The Forming of the PCA: Part 1

There are many questions circulating out there by some elders of the PCA concerning the future of our denomination.  Since this is a Pastoral blog, I believe it a good thing to look back at some of the writings of the fathers of our denomination as they were nearing the end of the PCUS and considering themselves what was to become of their own denomination, which in the end led to the formation of the PCA.  I believe we can learn from them, and so the following is Part 1 of this little series looking back to 'the fathers of the PCA.'  Please take time to read the entirety though it is long for a blog.  Trust me this is crucial. 

Take note of the year this was written and also that this is a transcription of a public speech (address) and was transcribed on a typewriter.  Therefore, you will notice many spelling errors.  They didn't have spell check in those days I am afraid.

August 1967 Address on Presbyterian Journal Day

By W. Jack Williamson

Fathers and Brethren - it is with no small degree of trembling and trepidation that I, as a novice, address such a group of distinguished divines whose wisdom, knowledge, experience and spiritual acumen so engulfs and eclipses mine. But perhaps, in my naivety, you may find a fresh breeze of hope, even in my obvious over-simplifications, and a genuine thrill "enrapport" of The Spirit - as the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above. But unabashed and unashamed do I speak as a disciple of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ whom I now publicly affirm to be The Son of the Living God, who came upon this planet to give his life a ransom for many, in which category, by His Grace, I am privileged to be included, not because of what I am but in spite of what I am - chief among sinners and faltering among his followers.

I am a Concerned Presbyterian because I am a Christian. And I discern trends in the Presbyterian Church of the United States which I believe are serious departures from the basic principles and teachings of the Christian faith.

First. To my mind the Church being "the bride of Christ" has as her primary mission - to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the souls of sinners and thereafter to nurture them in the faith. There seems to be a designed and deliberate effort in our church to change the attitude of the average church member toward the fundamental message and mission of the church. Instead of individualized Christianity we have institutionalized religion. The basic doctrine of regeneration is being replaced by a spurious doctrine of reformation. This is my main objection to the National Council of Churches. Its primary thrust seems to be in the creation of a super-church which becomes directly involved in economic, political and social issues in order to reform the world, forgetting the basic necessity for regeneration - such is the involvement of the National Council of Churches in Mississippi Delta project last year, its continuing political lobby in Washington that makes profession to speak for Protestants in this nation on legislation, foreign policy, etc., and its theory of evangelism as expressed in a Huntington, W. Va. Presbyterian pulpit by a member of the Department of Evangelism of the National Council of Churches in these heretical words:

"God has already won a mighty redemption, not only for us but for the entire world...The redemption of the world is not dependent upon the souls we win to Jesus Christ...God does not deal with each men as an isolated individual. There cannot be individual salvation...Salvation has more to do with the whole society than with the individual souls...It is for these reasons that contemporary evangelism is moving away from winning souls one by one to the evangelization of the structures of society." (sic)

This theory, philosophy or sociology seems to me to place primary emphasis upon service rather than salvation - i.e. that the church as a corporate body, through its official leadership as ministers, officers, boards, agencies and committees should become directly involved in community service as its consuming goal, and spend its principal energy directly promoting such things as better housing, better education, better recreation, better working conditions, etc. There is a grave danger that such promotion demotes the church from its status of a divine institution "in the world but not of the world" to just another noble and worthwhile service club. The degree to which this philosophy has permeated our society was clearly illustrated to me the other day in my own civic club. We have 65 members. This was the day for passing out perfect attendance pins. We had one member who had perfect attendance for 20 years. Another member had perfect attendance for 19 years. Several members who had perfect attendance for over 15 years. And over a third of the membership had perfect attendance for more than 5 years. As these pins were being passed out I heard one of the members jokingly remark, "Don't tell the preacher about this". What a classic truth in that jest. I don't believe there is a church in our town that has the fidelity of membership as does this civic club. Members will drive miles to make up a meeting. On vacation they will look up a place to make a meeting - not so for the church. There is a great danger that the church becoming just another eleemosynary agency with a tremendous potential for good community service but with only an incidental relationship to the salvation of souls through faith in Jesus Christ. It almost seems archaic to contend that the church's primary mission is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, that those who are chosen may be called by faith to Jesus and born again - this time, spiritually; and after this new birth, then to go out into the world as His disciples, to serve, to do good and to reform its errors in His Name. The church is mission: but this is her mission: and we must recall her to it.

SECONDLY, another alarming tendency in our church is the abrogation of the position that truth is an absolute which the church seeks to express in its basic doctrines to the popular position that truth is relative to each age and to each human conscience. Basic doctrines of our faith and their objects are no longer absolute verities; but we are told "the gospel must be made relevant to our times". Emotionally the whole age is in petulant revolt against order and truth - Illustration: the new morality. Such revolt ultimately means a revolt against God. It springs from the hatred of all discipline which is the last corruption of human nature. Intellectually we live in a defeated age. The age has lost its bearings. The cement of faith has crumbled. We have forgotten our creeds and flounder in a theological chaos. The climate of our day is one of intellectual pride with the insistence that faith is relative and that nothing is absolute. Neat slogans typify this trend - "We preach Christ: not a creed" "Let us propagate the gospel, not argue about it" - But my answer is that "if the trumpet give an uncertain sound who shall prepare himself for the battle". Let us sound forth the truth but let us be sure that that which we sound is the truth. Almighty God has become "Our ultimate ground for being". The racial crisis, not sin, has made the gospel relevant to our times. In our national as in our church life we Christians have failed to raise a standard to which the wise and just can repair leaving the rest in the hands of Almighty God. But instead each man has his own standard of the truth as it seems to him and this becomes a truth for him and others acting "responsibly in love" must tolerate his position as his truth. Hence emotionally, intellectually and spiritually we have utter chaos; and some men are trying to restore some order by simply getting everybody together regardless of their beliefs - the great ecumenical movement, it is called. It is not that the doctrinal differences have been solved, but rather that they have been declared to be irrelevant. I believe in an ecumenical Church founded upon common doctrinal beliefs as a basis for "a common faith" and a "common witness". The irreducible minimum of such belief must at least involve common basic precepts of God and man, the Bible, Christ, Salvation, and The Church. But the movement today would sacrifice all doctrine for the sake of unity - such as the Blake-Pike Plan. This doctrinal disparagity was my objection to union with the U.P.U.S.A. Church; and the New Modern Confession of 1967 which she is now considering and probably will adopt, for me, verifies this vast doctrinal abyss between us and them. This tendency was crystallized in my experience when as a Commissioner to our 1960 General Assembly in Jacksonville, Florida, and as a member of the Committee on Judicial Business I heard one of the public leaders of our church, a professor in one of our seminaries, and later a moderator of our General Assembly, argue in committee, for permission for an ordained Presbyterian minister in West Virginia to be ordained at the same time as a deacon in the Episcopal Church so that he could hold joint services for a small group of Presbyterians and Episcopalians, at the same time, in the same church, and serve communion one side of the church for the Presbyterians and on the other side of the church to the Episcopalians. Here seemed to me to be an irreconcilable conflict between the Episcopal doctrine of apostolic succession and our doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. The existence of this conflict was admitted; but the argument was made that more important than the doctrinal sacrifice was the opportunity of the two great churches to make this first move toward ecumenical unity. I cannot yet see how "two can walk together lest they be agreed". God is timeless. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. The gospel is timeless and endless in its revelance. (sic) Thus I suggest that we need to reassert, reaffirm and redeclare our doctrinal absolutes as infallible truths, plant our feet firmly on the verities that are permanent and enduring, and treat any opposition thereto as the heresy it is.

THIRDLY, although you may have other matters which concern you more, I am concerned by a tendency of our church to forget, neglect and discard the great reformed doctrine of the "priesthood of believers" particularly as it relates to church government, and to substitute government by an authoritative ecclesiastical hierarchy. Out of the reformers basic conception of the nature and mission of the church and of Jesus Christ as its King and Head, on whose shoulders its government is, came the great doctrine of the "priesthood of believers" which gave a new dignity to the individual and the individual soul. Logically following was the genius of the Presbyterian system of church government with power and authority flowing from each individual member (a priest) through their representatives (Ruling Elders), who had parity or equality with clerical members (Teaching Elders) to a series of church courts. The power flowed from the bottom up, not from the top down. The check against domination by clerical authority, which the early reformers so much feared from dear experience, was the system of parity between the teaching and ruling elders. This fine balance has been lost. The teaching elder and the officialdom of our Boards and Agencies have gradually taken over the government of our church. I don't believe any impartial observer could successfully argue that our church government has not been in recent years largely dominated by Teaching Elders and full time Servants of the Church - either by design of the clergy or the default of the laity. Evidence of this tendency is the deplorable but ever widening gap and schism between the clergy and the laity. Thus the voice of the people in the pew has not been heard in our church courts through their elected representatives, the Ruling Elders. To preserve this new power groups have been formed among the ecclesiastical hierarchy such as the Fellowship of St. James and the Fellowship of the Concerned. False notions are being promoted to protect this power, such as the idea that all General Assembly pronouncements and actions are the law of the church and must be obeyed and accepted without question as they are without error. Unconstitutional questions are being asked of candidates for admission to Presbytery, such as "Will you use church literature? Will you support the entire program of the church? etc." These are not proper constitutional queries. A devastating system of rotation of church officers is being widely urged and is being used in many places to rotate from our official groups those who disagree with clerical authority and retire them from official service. Those who disagree with the ecclesiastical officialdom have little or no opportunity in church courts, literature, or publications for the expression of their views and opinions. In my opinion the principal reason for this tendency has been the laity has been lulled by the "Laodician Lullaby" of the world being too much with us late and soon into neither being too hot or too cold just lukewarm for Christ and his Church. We need a great spiritual awakening in the pew - a pouring out of the Holy Ghost - which will revive the true priesthood of believers who will govern the church through an intelligent, informed and concerned laity operating on parity with the clergy under the genius of our system and our constitution.

But Fathers and Brethren, these trends are merely symptoms of the malaise - the feeling of uneasiness and discomfort in the church. You can never cure the disease by merely fighting the symptoms. You must treat the ultimate cause to effect a permanent cure. The National Council of Churches issues, the ecumenical issue, the usurpation of authority by ecclesiastical hierarchy issue, the racial issue, the communism in the churches issue, the new morality issue, are all mere symptoms of our real spiritual disease. The disease of sin. My personal diagnosis is that our sin is to place man above God. The creature would usurp the place of the Creator and become equal with him. A damnable intellectual pride places the mind of man superior to that of God. Nowhere is this more evident nor more clearly illustrated than in our attitude toward the inspiration and authority of the Bible. Man then becomes God's counsellor. (sic) The Bible is no longer our only infallable rule of faith and practice - but it contains error as we hear often in Presbytery examinations. (sic) A deliberate rationalization, which borders on intellectual dishonesty and is the product of this intellectual pride, pervades many Presbytery examinations of young ministers today on their doctrine of Scripture. It permits them to find a new orientation of authority in what they call "The Living Christ" and a developing "Christology". The Bible becomes the "normative witness" of revelation rather than the inspired Word of God, and its words are said to be "words of men" and thus historically conditioned. This theological device by-passes the Holy Scriptures as inspired and authorative while it utilizes selective words and phrases of Scripture in a new frame of reference. (sic) Since "God in Love" everyone's opinion must be accepted "in love" and tolerated as truth to him. Thus a wide tendency toward universalism has arisen as the Scriptural doctrines of "hell" and "final judgment" are being replaced by a nebulous idea that "God is Love" and therefore he will not ultimately permit any of his creatures to perish or regulate them to eternal torment even though the Scriptures clearly so declare. The real authority is not the Scriptures but in the final analysis can only be "the Christian Consciousness" of the selectors which is synonymous with human consensus. It has been my observation that wherever and whenever the inspiration and authority of the Word Inscripturated is attacked the person and work of the Word Incarnated is demeaned. The work of and for Jesus Christ is equated with all the other noble causes of the church in society. The zeal for the gospel of Jesus Christ is lost and the temper of the times dictates the religious cause for the day - just choose on of these symptoms. The Protestant Reformation set the "Sola Scriptura" as its ultimate authority and our contemporary faithlessness to this authority and substitution of our own spurious authorities is resulting in "the Protestant Deformation". I suggest that we will be held eternally  accountable for permitting men to feed the flocks in our church with their own progressive revelations as equal or additional to God's complete, final and perfect revelation of himself in the Word Incarnate and The Word Inscripturate. But back to these symptoms of which we spoke. We must and we should treat the symptoms of our spiritual disease. As the physician gives aspirin to assuage the fever, we must battle these contemporary issues which lead to error in our church. But our primary emphasis should be to treat the cause; and we should begin by demanding that the church acknowledge, teach and practice that the Bible is our only infallible Rule of Faith and Practice.

But what shall we use to treat the disease. Shall we not, just as the surgeon, cut out the damaged area and hope we have eliminated the cause. But what if it has reached the Church's blood stream? In the analogy of the battle, should we not gird our loins as Christian Soldiers and march out to war? Yes! Yes! Yes! Let us cut out the cancers. Let us go out to do battle. Let us not lackadaisically permit our spiritual cancer to kill us nor let us not think we can retire from the battle as the monks of old and ultimately escape its consequences. Let us get at these symptoms with fervor and vigor to allay the malaise - even David had to find and use the sling and the stones to slay Goliath. But to do so alone would be negativism. Our primary energy should be constructive and should not be spent on merely assuaging the symptoms. Here is a grave danger. Our primary emphasis should be on constructively promoting an ultimate cure for the disease. This cure is the Lord Jesus Christ living in every heart - making it new, pure, clean, acceptable unto God. We have too much "religion" and too little "Christianity" in our church. Sincerity of purpose is insufficient as the Apostle Paul graphically illustrated in his life. In his great autobiographical defense of his faith before King Agrippa, Paul pointed out that previous to his encounter with the Living Christ on the road to Damascus, he was sincerely and deeply religious but so certainly wrong. We need to individually reexamine our relations to Jesus Christ and there we must begin. We need then to use the means and the methods he prescribed for the cure. First we must know that our real enemy is not the issues that seem so pressingly to beset us, nor is he the people who would seemingly undermine the faith of our fathers; but our enemy is Satan - "for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places": Therefore we must be "strong in the Lord and in the power of His might."

In other words our enemy is from the spiritual world and our real battle is a spiritual battle and thus our methods and weapons should be spiritual. We should "put on the whole armour of God that we may be able to stand against he wiles of the devil - that we may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand."

We must stand, therefore, "having our loins girted about with truth, having on the breastplate of righteousness; our feet must be shod wit the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all we must take the shield of faith whereby we shall be able to withstand the fiery darts of the wicked; we must put on the helmet of salvation and take in our hands the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. We must pray always with supplication in the Spirit.

As disciples of Christ, we must begin on our knees in an attitude of humility - as Saint Augustine, we must answer when asked to name the three greatest Christian virtues, "Humility, Humility, and Humility."

Recognizing this necessary attitude, Concerned Presbyterians, Inc. at its Executive Board Meeting in Atlanta on July 16, 1965, adopted as its seal this statement and pledge:

"Every participating member of Concerned Presbyterians shall consider it his first responsibility as a member to encourage and support organized prayer in his own congregation."

In prayer, the believer, as a priest, has a pipeline directly to the fountainhead of truth, to the Commander-in-chief, where he is assured of an audience by the constant intercessions of his Great High Priest and where he is confident of an answer for "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."

Going forth into the battle, we should not permit these symptomatic errors in the church to go unnoticed, unaccosted, or uncorrected; but our principal effort should be toward the development of a constructive program of inspiration, information and instruction which the Holy Spirit may rightfully use to pour out a real spiritual revival in the pew whereby Christians rededicate their hearts and lives to Jesus Christ, honoring and worshipping and serving him as the Head of the Church.

Let us not succumb to the temptations to use the means and methods of our enemy: but let us in faith use the means and methods God in Christ has revealed as the Holy Spirit interprets them to us through the Holy Scriptures. And let us not despair for Jesus said "In this world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." And in spite of our tribulation, if we are his true instruments, so, too, we shall overcome.