THE Orthodox Presbyterian Church is the ecclesiastical denominational title of that section of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., which left the latter denomination in protest against its apostate infidel Modernism, a few years ago. When it formed itself into a separate denomination it assumed the denominational title of the Presbyterian Church of America, but the legality and validity of that title having been contested, it was superseded by its present denominational distinctive name, The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the national connotation being omitted. The main leader of this ecclesiastical separation, from the modernist Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., was the late scholarly evangelical, Rev. Professor Gresham Machen, D.D. Though the writer has seen it stated that The Presbyterian Guardian is not exactly the official organ of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, it nevertheless, for all practical purposes, or to all intents and purposes, serves that function on behalf of that newly-formed denomination. The exact relationship of the Westminster Theological Seminary to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is equally obscure and difficult to define, but some, at least, of its theological Professors are pastors in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. For instance, the Rev. Professor John Murray, M.A., M.Th., a one-time divinity student in our own church, is Professor of Systematic Theology in Westminster Theological Seminary, while also an ordained pastor of one of the congregations of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
The Westminster Theological Seminary itself was formed by those theological Professors and others who left the one-time renowned evangelical Princeton Theological Seminary, on account of the lamentably back-slidden condition of that seat of historical evangelical learning. The name “Westminster” was chosen for the new theological seminary, which was to carry on the evangelical tradition of Princeton in its best days, to testify the loyalty of its theological founders to the doctrines of the famous Westminster Confession of Faith.
Now, while The Presbyterian Guardian is ably devoting its pages to the scholarly defence of the evangelical doctrines of the Westminster Confession of Faith, especially as against apostate infidel Modernism, it is only on two or three occasions that the present writer saw a reference to Romanism in its pages, and these references were of a very milk-and-water nature. This is the outstanding defect of this evangelical periodical, as it is of The Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The laudable critical and informed exposure of infidel Modernism within its pages is merely half the battle of a present-day militant branch of evangelical orthodoxy, while blasphemous, tyrannical, idolatrous, and superstitious Romanism continues scarcely ever to be referred to. If modernism interprets the Bible by methods of infidel rationalism, it nevertheless still leaves the Bible with the laity, whereas Romanism, wherever and whenever it has the power, forbids the perusal of the sacred volume, upon pain of eternal punishment, placing it on the Index Expurgatorius, except by special licence from one’s father confessor, and only then the corrupt Douay version. This is done in the teeth of the Divine injunction “Search the Scriptures for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me.” There is thus a lamentable omission in the testimony of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
It is also to be noted that while Modernism denies the Virgin Birth of the Redeemer, Romanism goes to the other blasphemous extreme of deifying His mother, and representing her as being much more merciful, tender, and accessible as “Mediatrix” than He is as Mediator. Rome’s exalting her to that position at all, more tender or otherwise, is blasphemously in the teeth of Scripture which declare, “There is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” The Scripture title of “Lamb of God” sufficiently contradicts the false view regarding tenderness.
Despite the professed loyalty of the Westminster Theological Seminary, The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and The Presbyterian Guardian, to the Westminster Confession of Faith,
we are sure it will amaze our readers to learn that in the doctrinal Constitution of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, clause or paragraph vi., of chapter xxv. of the Westminster Confession of Faith is left an open question, as far as that church’s terms of subscription are concerned. We refer to that part of the Confession which declares concerning the Pope that he is “that Anti-Christ, that man of sin, and son of perdition that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God.” A Church making such a grave omission scarcely merits the name Protestant, according to the original connotation of that term.
As it seems impossible that Rev. Professor Murray could have accepted ordination and induction to a pastoral charge in that denomination without subscribing his agreement with the viewpoint above stated, he must, in this connection, have burnt all his bridges behind him, when he turned his back upon the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Personally, the present writer believes sincerely that the attitude of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church to this part of the Westminster Confession of Faith is the fruit of lack of spiritual discernment, due to spiritual or intellectual pride, in imagining themselves superior in their power of Biblical interpretation relative to this particular point, to the pious, profoundly spiritual and scholarly theologians who framed the Westminster Confession of Faith, and that the Most High has consequently punished the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and its evangelical periodical, by giving them over, in this respect, to spiritual blindness. If this view is correct, as we firmly believe it is, then that Church and that periodical will not be honoured, failing conviction of their error and repentance, in witnessing against the most formidable obstacle to the spread of the Gospel in the world—Romanism, “the masterpiece of Satan.” As it is generally acknowledged that, with the possible exceptions of the Reformers at the Reformation period, and the body of godly and scholarly men who produced that unrivalled translation, the 1611 Authorised Version of the Scriptures, there
has not been known since the time of Pentecost a body of theologians more endowed with spiritual power, depth, and discernment, from on high, than the pious, spiritual, and scholarly framers of the Westminster Confession of Faith, does it not appear like gross presumption on the part of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church thus, by implication, to correct the, to them, debatable convictions of these divinely highly-favoured theologians? The most deeply spiritual Christians of the present day might, with propriety, be called light-hearted compared with these theologians.
To excuse oneself by saying that the confessional view on this particular point is merely an interpretation is inconsistent, as it is an integral part of an article of the Westminster Confession of Faith, binding upon all who subscribe it as the confession of the individual subscriber. To subscribe only those parts of the Westminster Confession of Faith which suit our own notions of propriety, while still claiming unqualified unequivocal heirship of, and admiration for, confessional doctrines, savours far too much of the unscrupulously-unseemly tactics of the Modernists relative to the Bible—they must needs pose as Christians, while discarding those parts of the inspired infallible Word of God, which they, in their lamentable spiritual blindness, think should not be there. The seeming subterfuge that the Westminster Confession of Faith being, after all, a humanly-framed document, though based on the Bible, one could not be expected to endorse every detail of it, as one knows of no book composed by man to which one could not yield such endorsement, may seem not only plausible but an incontrovertible argument to some, but in this particular case it does not carry conviction. If the Papal System, culminating in the blasphemous doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope, when he speaks ex-Cathedra on matters of faith and morals—an attribute and prerogative peculiar to the Godhead—is not, after all, the Scriptural Anti-Christ, we fail absolutely to conceive how any other system that can ever arise and develop will coincide so exactly, in minute detail, with the inspired Biblical description.
We can only conclude that “blindness in part is happened” to those who believe otherwise. The probability is that before the present war is over, or before it is very long over, it will be made manifest to the whole world that the Pope is the Scriptural Anti-Christ, and that his army of Jesuits, disguised under the smoke-screen of politics, diplomacy, ambassadorial appointments, papal legates, nuncios, and apostolic delegates, caused and fostered the prevailing holocaust of war. In causing and continuing this war Jesuitised Romanism manifests the characteristics of its satanic author, the Devil. In producing this international blood-bath they are only acting like their father, the Devil, who “was a murderer from the beginning,” and in propagating it by lying unscrupulously they still further evidence their sonship, for Satan is a liar and the father of lies.