The Westminster Assembly and Westminsterian Deviations
“The mere fact that a particular doctrine was held by an individual Westminster divine during the assembly’s debates does not automatically mean that doctrine was considered within the bounds of confessional orthodoxy by the assembly. Not everything in the WCF is a compromise.”
This is a quote from Keith Mathison, professor of systematic theology at Reformation Bible College. It’s been making the rounds, but I think it says less than Mathison hoped. There is a kind of person who will cite members of the Assembly as cover for their idiosyncratic views (e.g. hypothetical universalism and Edmund Calamy’s alleged support of it) and my guess is that Mathison is aiming at them. However, the framing in his statement needs further development in order to be helpful.
First, is there a difference between a view being excluded from the Westminster Standards and being ruled outside the bounds of confessional orthodoxy? Is it possible to hold doctrinal views excluded by the Assembly and still be within the bounds of confessional orthodoxy? How is that even evaluated? I’m thinking here of Erastianism, which was held by a small number of the divines and was very much rejected in the Westminster Confession. Are Erastians outside the bounds of confessional orthodoxy?…
Connectionalism and Confessional Exceptions
Can EPC Presbyteries exercise authority over a local church’s election, ordination, and installation of officers? On the one hand, local congregations have the irrevocable right, in perpetuity (BoG 6-2, 25-2B), to elect their own officers. On the other, there are numerous restrictions and mandated procedures for how that election process should be done (e.g. BoG 10-10 on nominating procedures, 11-3 on preparation, and 12-6 on examinations). Each court of the church is required to annually submit its minutes to the court above it. So Sessions need to submit their minutes to their Presbytery, and the Presbytery must review those minutes to ensure the local church is in conformity with the EPC’s constitution. If the local church is not, the Presbytery is allowed to require a revision to the church’s practice to meet the EPC’s constitutional standards. This process is called “Review and Control” (BoG 2-4)…
EPC Ruling Elders and Confessional Exceptions
All ordained officers in the EPC are required to vow that they “sincerely receive and adopt the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Catechisms of [the EPC] as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures”. Like many other Presbyterian denominations, the EPC has long debated how to handle its officers disagreeing with parts of the Westminster Standards. For Teaching Elders (pastors), the EPC has determined they may declare disagreements (exceptions) and the Presbytery may allow those exceptions (see BoG 12-4). The exceptions have to be stated and the Presbytery has to vote to allow or disallow them…
Confessional Subscription in the CRC
So it begins: “Historically there have been very few requests for an exception about a specific teaching. But following Synod 2022’s decisions regarding human sexuality, particularly in affirming the confessional status of the church’s traditional understanding of marriage, some Council members have been seeking a process to file an exception, indicating their difficulty with that decision.”
The CRC’s approach to scruples and exceptions, “gravamen”, has differed from the confessional subscription debates in Presbyterianism. No more. Now, at least for the Council of Delegates (denominational executive committee), “When a delegate requests an exception, the Council’s executive committee will make a decision on whether or not to grant it, based on the centrality of the belief for which the exception is sought and the member’s agreement not to publicly contradict, teach, or act against the synodical position.”
The resistance to this recommendation hits all the familiar beats…
Liberty In Non-Essentials: Sin in the EPC
What is sin? Sin is many things, but at its core sin is lack of conformity to and violation of God’s law (cf. WSC 14, WLC 24). Doing what God forbids is sinful and not obeying what God commands is sinful. Christians often disagree about what God has required in his word, which is why confessions of faith are valuable. A confession of faith is a statement of belief about what God’s word teaches. For the EPC, we believe that the Westminster Confession of Faith with the Larger and Shorter catechisms contain the system of doctrine found in the scriptures. We confess that these documents faithfully represent the truth of God’s word. Other churches may disagree with us, and some in the EPC may disagree with parts of these documents (more on that in a minute), but this is the chief role of a confessional system: affirming what the church believes God has revealed to us about himself and our duties towards him.
The EPC’s motto includes “In Non-Essentials: Liberty”. The idea in the motto, and very much the reality in the EPC’s culture, is that we foster liberty towards one another in areas of non-essential doctrines. People have the freedom to not only disagree with each other on these non-essentials, but are also able to have different non-essential practices. The most notable example of this is the ordination of women…
