The section of the Proposed Statement of Identity entitled "Subscription to Doctrinal Standards By Church Officers"1 is, to put the most generous construction upon it that we can, confusion.

This confusion is immediately evident in the first statements of each of the two main subdivisions of the chapter. Thus, in part 1, under the sub-title "A Commitment to Subscription", we read of "subscription to the system of doctrine contained in our confessional standards" (emphasis ours). In point 4, under the sub-title "The Meaning of Subscription", we read this statement: "We affirm that the PCA is a subscriptionist church in which men who desire to be ordained must receive and adopt the confession of the Church as containing the system of doctrine taught in Holy Scripture" (emphasis ours).

The italicized portion of the latter statement, of course, is taken virtually verbatim from the second ordination vow required of office bearers in the PCA. On the face of it, the statement is true in that it simply describes what is the status quo. Men who desire to be ordained must, through the assumption of vows - specifically, the second vow - "receive and adopt the Confession of Faith and the Catechisms of this Church, as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures." The issue in the subscription controversy, however, is not what the ordination vow says. What it says is plain, assuming words have meaning and that the arrangement of words in a sentence produces a meaningful statement - a clear and complete thought.

The reference, in the former statement, to "subscription to the system of doctrine contained in our confessional standards," is not the equivalent of the latter statement taken directly from the ordination vow. And this is precisely the issue in the subscription controversy in the PCA. There are those who evidently want to make the second vow say what it manifestly does not say - that ordained men receive and adopt the system of doctrine contained in our confessional standards. They, of course, do receive and adopt the system by way of receiving and adopting the Confessional Standards themselves. But that is not the emphasis of the vow.

The argument of this chapter of the PSI would lead us to conclude that the authors adhere to "system subscription." The affirmation in point 4 is a subtle clouding of the issue. It is confusion.

The confusion continues in items 2 and 3 of the section entitled "A Commitment to Subscription", and in the explanatory paragraph which follows.2 Now, as to these statements taken at face value, we would post no disagreement. No one, for example, would argue that "subscription alone can preserve the orthodoxy or unity of the Church." Nor would any, presumably, dissent from the statement that "the primary purpose of confessional subscription by officers is to bring honor and glory to God." After all, one of the best known affirmations of our Standards is that "Man's chief end is to glorify God." And, who will deny that "the chief agent of orthodoxy, unity, ecumenism, and worship is the Holy Spirit Himself"? We are suspicious, however, of this professed concern that "there is a subtle danger in depending upon the subscription process as the primary means of defending the orthodoxy and unity of the Church." The not-so-subtle danger in connection with subscription is not that the Church neglects "dependent prayer that calls on the sovereign work of God's Spirit"; but rather that the Church neglects the due administration of discipline in connection with the enforcement of subscription. Rising periodically to sing the Doxology cannot be a substitute for taking the sometimes difficult actions that are necessary to preserve orthodoxy and unity in the Church's Confession. This is no more dependence upon mere 'human means' than obedience to the Great Commission by something more than regular prayer meetings is dependence upon 'human means.' If, as stated in the introduction to Chapter 1, "the act of subscription is also an act of worship", then this is a work which God Himself, by His Spirit, works in and through His Church. Subscription as an act of worship, therefore, ought not to be set over against other works of the Spirit which come to fruition in the life of the Church. This is confusion.

The PSI also introduces the caricature of full subscription which allegedly commits a candidate to profess "to receive every detailed proposition within the Confession".3 This chimerical bogeyman of 'jot and tittle' subscriptionism is frequently found in company with the hobgoblin of the elevation of the Standards to a virtual equivalency with Scripture. Such positions are repudiated by the full subscriptionists, as the writers of the PSI know very well. It should further be noted that subscription to the Standards is not to be confused with subscription to a particular theologian's point of view with regard to the doctrine. For example, subscription to the doctrine referred to in the Confession as the 'Covenant of Works' does not oblige the subscriber to adopt the peculiar view of Charles Hodge. Also, it is recognized that certain terms in the Standards may have become infused, in the course of theological debate, with a meaning not strictly demanded by the terms themselves or their use in the Standards. Thus, language referring to Christ as "freely offered to us in the gospel" does not oblige one to subscribe to the peculiar view of Murray and Stonehouse on the subject.

Full subscription does not preclude development of the Truth any more than our commitment to Scripture as infallible and inerrant and authoritative for every department of faith and life precludes study and development of the Truth. What full subscription does is commit us to work within a rather precise framework, and within certain boundaries which are not to be summarily cast aside at the whim of the individual.

Which brings us to the issue of Semper Reformanda - a cry almost always raised, sooner or later, in debates of this nature, and generally, as in the case of the PSI, in connection with allowing men not only to take exception to statements in the Standards not deemed to be fundamental to the system, but to militate for their scruples in pulpit, classroom, and in the courts of the Church.

Those of us who have sat under the faculties of liberal seminaries have seen, first hand, where an unbridled enthusiasm for Semper Reformanda can lead. We have seen the principle abused to excuse or defend every sort of perversion of Truth and Scriptural order imaginable. Experience has taught us that when men begin to talk about how the Church must be always reforming, their meaning, often, is that the Church must accommodate its doctrine and practice to the latest trends in culture, the most recent findings of 'science,' the newest fancy of infidel 'scholarship,' and so forth. We have heard this discussion before, and we are not going to simply roll over in the face of appeals to our 'reformation heritage' in this matter.

R. A. Webb, one of the great sound teachers of the old PCUS, addressed this issue in an article entitled "Closed Questions", which appeared in The Presbyterian Quarterly back in 1891 - a period in history when the situation in the PCUS was in many respects similar to that in which the PCA finds itself today.4

After dealing generally, in the first part of the article, with the folly of repeatedly having to re-settle the issue of the Bible as the rule of faith in Protestantism, Webb turned his attention to creeds.

While it is superlatively true that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the only, the all-sufficient, the inspired, the inerrant rule of faith and practice, revealing all that man is to believe concerning God, and the entire duty that God requires of him, it is at the same time true that man must interpret each and every part of those Scriptures to the best of his ability, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and then combine all that the Scriptures teach upon every subject into a scientific whole. "Every student of the Bible must do this, and all make it obvious that they do it by the terms they use in their prayers and religious discourse, whether they admit or deny the propriety of human creeds and confessions . . . The real question is not, as often pretended, between the word of God and the creed of man, but between the tried and proved faith of the collective body of God's people and the private judgment and the unassisted wisdom of the repudiator of creeds." It would be spiritual presumption, intellectual vanity and wanton folly thus to discard the concurrent wisdom of the learned and pious of all ages, and erect in its stead the judgments of the individual reason. The egotism that would do it deserves popular rebuke instead of applause ....

These creedal statements are closed questions to the adherents of that denomination, because they are the results of its investigations into sacred truth. They mark the attainments already made in religious knowledge by that branch of the church. No man within that denomination has any intellectual or moral right to efface those marks in the name of his personal liberty - to demand of that denomination that it shall wipe out its constitutional principles, which are to it basic, to further progress, and instrumental to the great end of popular instruction. There is no greater mercy for which we are under obligations to thank our heavenly Father than this, that it is not our sad state to be in a plight, where nothing is settled, but where all is in a state of flux ....

Creeds are a covenant of fellowship voluntarily subscribed to, and covenant fidelity closes their contents against all destructive criticism within the fellowship. For purposes of self-protection, for the sake of internal peace and undivided cooperation, each denomination exacts of all its officers a solemn oath that they will in no point contravene that confessional bond of fellowship. The oath is a pledge of faith to one another. In entering into the doctrinal agreement, each member has the right to demand of every one of his associates a pledge of fidelity. . . . Denominational infidelity is perjury. For one to force into debate the points in the creedal covenant, which he swore at his ordination should always be regarded by him as settled, is the worst sort of faith-breaking ....

The quote from Thornwell in the PSI, introduced to demonstrate that even he, a 'strong subscriptionist,' recognized a distinction between 'the great system' taught by the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and certain "incidental statements, not affecting the plan of salvation and the doctrines of grace", begs the question in terms of whether the principle of Semper Reformanda allows a man to agitate the Church by teaching whatever scruples he may have with respect to the Standards. For one thing, Thornwell brings up the matter of these "incidental statements, not affecting the plan of salvation and the doctrines of grace", not in the context of a discussion about whether a man may teach his scruples, but in a section advocating a clear procedure for amending the Standards, should that become necessary. Thus, the issue is not one of the expression of the mind of the individual, but of the mind of the Church. As to Thornwell's view of the Church's obligation to be faithful and consistent to what she does confess by way of her creed at any given moment, a better citation is his report on the General Assembly of 1847,5 and particularly his discussion of the McQueen Case,6 in which he makes the statement, "as long as we profess to believe that our Standards faithfully exhibit the mind of the Spirit, our practice and our Creed ought to be consistent" (emphasis ours). In the specific case, which involved a question of lawful marriage, Thornwell went on to say that "It were better that the whole law of marriage were expunged from our Standards, than that we should be systematically guilty of the bad faith involved in professions which are not believed or never meant to be enforced."

What has this to do with Semper Reformanda? Simply this: If it can be demonstrated that the Standards are wrong at a point, the way to deal with the matter is by changing the Standards (as has been done on occasion), not to attempt an 'end run' around them with declarations of scruples and carte blanche to militate in favor of the exception and against the Confession. The emphasis, then, should be upon the development of a procedure whereby this sort of thing could be handled in an orderly and controlled manner (as was done, for example, in the questions of paedo-communion, and the report of the committee which studied the issues of marriage and divorce).

In no case should the principle of Semper Reformanda be conceived of as a license for every man to do that which is right in his own eyes. Semper Reformanda is the work of the whole Church, not of the individual. Otherwise, it is confusion.

1 PCA CONSENSUS: A Proposed Statement of Identity for the Presbyterian Church in America (PSI), Chapter 11, pp. 6-9.

2. PSI, p. 6.

3. PSI, point 5, p. 7.

4 The Presbyterian Quarterly, Vol. V (1891), pp. 610-615.

5 The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell D.D., LL.D. (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1974. Reprint of 1875 edition) Vol. IV, pp. 481ff.