Fundamentalism, Evangelicalism, and Modernity in the EPC
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Henry Fosdick’s “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” The past century, and especially the 93-86 years since the founding of Westminster Seminary and the OPC, has seen an almost cyclical effect.
Beginning with the Portland Deliverance in 1890, the PCUSA no longer regarded the Westminster Standards as a necessary summation of biblical teaching, but instead pushed for a reduced set of 5 “fundamentals of the faith.” Following Fosdick’s sermon of 1922, a number of pastors in 1924 issued the Auburn Affirmation in which they argued that requiring conformity to the fundamentals violated their liberty of conscience. These modernists argued that this was imposing an interpretation of the confessional standards on the church, instead of the standards themselves, which went beyond the power of the church’s courts.
So a doctrinal system was reduced to a smaller set of foundational beliefs, whose authority in turn was rejected as violating liberty of conscience. As Lefferts Loetscher documents in The Broadening Church (1954), his history of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy centered on Princeton, the modernists themselves were a tiny proportion of the PCUSA. It was the moderates, who agreed with the fundamentalists in doctrine but disliked their militancy, who set the course for the church. The argument for conscience made by the modernists was also persuasive to the moderates, but only because the Standards were no longer the standards…
Why Reject the Added Chapters of the Westminster Confession?
My recent presbytery transferal exam included quite a bit of discussion on my opposition to the 1903 additions to the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) still held by the EPC, namely the chapters “The Holy Spirit” and “The Gospel of the Love of God and Missions.” Though I’ve written about the revisions to the Westminster Confession of Faith at length here, I thought it would be helpful to present a concise summary of how to understand these chapters and why I think they ought to be rejected, not merely on the basis of being superfluous, but for failing to meet biblical muster. I draw heavily on the 1936 analysis and critique from Ned Stonehouse and John Murray, as well as the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church’s 2014 report on the additional chapters, which I recommend people read if they want a fuller picture of the doctrines taught and neglected in the additional chapters.
In short historical review, in 1890 the PCUSA began the process of revising the WCF. This effort culminated in 1903 with several alterations, including the addition of the two chapters in question. The express purpose of these revisions was to soften the Reformed and Calvinistic theology of the WCF. Confessionalists, such as B. B. Warfield, Abraham Kuyper, and Geerhardus Vos opposed the changes. After the changes, Arminians stated that the WCF could now be read in a way that was compatible with their doctrine, and by 1906 the majority of the Cumberland Presbyterian church (Arminian in doctrine) had rejoined the PCUSA because of the doctrinal revisions. When the OPC formed in 1936, they rejected these additions as being compatible with the WCF’s doctrine, which was the course followed by the PCA at its founding in 1973. The ARP had added the revisions in 1959, but removed them in 2014 on similar grounds. During the EPC’s formative years in the early 1980s the new chapters were kept, but no discussion of their compatibility with the rest of the WCF ever occurred.
There are several ways of reading the new chapters in relation to the rest of the WCF and Catechisms…
An Addendum on ‘Restoring the Confession’
I need to add an addendum of two pieces to part one of my call to confessional renewal in the EPC.
First, in regards to Christ’s headship over the church, I said, “Any pastoral candidate taking exception to the statement, ‘And the claim of any man to be the head of the Church is unscriptural and is a usurpation dishonoring to the Lord Jesus Christ,’ should be barred from ministry. Anyone unwilling to say that it is unscriptural and sinful to claim the headship of the church should not be in a position to shepherd the church.”
Some have asked if this means I believe this should be an “essential”, i.e. something elevated from within our confessional system that is non-negotiable. The answer is a qualified no. This is the lone instance where I argued that something should be added to the WCF rather than being replaced or deleted. The Westminster Standards are not a haphazard or total compilation of biblical data, but contain the system of doctrine found in the scripture. Therefore, if something is to be added to the Standards, even if it is being returned after previous deletion as in this example, a case needs to be made that it represents a truth that is part of the system of doctrine found in the Bible. A counter example could be helpful: How many judges are there in the Old Testament? 12? 14? 16? There is a definitive biblical answer, even if that answer depends on a variety of factors (e.g. what counts as a judge?) But this doctrine, while biblical, is not part of the Bible’s system of doctrine, nor would disagreement on this proscribe someone’s ordination to the pastoral office…
