A Positive Theological Vision for the CRC and Evangelicalism
Eric Davis and Aleah Marsden have written a well outlined vision for what a Reformed Catholic vision of the CRC would entail. They are happy that the CRC seems to be avoiding mainline liberalism but are wary that in doing so seems to be headed towards evangelicalism. Their proposal for a thicker set of identity markers (not just doctrine, but covenant, ecclesiology, and kingdom) and their articulation of it are excellent. In many ways their proposal maps onto my argument for how evangelicalism and pietiesm differ from confessionalism. There’s a lot they say worth commending, but these two lines in particular are excellent, “We applaud the desire by some to turn more toward evangelism, but we don’t think it requires turning to evangelicalism. A Reformed catholic emphasis on a covenant-keeping God is properly evangelistic in tone and tenor, and precisely what an exhausted culture desperately needs.”
An interesting difference between the CRC and my own EPC on this is the nature of confessionalism and doctrine. In the EPC the Westminster Standards are often relegated to the background. For us to become more Reformed Catholic would include recovering our confessional heritage and making Westminsterian logic our primary vocabulary. Davis and Marsden are concerned that the CRC is headed towards confessionalism (other CRC/RCA critics of the recent shift think that this is CRC moving from the Neo-Calvinism of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck to the New Calvinism of John Piper and Kevin DeYoung) stripped of the other dimensions necessary to hold a denomination together and keep congregations richly rooted. I don’t disagree with them that the church is more than its doctrine, but my experience with the Reformed Catholic movement is that historic Reformed dogma gets set aside in favor of shared practices. Reformed Catholicism is certainly more than shared confessions of faith, but it is not less than that and requires robust confessionalism to stay Reformed.
Establishment and Freedom in American, Westminsterian Confessionalism
Kevin DeYoung has a piece up at Themelios arguing that the 1788 American revisions to the Westminster Confession of Faith surrounding the civil government’s relationship to the church are substantially and irreconcilably different from the original 1647 version. Stephen Wolfe’s rejoinder I think gets the better of it: removal doesn’t imply denial. The 1788 version of the WCF only ceased requiring ministerial belief in the government’s responsibility to ensure doctrinal purity in the church, enforcement of Christianity in society, and the establishment of a national church. The revisions don’t rule those views out. Back in 2019 (pre-Christian nationalism debates) I wrote
“The 1788 version [of the WCF] does not explicitly contradict the 1647 version, it just does not specifically hold [its assertions], which means someone who agrees with 1647 may faithfully subscribe to 1788. The 1647 version of the WCF… taught that the civil government was also instituted by God, and therefore there should be no separation of church and state in a Christian society. Since both church and government were instituted by God for the ordering of society there were levels of interaction and accountability between the two. The 1647 WCF is not Erastian, but neither does it grant secular authority over the church.”
Essential Issues and Legitimate Differences in the EPC
An open letter and accompanying theological paper on same-sex attraction and ministerial ordination have been making the rounds of the EPC this past week. There is much I could say on the substance of the letter and paper (my thoughts on the topic are well documented on this page, especially in my recent talk on same-sex attraction and pastoral care) but instead I wanted to highlight and engage an unassuming paragraph in the paper. This was written by Don Fortson, a retired professor of church history from Reformed Theological Seminary, who has worked extensively on American presbyterian history, and authored Liberty In Non-Essentials, the official history of the EPC. He also has written quite a bit on confessional subscription and authored the EPC’s official guide on adopting and receiving the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. What Fortson said in the paper is,
This [homosexuality and the ordination of celibate, same-sex attracted people] is not a liberty in non-essentials issue. The EPC position on women’s ordination, is put in the non-essential category because it is recognized that there are legitimate differences in biblical interpretation on this topic. Both sides agree that there are texts of Scripture that may be understood to support either position. This is not true of homosexuality; there aren’t any passages, anywhere in the Bible, that say anything positive whatsoever about homosexuality.
The EPC’s motto is “Unity in Essentials. Liberty in Non-Essentials. In All Things Charity.” This motto is the true creed of the EPC. It shapes the way we think and act more than other doctrinal statement, its informal status notwithstanding. And Fortson’s argument here demonstrates that — to persuade people in the EPC he has to convince them that this is an “essentials” issue…
The EPC’s Confession of Faith and Women’s Ordination
Recently I have been pressed on two fronts about the ordination of women in the EPC. The first concerns my claim in Women’s Ordination in the EPC: Learning from the CRC that “[Women’s ordination] is not addressed in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and so lies outside the system of doctrine taught in the scriptures.” I have been challenged on whether this is an accurate representation of the Confession and Catechisms. The second concerns the absence of the topic in What the EPC Can Learn from the PCA, with some stating that for the EPC to grow numerically and to grow in doctrinal and confessional rigor requires repudiating the ordination of women.
In regards to the first claim, I have several starting presuppositions. First is that the Westminster Divines were familiar with and well-versed in the Reformational documents and debates on both the European continent and colonial America, and that these informed their deliberations and finalized standards. The second is that the Divines, as Puritans and scholastics, did not make theological or liturgical assumptions, but rather developed and defended their assumptions. The third is that the Divines were trying to forge a Puritan/Presbyterian consensus built on the pre-existing English, Scottish, and Irish Reformational confessions and liturgies. The fourth is the acknowledgement that the Assembly published more than the Confession and Catechisms, and so all of the Standards produced were intended to be taken as a unit. Yet, these additional documents were only ever adopted in Scotland, even if they influenced things in Ireland and America. The fifth is that the specific vow and formulation about “the system of doctrine” is not from the Assembly itself, but was developed by the Irish Presbyterian Church in the early 1700s and has been part of the American subscription formula since the founding of the American Presbyterian Church…
Confession and Culture in the EPC
Every time I make some variation of the case that the EPC should lean into its Westminsterian, Reformed heritage, I am asked whether in doing so the EPC would lose its ethos. This reaction emerged to my “What the EPC Can Learn from the PCA” post. Usually the PCA’s more rigorous (rigid?) confessionalism is inferred to be part of a contentious dynamic, and that embracing a more confessional posture on the EPC’s part would sacrifice our ethos. In these cases, higher doctrinal standards, greater confessional rigor, and intentionally cultivating a Reformed identity are all assumed to be at odds with the culture of the EPC.
One of the biggest challenges facing the EPC is imagination. We struggle to imagine what a confessionally-grounded approach to ministry and polity would look like. When it comes to the PCA vs. EPC, we struggle to imagine how we could be confessionally rigorous without losing our relaxed ethos. This is a common sentiment, and it’s actually quite revealing — confessionalism is confessing what God teaches in scripture. The Westminster Confessions and Catechisms may get that wrong, but as a church the EPC confesses that we sincerely believe that they get the teachings and system of scripture right. The fear of some is that if we become more confessional then we will lose our ethos. If we have to choose between being faithful to our confession of faith and our “ethos” we should choose faithfulness every time…
