BY REV. JOHN COLQUHOUN, GLENDALE.
XVIII. The Position in Britain Today.
In these articles we have been tracing the footsteps of the Union-mongers in Scotland and England, and, on both sides of the Border, it appears very evident that with each step taken, there is less and less of a regard for the things of God. What is needed, however, is not an outward Church union in which an attempt is made to associate in one body elements which, from their very nature, can never be united, but a return to the Word of God in doctrine, government, and mode of worship. For many years back men were labouring by conferences and other means to bring about a Union between the Episcopal Church of England and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The result of this labour is seen in the issuing of a Joint Report in January, 1957, which has caused a good deal of controversy, and, judging by its reception in certain parts of the Church of Scotland, instead of union it will bring about disruption. The Report itself is very vague, betraying what is far too evident, that is, a fear of offending one side more than another, and an utter neglect of searching the Word of God for a basis of Union. This can be gathered from the following paragraph:—”The New Testament teaching about the nature of the Church being what it is: the Episcopalian and Presbyterian ‘Churches’ being what, in the course of history, they have come to be, neither of them claiming in its separatedness to exhibit the whole truth and wealth of the One Church of Christ, yet each claiming to possess gifts from the Head of the Church which it cannot in conscience deny or resign, and each being as desirous of respecting the conscience of the other as it is bound to obey its own—this being the historic situation, are there conceivable modifications and mutual adaptations of the two Church systems whereby they may be reconciled in such a plenitude of faith and order as will conserve the fullness of their traditions.” Joint Report. p. 16. This leaves out of account the need that the conscience of the Church, as well as the conscience of the individual, be enlightened by the Word of God.
That there should be such a neglect of the Scriptures need not surprise anyone, for, both the Church of England and the Church of Scotland, have long ago ceased to be led by the Bible. In 1922 the Archbishops of Canterbury and York set up a Commission on Christian doctrine, and fifteen years later they issued their Report. Considering the time taken, one is warranted to expect that the Report in all its details would be the result of mature deliberation, and that it would set forth the doctrine presently believed in the Church of England with a finality which would admit of no contradiction or revision. Of course one would naturally expect in this Report a re-affirmation of what is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles and in the English Prayer Book, and, therefore, it comes as a rude shock to one to find the belief in the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible set down as a tradition which “cannot be maintained in the light of the knowledge now at our disposal,” and that “there is some reason to think that in some cases the words attributed to our Lord reflect rather the experience of the primitive Church, or the utterances of Christian prophets than actual words of Jesus.” The theory of evolution is held to be quite consistent with the narrative of Creation given in Genesis. The doctrines of the Fall, the total depravity of our nature, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, are all denied in the Report, and a certain bias is manifested towards such Roman Catholic dogmas as Extreme Unction, Purgatory, and Auricular Confession. In the proposed new Canons of the Church of England the Lord’s Supper is profaned and made meaningless by the substitution of an altar for a table, the recommendation of Mass vestments, and the use of wafer bread as in the Roman Catholic Church, while the Confessional is recommended together with the recognition of religious Orders and Communities. This is the Church with which many of the Church of Scotland leaders are so anxious to unite.
When we come to the Church of Scotland we find that things are not any better. For many years now the Higher Critics have been working within her pale. They brought into her colleges and seminaries doctrines which were contrary to the doctrines of the Bible, and bearing the hall-mark “made in Germany.” These doctrines were instilled into the minds of students of divinity, who, to all appearances, had not a ballast of grace, and these, in turn, disseminated these pernicious doctrines throughout the land by means of the pulpit. We have already seen how these unscriptural views when given official standing by the Assembly destroyed the once-glorious Free Church of Scotland. The Declaratory Act, which gave that official recognition to these heresies, is among the documents which formed the basis of the Union which took place in 1929. Thus the Church of Scotland as well as the Church of England has gone far from her original foundation as far as doctrine is concerned.
A great deal is made of the need of unity in order to heal the breaches in the visible Church and such as cannot see their way to promote that unity are stigmatised as schismatics and guilty of a great sin. Those whose one cry is unity in the Church may be, and often are, guilty of an even greater sin than remaining outside such a Union, that is, promoting a church union which is not based on the Scriptures. No one is bound to enter a church union where adherence to the Bible is not considered of any great importance, and if there is sin in connection with disunity in the visible church, the question may well be asked, Who is guilty of it? Is it the man who adheres whole-heartedly to the Word of God in doctrine, worship, and discipline, or his neighbour who has changed his attitude to the Bible and the subordinate standards, and is seeking to fill the Church with innovations which have no foundation in Scripture? How do matters stand at present between the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the Episcopal Church of England? Can the Church of Scotland unite with that of England without forsaking the Scriptural foundation upon which it stood at the Reformation? Before there can be even an outward union one or other of these Churches must lay aside its government and much of what it professes to believe, and wholly accept the government, worship, and discipline of the other.
The Church of England, claiming to be in the line of Apostolic Succession, is not prepared to yield anything, or even accept the validity of the ordination of ministers of the Church of Scotland, but expects that the latter Church must yield in all things. In the light of this we see how well-merited is the castigation of the Episcopal Church by Dr. Charles Hodge when he says, “To refuse to recognise those as Christians who are Christians; to refuse communion with those in whom Christ dwells by His Spirit; to un-church the living members of Christ’s body; to withhold sympathy, fellowship, and co-operation from those in whom Christ delights, and who are devoted to His service; to take sides in the great conflict, between true and false religion, between the gospel and ritualism, against the truth and against God’s people, is a very great sin. It is the sin of schism which all Churchmen profess to regard with special abhorrence. It supposes wrong views of the nature of the Church, of the plan of salvation, and of the nature of religion. We do not wonder, therefore, that the evangelical spiritual members of that Church are anxious not only to free themselves from the imputation of this sin and heresy, but to prove that the Church to which they belong is not justly chargeable with either.” Church Polity. p. 134.
When the Church of England is so insistent on the dogma of Apostolic Succession it would be well to pause for a moment to examine as to whether it is fact or fiction. It is averred that ordained persons in the Church of England are in the direct line of succession from the Apostles, that is, that the Apostles ordained their successors and that a special grace has been transmitted to all who are thus ordained by the successors of the Apostles in all generations. In no case in the New Testament do we find an Apostle singly ordaining office-bearers in the Church. Timothy, for whom Paul was so solicitous in all things, was not ordained by him, but by the “laying on of the hands of the presbytery.” I. Tim. iv. 14. The Apostolic office was of a temporary nature, and was confined to those who had an immediate commission from the Lord, and on whom He bestowed miraculous powers which were necessary for the confirmation of the Church at its beginning. It is rather significant that the Apostle Paul makes no mention of diocesan bishops when he says in Ephesians iv. 11, 12, “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” By this he seems to have exploded the myth of Apostolic Succession centuries before the Church of Rome created it.
The foregoing warrants the following observations as indicative of the position today:—(1) The Church of Scotland has departed from its original moorings by putting certain documents in its Constitution which gives its office-bearers permission to understand its subordinate standards in a different manner from how they were originally understood. (2) This has been taken advantage of by the vast majority of these office-bearers in order to preach Modernism and Rationalism and other systems of error contrary to the Word of God. (3) The Church of England, though officially committed to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Authorised Prayer Book, is notorious for its Romanising practices in a great many of its parishes, and is under the power of a dead Erastianism against which the Church in Scotland fought and bled for centuries. (4) The promoters of this projected Union are not keen that a backward glance should be taken at the past history of both Churches. They say, “In the present Conversations we have renounced, and believe that the Churches concerned should renounce, the method of selecting such faults and errors in the past history of the Churches now conferring, as might be judged to be responsible for our present divisions. Relations between Anglican and Presbyterian Churches. p. 15. This last observation is like passing an Act of Oblivion on all the persecutions endured by the Church of Scotland at the hands of those who endeavoured to foist Episcopacy on her. A suitable reply to such a suggestion would be that some philanthropist would reprint and distribute throughout the land the History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, by Rev. Robert Woodrow. It would give the present generation an eye-opener as to the cruelties of the minions of the Episcopal Church in their somewhat uncouth efforts at effecting Church Union in Scotland.