Gene TeSelle's comments on the "guidelines" adopted by the Presbytery of San Diego for the guidance of candidates for ordination - and for those examining them - have drawn a fair amount of attention.

Former Moderator Herbert Valentine sent a note already posted here.

We're grateful for the thoughtful and stimulating comments below. And we invite you to join in! Just send a note that can be added to this discussion.

 

We've received this criticism of TeSelle's essay:


Doug,

Have you actually ever read the Swearinger [We thiink he means Swearingen] Report? I have a copy and find that most people who talk about it have never actually read it. It is available from the GA Polity office. You would be surprised what it doesn't say. In fact, if you ask the polity people at GA they will tell you that the church has never rescinded our adopting of the five fundamentals. You might want to read it before you quote it.

Al Sandalow

Ellensburg, WA

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TeSelle replies:

I'm not sure just what is meant by this statement, or where I misspoke. I've just checked a variety of interpretations -- Loetscher's The Broadening Church, Longfield's The Presbyterian Controversy, and Weston's Presbyterian Pluralism -- and all of them agree on the process and the outcome. The Swearingen Commission, appointed in 1925, was made up of moderates (constitutionalists, Longfield says; "loyalists," Weston calls them). It reported in both 1926 and 1927, and its recommendations were approved overwhelmingly by these General Assemblies. The main points were that procedures must be followed, that the Assembly had no power to add ordination requirements beyond those spelled out in the Book of Order, that the presbytery is the ordaining body, that it is inappropriate to insist on exact formulations, and that there is a place for toleration and diversity.

This is not to say that any of the five fundamentals insisted on by the Assemblies of 1910, 1916, and 1923 was rejected; in fact the Auburn Affirmation of 1924 had affirmed the doctrines even while it objected to the way they were stated and the insistence on a particular wording.

Members of the Commission and other participants in the controversy were well aware of the historical background -- the insistence on strict subscription in the Church of Scotland (with even the addition of further propositions) and the more flexible tradition of England and New England (in fact, the Westminster Assembly did not envision strict subscription!); the Adopting Act of 1729, which called on ordinands to assent to the "essential and necessary" doctrines of the Westminster Confession, but permitted them to state their "scruples" and leaving it to the presbytery to judge whether these were within legitimate bounds; and the terms of the reunion agreements between the Old Side and New Side in 1758, between the Old School and the New School in 1869-70, and the union with the Cumberland Presbyterians in 1903-6.

The habit of adding requirements for ordination is an old one. Anyone acquainted with Scottish history will have heard about the Auchterarder Presbytery, which added its own propositions and was rebuked by the General Assembly in 1717; the elevation of the Marrow of Modern Divinity to magisterial status; and the secession of Erskine and the Associate Presbytery. This was a path that American Presbyterians tried to avoid from the start, although two Pennsylvania presbyteries violated the Adopting Act by requiring strict subscription. Those who opposed strict subscription, and opposed even more the adding of codicils beyond what the Westminster Confession said, have pointed out since the eighteenth century that this demands subscription not to Scripture but to a particular interpretation of Scripture, making it the object of assent and not letting it point beyond itself.

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This note expresses agreement with TeSelle's essay, and suggests alternative approaches to the idea of using all of the confessions in such guidance for the candidacy process.

Friends:

Mr. TeSelle has done an admirable job dissecting the San Diego guidelines. It leads me to ponder, hypothetically, what if a candidate in conversation with them were to stress C67's view of atonement and scripture and not the scholasticism of the Westminster divines?

Further, could the presbytery and the drafters of the document be charged with Christian error or heresy for not giving sufficient and due weight to all the creeds and confessions in these guidelines?

The ordination vows require us to assent to the creeds and confessions as being reliable expositions of what scripture leads us to believe and do; the creeds and confessions judge us, not we, them. The creeds and confessions are under the judgment of scripture, but not our judgments of what is important in scripture.

And as to the guideline's Anabaptist stance (actually a watered down Zwingli) on the sacraments, what more nonsense can we expect?

I pray Christ that someone in that presbytery reads scripture, Calvin, and the Book of Confessions.

Joseph Cejka
[The writer has added further detail.  Click here.]

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The Covenant Network has posted a brief comment, expressing appreciation for it as "a serious document, clearly the product of careful work." They link to TeSelle's essay, and to a number of documents on the Covenant Network site dealing with "how Reformed Christians use the confessions, discuss theology, and hold our convictions."

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The Layman has taken note of this conversation as well, headlining its criticism: "Special-interest group, former moderator vilify 'Essentials Tenets'"

Well, it's nice to know we're special.

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Added on 7-16-03

Looking at the Swearingen Report:

A call for forbearance, and not for "fundamentals"

[We received this note on July 9; it is posted here on 7-16-03]

Dear Doug:

As to the Swearingen report, Recommendations #3 and 4, below, from its first report, are remarkably apropos in light of San Diego's "essential tenets" paper and Jensen's filing of charges.

3. That the General Assembly while welcoming the discussion of great theological and practical issues lays upon the consciences of ministers and members, the duty of exercising patience and forbearance, and of refraining from public expression of hasty or harsh judgments of the motives of brethren whose hearts are fully known only to God; especially from bringing against individuals "in a calumniating manner," and not in the legally prescribed way, charges which assail their loyalty as Presbyterian ministers or ruling elders, and even their Christian belief, and which otherwise tend to weaken their influence as servants of Christ in His Church; so that discussion of the serious problems affecting the welfare of our Church, in so far as discussion may seem wise or necessary, may proceed in a way that will persuade the minds and win the hearts of men, stimulate the Church to greater activity in carrying forward its task and encourage all to provoke one another to love and good works.

4. That this Assembly records its unshaken loyalty to the whole body of evangelical truth, and more specifically, that it declares its purpose to uphold the Constitution of our Church and to maintain the integrity of its historic and corporate witness to our Lord Jesus Christ as He is represented to us in the Scriptures, and to the system of doctrines set forth in the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Note that it does not repudiate the five fundamentals, nor does it uphold them. It bypasses them. The system of doctrine confirmed and embraced is NOT the five fundamentals, but that of the Westminster Confession of Faith. By the by, this system of doctrine is behind the reasoning of the PCUS's rejection of dispensationalism in the 1940s. The Westminster Confession of Faith does not support the five fundamentals or the heresy of dispensationalism.

Its call for forbearance is particularly important.

The Annotated Book of Order on CD ROM has both Swearingen reports in full text for reading and research.

Joseph Cejka
Minister of the Word and Sacraments
Faculty, UOP, Bakersfield Learning Center
cejka047@email.uophx.edu
cejka@lightspeed.net

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We're grateful for the thoughtful and stimulating comments. And we invite you to join in! Just send a note that can be added to this discussion.