The General Assemblies

The Church of Scotland General Assembly

WE looked in vain in the secular and Christian press for any reports which might indicate that there were calls by at least some Assembly members for a return to Biblical truth and practice in our Scottish national Church.

In his sermon, the Moderator, the Right Rev. Sandy MacDonald, did exhort the Church to make a fresh start. But he did not mean the fresh start of whole-hearted commitment to the Scriptures but rather what he called “new patterns of ministry, of worship,.. new co-operation between denominations… Maybe even a new understanding and interpretation of the Bible.”

The Queen’s representative at the Assembly, Lord Macfarlane, the Lord High Commissioner, not only called on the Church to “continue to devote time and attention to how best we can persuade people to worship with us,” but also on political parties to work more closely with the Churches for “the greater good of Scotland”. However, “the greater good” he was thinking of was not spiritual benefit but the resolving of “social problems”.

It will not be for the good of the Church if it goes down the road recommended by the Rev. Duncan McClements, Convener of the Committee on Ecumenical Affairs, when he urged the Church to consider the appointment of bishops. His call reflected the statement made earlier to the Assembly by the Anglican Bishop of York, who said that he hoped “it may not be too long before we begin to see a more serious and perhaps more formal way with which to enter into conversations with yourselves.” It is no exaggeration to say that the ultimate end of the ecumenical road is submission to the Papacy – and that is not our view alone. In addressing the Assembly on the issue of inter-communion, the Roman Catholic delegate said, “It is a question of, at the end of the day, accepting the ministry of another’s church. I think we have to acknowledge that acceptance of Roman Catholic ministry involves also in some way facing the question of the ministry of the Bishop of Rome.” Even the report of the Church’s Committee on Ecumenical Affairs itself acknowledges that the 1995 papal Encyclical Ut Unum

Sint (that they may be one) is emphatic “that the fulness of communion is only within the Roman Catholic Church,” and that “the primacy of the Bishop of Rome is the key to the fulness of communion with God.”

With regard to social problems, the Assembly expressed its concern about increasing alcohol abuse among teenagers, condemned “alcopops” (sweetened alcohol drinks which are aimed at younger people), and supported the steps being taken by the Government to curb the sales of these drinks.

However, the Assembly also decided to request “that a Royal Commission be appointed to consider and make recommendations on the issues involved in the legalisation of cannabis.” This has provoked fears, and rightly so, that the Church could be seen as condoning drug use. Indeed, one member of Assembly, a woman minister by the name of Shirley Blair, (speaking outside the Assembly) said that she would favour legalisation of cannabis not only for medicinal purposes but for everyone, claiming that it is not addictive.

On the domestic front, a disturbing state of affairs was revealed when the Assembly had to admit that wife-battering took place in some manses, and decided to set up a 24-hour confidential hot-line for ministers’ wives who are victims of violence and abuse behind the closed doors of manses. It was claimed by one speaker that the Church has “tended to ignore, marginalise, blame, patronise or exclude victims.” No doubt, this shameful problem has grown, and this solution of using a hot-line is employed, because Church courts, on the whole, have failed to discipline offenders.

With regard to the National Lottery, the Assembly spoke from both sides of its mouth. On the one hand it adhered to its policy of condemnation of the National Lottery, but on the other hand appointed a commission to give further “consideration to the Church’s policy on the National Lottery and its effect [loss of Lottery funding] on the work being carried out [repair and maintenance of certain historic church buildings] in partnership with others.” No doubt, the Very Rev. David Steel echoed the thoughts of those in favour of using Lottery funding when he said that the Church would have to temper its attitude toward the Lottery with a degree of realism – deplorable words for a man who by his office professes to believe in the God of providence.

The Assembly, however, disapproved of any steps to clone human beings. It “expressed its strongest opposition to the cloning of humans and urged the Government to press for an international treaty enforcing a global ban.”

Strange to say, the bizarre phenomenon, the “Toronto blessing”, in which worshippers fall over, shake, and emit animal noises, was not condemned. In its report the Panel of Doctrine adopted “a sitting on the fence” posture. The Assembly, in approving the report, did no more than request Presbyteries to monitor the effect of the phenomenon on church life.

What is sorely needed in the Church of Scotland is a very decided proclamation of the whole truth of Scripture. Only when the trumpet gives a definite sound can we look for betterment in that Church which was once renowned for its Reformed stance but has slidden far away from it.

The Free Church General Assembly

THE retiring Moderator, the Rev. Neil MacDonald, Fearn, preached a sermon on 1 Kings 19:11-13, which ends with the question, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” He spoke first on “The dejection of the Prophet,” and then on “The sovereignty of God,” and stressed in conclusion that “the doctrine of His sovereignty is no excuse for inaction. It is indeed the belief that He is mighty to save that is our great incentive to preach the gospel which is His power unto salvation…”

The new Moderator, the Rev. Dr. Donald MacDonald, in his address to the Assembly, gave three answers to the question, “What is the church for?” In his third answer, “The church is for the people”, he stated that the first duty of the church is “to tell them the good news of Jesus”, but at the same time “to seek the welfare of the people at every level, moral, material and social, as well as spiritual.” Two issues cry out for a Christian lead, he said: the sanctity of human life and social justice, and the two most striking areas in which the sanctity of human life is being attacked in this country are abortion and euthanasia.

The matters which dominated the Assembly were those relating to the case of Professor Donald Macleod. The lengthy debate was over two reports from the Training of the Ministry Committee: the Minority Report, by those members of the Committee who were not satisfied with how the Church has dealt with the case, and the Supplementary Report. “The Minority Report, signed by Prof. Hugh Cartwright, Rev. Angus Smith, and Dr Murdo Murchison,” says The Monthly Record, “claimed that documents (letters and the booklet published and circulated by Iain H. Murray) [in which serious charges were made against Prof. Macleod] before the Training of the Ministry Committee had not received adequate treatment, and had been summarily dealt with in terms of the 1995 Assembly that declared the case against Prof. Macleod closed. The Report asked the Assembly to set up a Special Committee, made up of people who had not been on the Training of the Ministry or Finance, Law and Advisory Committees to look at these documents and report back.”

The Supplementary Report argued against the Minority Report and recommended the censuring of its signatories and their removal from committees. The Assembly adopted this report, declared the Minority Report to be in contempt of the findings of the 1995 General Assembly and of the Commission of Assembly of 31st October 1996, censured its signatories and removed them from membership of Group II Committees. Despite the

Assembly stating that the term censure was not used in the technical sense of disciplinary censure but as expressing “strong displeasure”, and that the removal of the signatories from these committees was not a punishment, the perception in the press and other quarters is that they have indeed been punished.

In the debate prior to this decision Rev. Alex MacDonald implied that the signatories were “hounds of death”. “It is high time for the Assembly to call those hounds to heel,” he added. Prof. Cartwright, in a statement read to the Assembly (he was absent due to illness) said, “I am not a bitter foe or hound of death . . . I am not a member of an anti-Macleod faction . . . But I am a duly appointed member of a responsible official body to which complaints were made and which was obliged to take cognisance of these complaints.”

A report on Theonomy (the belief that mankind is required by God to keep not only the moral law but also all the civil and judicial laws which were given to Israel in Old Testament times), was discussed. It was right, said Dr Eric MacKay, that the Assembly should address this issue because “letters in The Monthly Record had shown that theonomy was forthrightly espoused and preached.” The Assembly adopted the report and its recommendation that “the Assembly declare that the teachings known as Theonomy or Reconstructionism contradict the Confession of Faith and are inconsistent with Biblical doctrine.”

In the Youth Report debate, Rev. J. J. Murray expressed his concern about the Church losing its young people. This is due to the fact, he said, that they had lost catechetical teaching, acquaintance with Free Church principles, family worship and the keeping of the Lord’s Day. He spoke of “Christian events for young people that were no different to concerts and events in the world, and which eroded the distinction between the church and the world.” Looking from the outside one can see that his remarks are true with regard to the Free Church today. ☐

“Why Did the English Stop Going to Church?”

Rev. K. D. Macleod

THIS is the title of a thought-provoking lecture* delivered by Dr Michael Watts, a historian in the University of Nottingham. The statistics he quotes are stark enough. The 1851 census included a question on religious observance. This showed that 39.1% of the adult population in England attended church on a particular Sabbath. A survey conducted in 1989 revealed that the figure had dropped to just 9.6%. Significantly, and further emphasising the drop in attendance at Protestant places of worship, the 1851 figure included Roman Catholics at 1.7% of the population, but by 1989 it had doubled to 3.4%.

* Published as a booklet by Dr Williams’s Library, 14 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0AG and available for £2.26 post free.

In his lecture Dr Watts concentrated on nonconformist churches, where the decline has been most serious – especially among Presbyterians and Congregationalists, whose combined figure in 1989 (having united to become the United Reform Church) was only one-fourteenth of what it was in 1851. He does claim, however, that church attendance in 1851 was at an all-time high. He quotes for instance a William Harrison, who in 1614 “observed that for every person who attended church there were many hundreds who listened and danced to pipers on village greens”.

As a result of his own research into 670 accounts of Nonconformist conversion experiences, Dr Watts has come to the conclusion that the most significant factor in bringing about this greater rate of church attendance in the eighteenth century was the fear of hell. He suggests that “the Church of England laid the foundations for the Evangelical revival and for the expansion of Dissent by instilling into men and women, and especially into boys and girls, the necessity of adhering to a strict moral code, breaches of which would be punished by eternal damnation”.

From the results of various surveys conducted by contemporary religious periodicals, Dr Watts concludes that the decline in church attendance dates from the 1880s. From this point on, the churches were failing to hold the rising generations of young adults. He claims this failure was not so much the increasing acceptance of evolution and higher criticism, but the publication of the book Essays and Reviews, a manifesto of English liberal scholars first published in 1860. Its significance, he tells us, “lay not so much in the fact that it revealed, for the first time to many English readers, the doubts that German scholars were casting on the accuracy of parts of the Old Testament, but in the evidence that there were clergymen in the Church of England who were reinterpreting if not rejecting the orthodox doctrine of future punishment”. And this was the issue which had caused the most impassioned debate during the 1860s and 1870s.

Large sections of the English Churches reacted dishonourably to the claim that eternal punishment was a stumbling-block for many who would otherwise embrace Christianity. To quote Dr Watts’ again: “Increasingly Christianity was seen, not primarily as a preparation for life after death, but as a means of living a fuller life here on earth; it was seen, not as a religion which separated the saved sheep from the damned goats, but as a religion which proclaimed the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God.” He concludes that “English Christians, and especially English Nonconformists, jettisoned what had been, in the first half of the nineteenth century, their most effective argument in the winning of converts. The liberalisation of Christianity was intended to make the faith relevant to the men and women of the modern world. It had instead the

effect of making the churches irrelevant to the needs of twentieth-century men and women.”

Whether Dr Watts’ analysis is totally accurate or not, he has pointed to an important point which may have been somewhat neglected. There is no doubt that the Protestant Church as a whole has over the past 150 years failed to react scripturally to the changing trends of human thought. There are tides in human thought, and the Church cannot avoid these tides when they affect the spiritual wellbeing of men and women. But how is she to react? Her duty is, as far as possible, to assess the trends in human thought, to point out the fallacies in whatever theories become current and direct her people in a more scriptural direction. Which is not to say that every office-bearer within the Church has the intellectual capacity to engage in the kind of thinking which is necessary to oppose the particular theories which may raise their heads in a particular age.

But it is the absolute duty of every preacher of the gospel to proclaim the whole counsel of God – and to do so in the absolute confidence that the Word of God is totally trustworthy. This is what the Church has for many years signally failed to do. Certainly, the doctrine of a lost eternity is a particularly solemn part of that whole counsel. But the Church has no right to ask, Do congregations like it? Far less may she ask, Does the world like it? She has been given her message from heaven; her duty is to proclaim it faithfully. So Ezekiel was told, “Go, get thee to them of the captivity, unto the children of thy people, and speak unto them, and tell them, Thus saith the Lord God; whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear.” The response of Ezekiel’s hearers could not affect the message he was to proclaim; he must declare the message which God gave him. And preachers in every generation have exactly the same responsibility.

Yet if the Church in the nineteenth century had been more convinced of the truth, the reliability and the authority of the Scriptures, she would never have felt free to deny the doctrine of hell. To this extent at least, Dr Watts may be correct. The Church gave up warning about the reality of a lost eternity because she had lost her grip of the authority of the Scriptures. When the Church lost her grip of the authority of the Scriptures, she was at the mercy of the ebbs and flows of human opinion. Then, as Dr Watts clearly indicates, the vast majority of ordinary people were left without any compelling reason for coming to church. Preaching without real authority behind it, giving a message which is uncertain – which may be true or may not be true – will not in the long term hold the attention of the multitudes. True preaching must proclaim the holiness and justice of Almighty God; it must point to the seriousness of man’s position as a sinner who has consistently offended this holy God, who therefore stands under God’s condemnation – and who must continue in that position for ever unless

God Himself will do what is necessary to bring the sinner into a state of reconciliation. But when preachers cease to stir up the conscience, and when they can give no more convincing an answer to the serious questions of life than secular commentators, then the Church is doomed to failure. The steepness of the decline in church attendance should come as no surprise when conditions within the churches are as disastrous as they are.

But what of those churches which still proclaim the truth? Should they not be immune from declining attendance? Sadly, this is not so. Whole generations have been imbued with the thought that the eternal world is of no consequence and it is a thought which is highly congenial to the natural heart. Too often the path of least resistance is to follow the world, even although it means continuing on the broad way, which leads to everlasting destruction. Never perhaps is the blindness of the natural heart better illustrated than when those who have been in contact with sound preaching, and may even have felt its power in their own consciences, drift away from church attendance or wander towards churches where the message is more congenial to their fallen natures.

The principle announced to Eli still holds good: “Them that honour me I will honour”, but we must recognise that God is sovereign in the way He applies it. Some have faithfully presented the message of God to their hearers and have been honoured in seeing multitudes blessed for eternity as a result. Others have not been thus honoured, although they have been no less faithful. No one can question the fact that Jeremiah honoured the Lord in bringing to his rebellious people exactly the message that he was given – unpalatable though it was. It is less easy to see how God honoured Jeremiah. But whether or not it is easy to see how God honoured him in this world, there can be no doubt about the honour he was given when he entered the eternal world and it was said to him, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

Where does this leave the Church of God today? Where, in particular, does it leave the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland? We cannot but be conscious of our weakness and our apparent inability to exert influence over today’s society. But our duty is plain – continued faithfulness to the revealed will of God in doctrine, worship and practice. It is easy to become despondent when the Church of Christ seems to be in retreat. Yet we are to go on in the knowledge that there will be at last, around the throne of God, “a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations”. The Church, as well as individuals, may take the comfort once given to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” The Church must go on proclaiming the whole counsel of God in spite of her weakness, but in total dependence on God to bless His Word in the way and to the extent that

He sees fit. And she is to do so with the weapon of “all-prayer”.

The duty of prayer for the prosperity of the Cause of Christ is one which falls on all who fear God. And preachers of the gospel would still echo Paul’s heartfelt and urgent cry to his fellow-believers, “Brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you: and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men: for all men have not faith.” When that prayer is answered, the Word of God will in due course be blessed, as multitudes who attend on a purely-preached gospel will flee from the wrath to come, and the Church will be greatly strengthened in England and elsewhere. May the Lord hasten it in His time! •

A Catechism for the Instruction of Communicants

By Andrew Thomson, D.D.*

Continued from page 211 in the last issue

Questions Nos. 72 to 93 (some of which have been edited)

NOTE: This instalment, in continuing to deal with the qualifications which one ought to possess in order to partake of the Lord’s Supper, now deals with the qualification of faith. As the answer to Question No. 63 shows, these qualifications “are such as are prescribed in Scripture, or suggested by the nature and ends of the ordinance; and may be reduced under these five heads: Knowledge, Faith, Repentance, Love, and New Obedience.”

72. Q. What is faith in Jesus Christ?

A. “Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation, as He is offered to us in the Gospel.” [Quoted from the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism].

73. Q. What reason have you to believe in the mission and doctrine of Christ?

A. 1. I believe in Christ, because in Him were fulfilled a great variety of prophecies, that were uttered some ages before He appeared; and by Him were wrought many miracles, or wonderful works, which, “no man could do except God were with him,” (John 3:2.) This I know on the evidence of testimony more powerful than what was ever employed to establish the truth of any other fact – the testimony of a great number of witnesses, of irreproachable characters; who showed no symptoms of enthusiasm; who were capable of judging of what they saw and heard; whose declarations were consistent, although made at different times, in different languages, and in different circumstances; whose evidence was contrary at once to their strongest prejudices and their worldly interest; who, notwithstanding, gave it boldly and distinctly; who maintained it by a life of

* See the May issue for a biographical footnote about Andrew Thomson.

danger and suffering; and who (many of them at least) sealed it with their blood, amidst tortures and death.

1. I believe in the religion of Christ, because it is one which it is worthy of God to promulgate, and every way suitable to the nature and circumstances of man; because it contains the sublimest truths and the purest system of morality that were ever taught; and because, with all this excellence, it was published not only at a time when the world around was grossly mistaken with respect to the very first principles of religion and morals, but also by men who had received no education, and who were utterly unqualified of themselves for teaching mankind.

2. I believe in the religion of Christ, because, although it was universally resisted by interested priests and civil rulers, by bigoted Jews and idolatrous mobs; although it opposed the whole current of religious opinion, and condemned the most favourite practices that prevailed in those times; although it was preached by none almost but men of low birth, without learning, and without influence; although the most effectual means that can be imagined were made use of to crush and destroy it: yet, in spite of all these disadvantages, it made such a rapid and triumphant progress, that in the space of thirty years after the death of Christ it was diffused over the greatest part of the then known world; which astonishing success can be reasonably ascribed to nothing else than the power of God accompanying the labours of the Apostles.

3. Lastly, I believe in Christ, because He delivered several prophecies which were afterwards most exactly fulfilled: one, in particular, of the destruction of Jerusalem, which was so circumstantially foretold, and so minutely accomplished, that we should consider the language of our Saviour rather as a history than a prediction of the event, were we not certainly informed of the contrary.

4. Q. Before you can properly receive or believe in Christ, must not you be sensible of your need of a Saviour?

A. Yes: I must be sensible that I am guilty before God; that I cannot of myself merit His pardon and favour, and that I am undone for ever, unless some gracious and powerful Redeemer interpose in my behalf.

1. Q. Must not you be also persuaded that Christ is such a Redeemer as you stand in need of?

A. Yes: I must be convinced that He is willing to save me; that He is as able as He is willing; that He has been sent of God for this very purpose; and that His mediation and atonement have been accepted as perfect and satisfactory.

1. Q. Is it not necessary that you receive Christ in all His offices and characters, in order to believe on Him aright?

A. Yes: it is absolutely necessary that I receive Jesus Christ just as He is offered in the Gospel, and not according to my own private views and inclinations. I must receive Him as my Prophet, as my Priest, and as my King, which are the three great offices that He executes as our Redeemer.

1. Q. How do you receive Christ as your Prophet?

A. I am ignorant; and I take Him to instruct me by His word and Spirit in divine things.

1. Q. How do you receive Him as your Priest?

A. I am guilty; and I trust in Him as one who has atoned for my guilt, and is making intercession for me at the right hand of God.

1. Q. How do you receive Him as your King?

A. I am naturally weak and perverse; and I apply to Him to protect me by His power, and govern me by His laws.

1. Q. What is faith, considered as the instrument of our justification before God?

A. It is simply that principle of the heart by which we accept and trust in the righteousness of Christ. For the sake of this righteousness alone God justifies us; that is, pardons our sins and accepts of our persons; in order to which He is graciously pleased to impute it to us, or place it to our account. And faith is, as it were, the hand or instrument with which we receive and hold the meritorious gift.

1. Q. Is not true faith always a living and practical principle?

A. Yes: wherever true faith exists, it fails not to “purify the heart,” (Acts 15: 9), to “work by love,” (Galatians 5: 6), and to “overcome the world,” (1 John 5: 4). To think, therefore, that we have saving faith, whilst we are not “careful to maintain good works,” (Titus 3: 14) is a gross and fatal error.

1. Q. Why is faith necessary for partaking worthily of the Lord’s Supper?

A. Because, if I do not believe in Christ as a true messenger from God, I cannot with any propriety do what is designed to keep Him in grateful remembrance; for this would be to commemorate an impostor: if I have not trust in the merits of His death, I cannot with any propriety partake of the sacramental elements; for these represent the perfect sacrifice for sin which He offered up when He died on the cross: if I do not confide in Him as an all-sufficient Saviour, I cannot reasonably expect to receive any blessing from His hand when I approach Him in this ordinance; and therefore my approach would be in vain.

1. Q. What is the just and simple notion of repentance?

A. It is turning from sin unto God.

1. Q. What is the first step of repentance?

A. The first step of our repentance is entertaining a just view of sin.

1. Q. What is the view of sin which you should entertain?

A. I should consider it as that abominable thing which the Lord hates, as that which is contrary to His will, and injurious to His perfections, as that which has introduced all the misery that prevails in the world, as that which dishonours and degrades human nature, and as that which tends directly to the destruction of the soul.

1. Q. But must not you be sensible or convinced of sin as something attached to yourself?

A. Yes: I must regard it as something with which my own heart and character are deeply stained; as that which I have committed times without number, in thought, in word, and in deed, and which in my case has been highly aggravated.

1. Q. What are the proper consequences of having these views of sin?

A. From these views of sin, I am naturally led to hate it as a most odious quality; I am led to mourn for it with a sincere and godly sorrow; I am led to forsake its ways, and to return to my duty and my God with firm resolutions and earnest endeavours to be henceforth “holy in all manner of conversation,” (1 Pet. 1: 15).

1. Q. Can you return to God without having reason to hope that He will graciously condescend to receive you?

A. No: if I had no reason to cherish that hope, I could not dare to approach God after having offended Him so much, but would either continue in sin or fall into despair.

1. Q. Have you reason to cherish that hope?

A. Yes: great and abundant reason.

1. Q. What is that reason?

A. God has sent forth His own Son as a propitiation for sin; and in consideration of the sacrifice which Christ offered up, the memorials of which we partake of at His Table, He has declared His willingness to receive all true penitents to the enjoyment of His mercy and favour. Having this assurance, I am encouraged to forsake my wicked ways, and to return unto the Lord, who will have mercy upon

me, and abundantly pardon me. (See Isaiah 55: 7.)

1. Q. How will your repentance show itself to be sincere and genuine?

A. By its producing a life and conduct conformable to the will of God, as revealed in the Gospel.

1. Q. Do you look on repentance as any kind of atonement for the sins which you forsook?

A. No: it cannot be so in the sight of God. There is no other atonement for sin than the atonement of Christ. Repentance is merely that moral change which a holy God requires of us, and which, by the operation of His grace, we are enabled to make, and is itself acceptable to Him, only through the merits of a Redeemer.

1. Q. Why is repentance necessary for partaking worthily of the Lord’s Supper?

A. Because this sacrament is a memorial of Christ’s “suffering for sin;” and to celebrate that memorial without an abhorrence of sin, and a determination to forsake and to avoid it, is evidently to insult the sufferings of Christ, and to provoke the displeasure of the God of ordinances, who is, “of purer eyes than to look on iniquity,” (Habakkuk 1: 13.)

To be continued