THE regular meeting of the Presbytery of Philadelphia of The Orthodox Presbyterian Church was held on Monday, November 20th, at Eastlake Church, Wilmington, Del. The morning devotional service was conducted by the Rev. Samuel J. Allen of Philadelphia.
The Rev. Glenn R. Coie, pastor-elect of Knox Church, Silver Spring, Md., was received from the Presbytery of California. Mr. David W. Kerr, a senior at Westminster Seminary, was examined and taken under care of presbytery as a candidate for the gospel ministry. The amendment to the Book of Discipline, Chapter II, Section 3, proposed by the last general assembly, was approved by the presbytery.
By far the largest portion of the day was consumed in hearing and intaking actions in connection with a complaint filed by thirteen members of the presbytery against actions of that body in the matter ·of the licensure and ordination of the Rev. Gordon H. Clark, Ph.D.
The actions complained against were taken in connection with the meeting of presbytery on July 7, 1944. The complaint, which was read in full to the presbytery, states that in the opinion of the complainants the meeting itself was illegal and that the theological views of Dr. Clark as indicated in his examination were of such a character as not to warrant presbytery in proceeding to his licensure and ordination.
In support of the claim that the meeting itself was illegal, the complainants state that it was called as a special meeting, but that there was no good reason why a special meeting should have been called, since the matter was neither an emergency nor something newly arisen since the previous meeting of presbytery. The history of the calling of special meetings in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. from 1789 to 1936 is reviewed, as well as the special meetings of the Presbytery of Philadelphia since its formation, with a view to showing that the calling of a special meeting for a purpose such as this has no parallel in the past. In support of the second part of the complaint, four considerations were advanced, which are summarized near, the end of the text of the complaint itself as follows: "The very doctrine of God is undermined by a failure to maintain a qualitative distinction between the knowledge of God and the knowledge possible to man, thus denying the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God and impinging in a most serious fashion upon the transcendence of the Creator over the creature. The interpretation of Christianity as being fundamentally intellectualism subordinates the volition to the intellect in a manner that is flagrantly in violation of the teaching of Scripture and of the Reformed theology. Similarly emotion as an element in the mind of God and in the mind of the Christian is disallowed. And the views concerning human responsibility and of the free offer of the gospel likewise clearly affect decisively one's conception of matters that are of the greatest possible moment to every Christian.
"Nor do these errors concern only isolated details. In all of these matters there is manifest a rationalistic approach to Christian theology. The highest activity in man is the intellectual activity; his. highest goal is the intellectual contemplation of God. In connection with his answer, to the question as to the extent to which man may comprehend God, Clark admits the dependence of man upon the revelation of God but, on the basis of a rationalistic dialectic, maintains that any knowledge that man possesses of any item must coincide with God's knowledge of the same item in order to be true knowledge, thus failing to distinguish with respect to content between the Creator's knowledge of any thing and creaturely knowledge of the same thing. And, even though he speaks of the infinity of God's knowledge, he does not rise above a quantitative distinction between the content of the knowledge of God and the content of the knowledge which man may possess. And in pursuance of his effort to penetrate into the mind of God he sets aside, or attempts to set aside, by resort to reason, the paradoxes which Reformed theology has recognized as existing for the human mind between the divine foreordination and human responsibility and between predestination and the divine offer of salvation to all men, with the consequences that the doctrines of human responsibility and of the free offer of salvation to all fail to be set forth in any adequate way. These innovations are then not curiosities of an innocent sort, but concern some of the most central doctrines of the Christian faith, including even the all-decisive subject of the doctrine of God. And the result of this rationalistic approach to theology is a failure to maintain the balanced, comprehensively Biblical, character of historic, classic Calvinism which is set forth in the standards of The Orthodox Presbyterian Church."
The complaint was signed by John Wistar Betzold; Eugene Bradford; R. B. Kuiper; LeRoy B. Oliver; N. B. Stonehouse; Murray Forst Thompson; William E. Welmers; Paul Woolley; Cornelius Van Til; Edward J. Young; David Freeman; Arthur W. Kuschke, Jr.; and in a limited fashion by Leslie W. Sloat.
Following the reading of the complaint, Dr. Clark read a brief statement in lieu of a full answer which he had not yet had time to prepare. He charged that the complaint was characterized by "poor logic", "false statement", "intemperate words", and "ambiguities", while remarking at the end, "There is no doubt a difference between my views and those of the complainants";
The presbytery elected the following members to serve as a committee to reply to the complaint, with instructions to report to the presbytery not later than March 19, 1945, and to prepare the reply for distribution to the presbyters at least two weeks prior to the meeting: Ministers: Gordon H. Clark; Robert Strong; Floyd E. Hamilton; and Edwin H. Rian. Elder: Charles A. Tichenor.
An overture had been received from the session of Calvary Church, Willow Grove, asking that the presbytery request THE PRESBYTERIAN GUARDIAN not to publish the text of the complaint. After lengthy debate, the presbytery, by the close vote of fourteen to thirteen, advised THE PRESBYTERIAN GUARDIAN not to publish the complaint until an answer had been prepared.
Although THE PRESBYTERIAN GUARDIAN is not including the text of the complaint in the magazine, it is glad to announce that the full text is being privately printed and that copies may be had at ten cents each upon application to THE PRESBYTERIAN GUARDIAN, 1505 Race Street, Philadelphia 2, Pa.
Attention is also called to the editorial, "Issues and Convictions", .on page 349 of this copy of the GUARDIAN.
No comments:
Post a Comment