, that is contemplated in the overture. And it avoids going so far as to propose even this. The preamble continues:

      "And whereas, Before any definite steps should be taken for revision of our Standards, it is desirable to know whether there is any general desire for such revision."

      The "revision of our Standards" here is, of course, the kind of revision defined in the preceding clause, and this sense is necessarily carried over to the concluding resolution:

      "Therefore, resolved, That this General Assembly overture to the Presbyteries the following questions: 1. Do you desire a revision of the Confession of Faith? 2. If so, in what respects and to what extent?"

      If anything were needed to vindicate the foregoing exposition of the meaning of the overture, it would be supplied by the brief debate that was held in the Assembly upon its adoption. It was adopted just in this form on the distinct ground that it was a colorless inquiry into the will of the presbyteries, and did not propose either revision or no revision to them; and so little was it thought to concern the substance of any doctrine that the moderator ruled that the introduction of doctrinal discussion into the debate concerning it was out of order.

      II.

      That even this colorless overture was not the outgrowth of any general and spontaneous movement in the Church, the history of its origination in the Assembly sufficiently shows. Its origin is traced to an overture sent up by the

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      Presbytery of Nassau to the General Assembly of 1888, asking for the revision of the third chapter of the Confession of Faith (that on "God's Eternal Decree") on the ground that "in its present form it goes beyond the Word of God, and is opposed to the convictions and repugnant to the feelings of very many of our most worthy and thoughtful members." That the Assembly did not consider the matter very urgent is sufficiently evinced by its neglecting to act on it further than by referring it to the next Assembly. In the interval between the two Assemblies, the Presbytery of Nassau made a strong effort to enlist the Church at large in its overture, sending a circular letter out requesting the co-operation of the other presbyteries. The success of the effort was not striking—the great majority of the presbyteries paying no attention to the request, and the great majority of those who did take up the matter refusing in one way or another (usually by laying the appropriate motion on the table) to enter into the movement. Only some fifteen presbyteries out of upward of two hundred responded by appropriate action; and it was in answer to their request thus obtained that the Assembly passed the overture. Even this meagre result, we shrewdly suspect, does not represent an impulse wholly native to our soil or Church. In these days of easy communication the ends of the earth are brought very close together, and contagion is easy if not unavoidable. It is significant that the Committee of the Presbytery of Nassau, in urging co-operation on the other presbyteries, were not willing to rest their appeal on the merits of the case; but were careful to adduce the examples of the Scotch United Presbyterians and the Presbyterian Church of England. And the contagion of the present restlessness of the foreign Presbyterian Churches in their relation to the Confession of Faith, appears to us to be the source of all the apparent strength

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      the present movement has among us. The adduction of the example of these foreign Churches—and, much more, any attempt to imitate it—is, however, the fruit of a misapprehension. Their struggles now are simply efforts to attain some such free and yet safe relation to the Confession of Faith as the American Church has enjoyed ever since it adopted the Westminster Symbols in 1729. From the very beginning, the American Church, whose present formula asks of its office-bearers acceptance of the Westminster Standards only as containing "the system of doctrine" which they believe to be true and Scriptural, has possessed all the liberty which the Free and Established Churches of Scotland, for example, are now seeking. Up to to-day those Churches have required confession

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