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Gillespie & the indigenous principle

Posted in Church of Scotland, Church Order & Discipline, Connectionalism & Conciliarism, Indigenous Principle, The Visible Church on March 29, 2024| Leave a Comment »

The following two quotes are taken from George Gillespie’s An Assertion of the Government of the Church of Scotland (1641). They seem to me to have a bearing on the question of the ‘indigenous principle’ that our denomination, the Presbyterian Reformed Church, has advocated since its inception in 1965. That is, presbyterian churches ought ideally to develop their own nationally autonomous bodies distinct from others outside their borders; or, trans-national denominations, especially when ‘centered’ in one particular nation, should be avoided or superseded as impractical, and liable to hierarchicalism or a kind of church-imperialism. These quotes in particular demonstrate that historic presbyterianism, while holding out a gradation of church courts, nevertheless accepts as valid smaller and even the smallest church units when circumstances on the ground prevent more.

“Add unto these a distinction betwixt a congregation lying alone in an island, province or nation, and a congregation bordering with sister churches. If either there be but one congregation in a kingdom or province, or if there be many far distant one from another, so that their pastors and elders cannot ordinarily meet together, then may a particular congregation do many things by itself alone, which it ought not to do where there are adjacent neighbouring congregations, together with which it may and should have a common presbytery” (43).

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Witherspoon on church-hopping vagrants

Posted in Church Order & Discipline, Ordinary Means Ministry, Parish in American Context, Parish Theory & Practice, Practice of Piety, Religious Marketplace, The Church in America, The Visible Church, Theology of Community, Theology of Place on March 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »

If you would truly profit by ordinances, after you have a fixed pastor, I think it is of moment to forget, as much as possible, the persons of men, and confider them as no more than instruments in the hand of God, for your daily instruction and comfort. The more you remember the appointment of God, and wait upon his ordinances, in the faith of his presence, and the expectation of his blessing, the more you are likely to receive both sensible and lasting benefit. I must therefore take the liberty to observe, that we have amongst us a set of wandering unsettled hearers, who run about from one congregation to another, and even from one profession to another, and are scarcely ever to be seen a whole day in one place. If they be but deliberating where to fix, we may fay of them, that they are ever learning, and never come to the knowledge of the truth. But the probability is, that they have itching and curious ears, and go about not to serve God but to hear men. If I am able at all to judge, either by reflection or observation, those are most likely to profit, who having deliberately made their choice, sit habitually and regularly under one minister. By this means they enter into his views; and as he will naturally endeavour, if any thing was wanting at one time, to complete his scheme by supplying it at another, they will thereby have a more comprehensive view of the whole counsel of God. At the fame time, not having the charm of novelty to enchant them, they will have nothing to do but to reap instruction. On the other hand, by hearing separate, detached, and independent discourses, men may please their fancy more, but they will improve their understanding less. It is also plain, that as every minister will endeavour, not only to follow an order in his discourses on one subject, but to have a respect to the connection, and relation of the subjects themselves, the more accurate and exact he is, in suiting one part to the, illustration of another, the less he will be understood by these desultory hearers, who take only a single branch, without being able to perceive its subserviency to the general design. I have many times known exceptions taken at ministers, for some parts of a discourse by such persons, when, if they had heard the whole upon the fame or corresponding subjects, they would have perceived there was no place for their objections. The great purpose, my brethren, of a serious and judicious people, in attending on ordinances, should neither be to please themselves, nor to criticise their teachers; but to hear the word of God, that they may do it. On this account it is, that humble and regular Christians are getting real advantage to their fouls, while some are only watching the opinions, or others only passing judgment on the ability, perhaps no more than the style and outward manner of the speaker.

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“Alexander Shields, the Revolution Settlement, and Unity of the Visible Church”

Posted in Catholicity, Church of Scotland, Ecclesiology, Establishments, The Visible Church on August 30, 2023| Leave a Comment »

A tremendous, two-part treatment that anyone identifying with historic Presbyterian should read by my friend, Matthew Vogan.

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ALEXANDER SHIELDS article

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“Study Uniformity in your Zeal”: Alexander Shields’ appeal for visible church unity

Posted in Audio Resources, Catholicity, Church of Scotland, The Visible Church, WPE Audio on April 10, 2023| 1 Comment »

Just finished reading and recording Alexander Shield’s Church Communion Inquired Into (1706). Listen to it here, or read it below. This treatise is such a highwater-mark of classic Presbyterianism, with particular focus on the visible unity of the Church of Christ. It was his heartfelt, pastoral appeal to his brethren who refused to enter the Revolution Church of 1690 on account of its putative corruptions, urging them to reconsider their separation. It is not the easiest of reads, for sure, as it was written in the midst of controversy, among other things. But it is a definitive work on Presbyterian catholicity, right after James Durham’s On Scandal. Here is a very moving appeal from his conclusion:

“Keep your Zeal lively against all sin, but let it have two edges, to resent the Dishonour done to God, by Schism as well as defection; let it be Ballanced with Charity, and managed with Discretion. And we request you, that you study Uniformity in your Zeal, that you be not like Cake unturned, hot for some lesser Points in Religion, and cold for other Duties, but with a regular Proportion to their Concern in the Vitals of Religion. Let Religion be more in your Heart than Head, in Practice than in Controversie. Neglect not the Duties of your General Calling of Piety towards God, Sobriety in your selves, Righteousness and Mercy to Men, Brotherly Love, and Holy Christian Fellowship; And forget not the relative Duties of your particular Callings. Have a care of the Idleness of busy Bodies. 1 Thess. 4.11. But study to be quiet, and do your own business, and to work with your own hands. Beware of them that cause Divisions and Offenses, and avoid them. And look on them that blow the Bellows of Contention as no Friends to your or the Church’s Interest. Finally, study to be United one with another, and with your Pastors make Acquaintance, and entertain frequent and Friendly Converse with them, receive the Law at their Mouth, for they are the Messengers of the Lord of Hosts: Grieve them not by your Contempt, or continued Withdrawing, lest they be put to Complain of you to God, and it become Sin unto you.”

Here is a summary of the author by Matthew Vogan: “Alexander Shields (1660?–1700) is less well known than other field preachers such as Donald Cargill, Richard Cameron, and James Renwick. One of the last of the field preachers and a close associate of James Renwick, he was also a prisoner on the Bass Rock. He was a prolific writer and ably defended the Covenanter principles in the classic book A Hind Let Loose. After the Revolution of 1689, he was chaplain to the Cameronian regiment fighting against France in defence of Holland and the Protestant cause. In 1699, he was also among the first foreign missionaries of the Church of Scotland in the infamous Darien venture to what is now known as Panama. He died and was buried in Jamaica in 1700 at the age of forty. John Macleod well describes him as ‘one of the most striking figures of his epoch’. The life of this zealous young man is uniquely interesting and instructive.” Learn more about Shields and this treatise in Vogan’s two-part article, “Alexander Shields, the Revolution Settlement and the Unity of the Visible Church” (2013).

Listen to other titles at WPE Audio

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Scottish Reformation Discipline . . . treadmill ready

Posted in Church of Scotland, Church Order & Discipline, John Knox, Sacraments, The Lord's Supper, The Social Status of the Church, The Visible Church, Visiting the Sick & Dying, WPE Audio on December 6, 2022| Leave a Comment »

“Our Reformers were men of great wisdom, undaunted courage, irrepressible zeal and strong faith. They relied not on human expediency, vain traditions, or worldly wisdom, but on God’s promised blessing on His own means. They went direct to the Bible for all their plans, and the result was that every rag of rotten Popery, and every relic of the Amorite was purged away, and cast forth as things accursed into the region of eternal detestation, and the pure evangel set up instead. In the language of George Gillespie:

‘The Church of Scotland was blessed with a more glorious and perfect reformation than any of our neighbor Churches. The doctrine, discipline, regiment, and policy established here by ecclesiastical and civil laws, and sworn and subscribed unto by the king’s majesty and [the] several presbyteries and parish churches of the land, as it had the applause of foreign divines; so was it in all points agreeable unto the word; neither could the most rigid Aristarchus of these times challenge any irregularity of the same.'”

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These words are drawn from the opening of David Hay Fleming’s four-part series of articles in the Original Secession Magazine in 1878 entitled, “The Discipline of the Reformation.” I’ve just finished recording the fourth today. Listen to them here. The PDF is below. And check out more titles in my expanding amateur audio library.

I do not suggest that everything our fathers in the Reformation and Second Reformation did or said regarding discipline should be carried over in toto today. Nor do I think Fleming himself thought this. But before we too quickly dismiss what we may judge austere or harsh, let us consider that we are just as much creatures of our time as they were. And if we shouldn’t be slaves to their judgments, yet we still ought to honor father and mother. And listen to them in the first case!

[image source]

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Bavinck on the blight of modern sectarianism

Posted in Catholicity, Church Order & Discipline, Connectionalism & Conciliarism, Contemporary Issues, Contemporary Parochialism, Ecclesiology, Gathered Church Ecclesiology, Individual & individualism, Secularization, The Church in America, The Social Status of the Church, The Visible Church on November 1, 2022| Leave a Comment »

”The rise of sectarianism that has accompanied the Protestant movement is a dark and negative phenomenon. It manifested itself already at the beginning of the Reformation, but it has never flourished as it has in our age. New church after new church is established. In England there are already more than two hundred sects. In America they are innumerable. The differences have become so many and so insignificant that one cannot keep track of them. There are even voices arguing for a new discipline in theology itself devoted to the comparative history of church confessions. What is even more serious is that this sectarianism leads to the erosion and disappearance of church consciousness. There is no longer an awareness of the difference between the church and a voluntary association. The sense that separation from the church is a sin has all but disappeared. One leaves a church or joins it rather casually. When something or other in a church no longer satisfies us, we look for another without any pangs of conscience. The decisive factor turns out to be our taste. Exercise of discipline thus becomes virtually impossible; it loses its very character. What preacher is left who dares, in good conscience, except perhaps in extremely rare instances, to use the form for excommunication? The worst result of all this is that by breaking the unity of doctrine and the church, Christians do violence to the communion of saints, deprive themselves of the Spirit’s gifts of grace, by which other believers labor to build up the saints, shut themselves up in their own circle, promote spiritual pride, strengthen Rome, and give the world occasion for scorn and mockery.”

-Herman Bavinck, “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church”

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Witherow’s case for Presbyterianism

Posted in Church Order & Discipline, Connectionalism & Conciliarism, Ecclesiology, The Visible Church, WPE Audio on October 13, 2022| Leave a Comment »

It is very common for professing Christians to draw a distinction between essentials and non-essentials in religion, and to infer that, if any fact or doctrine rightly belongs to the latter class, it must be a matter of very little importance, and may in practice be safely set at naught. The great bulk of men take their opinions on trust; they will not undergo the toil of thinking, searching, and reasoning about anything, and one of the most usual expedients adopted to save them the trouble of inquiry, and to turn aside the force of any disagreeable fact, is to meet it by saying, ”The matter is not essential to salvation; therefore we need give ourselves little concern on the subject.”

If the distinction here specified is safe, the inference drawn from it is certainly dangerous. To say that, because a fact of Divine revelation is not essential to salvation, it must of necessity be unimportant, and may or may not be received by us, is to assert a principle, the application of which would make havoc of our Christianity. For, what are the truths essential to salvation? Are they not these: That there is a God; that all men are sinners; that the Son of God died upon the cross to make atonement for the guilty; and that whosoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved? There is good reason for believing that not a few souls arc now in happiness, who in life knew little more than these—the first principles of the oracles of God—the very alphabet of the Christian system; and if so, no other Divine truths can be counted absolutely essential to salvation. But if all the other truths of revelation are unimportant, because they happen to be non-essentials, it follows that the Word of God itself is in the main unimportant; for by far the greatest portion of it is occupied with matters, the knowledge of which, in the case supposed, is not absolutely indispensable to the everlasting happiness of men. Nor does it alter the case, if we regard the number of fundamental truths to be much greater. Let a man once persuade himself that importance attaches only to what he is pleased to call essentials, whatever their number, and he will, no doubt, shorten his creed and cut away the foundation of many controversies; but he will practically set aside all except a very small part of the Scriptures. If such a principle does not mutilate the Bible, it stigmatizes much of it as trivial. Revelation is all gold for preciousness and purity, but the very touch of such a principle would transmute the most of it into dross.

Read the entire treatise, Which is the Apostolic Church?, by Thomas Witherow, below. Or, listen to an audio version here.

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Reformed parish missions: “Gentil-inclusión”

Posted in Authored by Site Admin, Contemporary Parochialism, Covenant Theology, Family Religion, Gospel Proclamation, Gospel Tactics, Locality & the Law of Residence, Ministerial Fidelity, Missiology, Ordinary Means Ministry, Parish in American Context, Parochial Strategy, Reformed Parish Mission (RPM) Posts, Social Byproduct, The Church in America, The Gospel & the Poor, The Visible Church, Theology of Community, Thomas Chalmers, Transgenerational Faith on May 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Years back, my heart got large for missions — especially urban missions to those on the ‘other side of the tracks.’ At about the same time, I became Reformed (a high octane, old school Presbyterian no less!), putting me in a a sub-subset of a subset. My life and ministry has ever since lived somewhat in the frontiers the unlikely and the implausible. A straightlaced, tall gringo Presbyterian goes out among immigrants, trying to evangelize in broken Spanish and recruit sinners to the “outward and ordinary means” in a humble, little Reformed church 15 minutes to the south. And to sing Psalms. Without musical accompaniment. In English.

I admit that there are all kinds of problems with this model, from a human perspective. But it is actually more plausible than one might think. Yet before I deal with the plausibles, let me first set forth some principles.

The first principle is principle! Principle precedes the practical. We must first determine whether something should be done before we decide whether or not we think it is practical. We ought to go out and bring the Gospel to all. None excluded. Politics quite aside, we may and must not discriminate based on sex, ethnicity, gender, or for that matter even sexual ‘preference.’ By the mandate of our King, we must go and tell them. Yes, as Calvinists, we know that not every “all” means “all.” But “every creature” does in fact mean “every creature.” Even if they don’t look like us, eat like us, or even use our language. It doesn’t matter whether they ‘have papers’ or not, vote Democrat or not. How they got here and whether they should by law be here, is a separate issue for a different discussion (and full disclosure: I lean quite “red” when it comes to immigration policy!). But that they are here means they are here for us to evangelize. And not just gripe about and avoid them as much as possible.

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The efficacy of the sacraments

Posted in Catechesis, Ordinary Means Ministry, Sacraments, The Lord's Supper, The Visible Church, Theological Diagrams on August 17, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Another theological diagram as a teaching aid for my next lesson on the Westminster Shorter Catechism this Sabbath. I designed this some time back and got some feedback on it from a couple of my ministerial colleagues.

Like any diagram, it doesn’t say it all. But I think it helps distinguish the Reformed position from extremes on either side. What think ye?

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The “Catholic Visible Church”

Posted in Catholicity, Christ & the Church, The Visible Church, Theological Diagrams on May 23, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I designed the following diagrams to illustrate my recent lesson on the Reformed doctrine of the “Catholic Visible Church” (WCF 25.2-6; cf. 30.2, 31.1). Watch the class here.