Another term which we would be glad to take to ourselves in its original significance is Reformed. What does it mean to be Reformed? We cannot assume that the term as used today is a guarantee of Biblical orthodoxy. The author of an article entitled “Reformed Tradition”, in the Dictionary of Scottish Church History & Theology, acknowledges that “defining the boundaries of the Reformed tradition has become increasingly difficult because of changes in Churches which were once strongly Reformed. . . . Reunions have removed Reformed landmarks into new positions, and the success of missions has brought genuinely international cultural diversity. Many rejoice in these changes as a sign of healthy diversity, while others continue to pursue the ideal of a unitary theology recognizably continuous with classic Calvinism.”
The difficulty referred to is illustrated in the volume Disruption to Diversity: Edinburgh Divinity 1846–1996. Dr Gary Badcock of New College, Edinburgh University, writes: “That we stand historically within the Reformed tradition can hardly be doubted; many of the great names of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Reformed thought are our own predecessors, or have strong links with us. That we still stand within that tradition, and that we are likely to do so for the foreseeable future, may be a somewhat more controversial thesis. It is one, however, that I propose to defend, for I am convinced that New College retains, and will retain, a clear Reformed identity. In fact, I wish to go farther, and to suggest that the truth is that the milieu of faith, and specifically of faith as conceived in the Scottish Reformed tradition, is what has made and makes New College what it is.22
What significance this claim has can be judged by the general context of the volume, including Professor T F Torrance’s reference to room being made “for a fresh understanding of the gospel by freeing it from the rigid framework of rationalist Calvinism”,3 and Professor Stewart Brown’s almost-horrified description of William Cunninghame as one whose “theological beliefs consisted of a narrow and rigid scholastic Calvinism, including a belief in predestination,” and who “seemed to perceive the Free Church of Scotland as a small bastion of Reformed truth surrounded by the corruption and errors of an expansive Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, as well as by the dangers of Biblical scholarship and infidel philosophy”.4
Dr Badcock’s own idea of what is meant by continuing in the Reformed tradition can be gathered from, among other things, his reference to candidates for the Church of Scotland ministry worshipping, while at New College, “with those who worship differently, or with those who find it difficult to worship, or even worship a different God. Perhaps one of the gains of such experience is a recognition on the part of each that any given theology or tradition is intended only to mediate the mystery of God, and not to be the mystery itself; one recognises the limitations of one’s own way by recognising the strengths of others. Such an approach finds a fitting home in a Reformed context, for here the classic ecclesiological semper reformanda5 theme means that one can never presume to have the perfect church, the perfect theology, or the perfect mode of worship, but always and only something provisional and approximate, something that must be ever open to change, even to be what it is.” A similar situation prevails in many churches and seminaries throughout the world which claim to be in the Reformed, or Reformation, tradition. The term thus understood is not of much practical use.
The term is also used in a more restricted sense. In his introduction to the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland edition of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the late Rev Alexander McPherson noted that, after the Second World War, there appeared “signs that in various parts of the English-speaking world the Lord was turning hearts back to the Bible and its doctrines. Ere long the term Reformed began to be used to describe those who accepted the Scriptures as the inspired, infallible Word of God, and who saw in the Confessions of the Calvinistic Churches accurate statements of the principal truths of the Christian religion.” More recently, Edmund Clowney, former principal of Westminster Theological Seminary, introduced a book of essays entitled After Darkness Light with the claim that “for almost a biblical generation, the ministry of R C Sproul has been transforming the convictions of Evangelicals. His teaching brought robust Calvinism back into American Evangelicalism.” In these contexts Reformed is used in its historical sense to distinguish the Calvinistic section of the Reformation Church from the Lutheran and – in spite of Arminius’ claim to be Reformed – to distance the Calvinistic section of the Church from Arminianism.
Reformed is properly equivalent to Calvinistic. B B Warfield asserted in his article The Present-Day Attitude Toward Calvinism: Its Causes and Significance: “Calvinism is Evangelicalism in its pure and only stable expression. When we say Evangelicalism we say sin and salvation. Evangelicalism is a soteriological conception; it implies sin, and salvation from sin. . . . It means utter dependence on God for salvation. . . . Calvinism will not play fast and loose with the free grace of God. It is set upon giving to God, and to God alone, the glory and all the glory of salvation. . . . Calvinism is only another name for consistent supernaturalism in religion. . . . The supernaturalism for which Calvinism stands is the very breath of the nostrils of Christianity; without it Christianity cannot exist.”
He gives a more extensive description of Calvinism in his article Calvinism: “The roots of Calvinism are planted in a specific religious attitude, out of which is unfolded first a particular theology, from which springs on the one hand a special church organisation, and on the other a social order, involving a given political arrangement. The whole outworking of Calvinism in life is thus but the efflorescence of its fundamental religious consciousness, which finds its scientific statement in its theological system.” Its fundamental principle “lies in a profound apprehension of God in His majesty, with the inevitably-accompanying poignant realisation of the exact nature of the relation sustained to Him by the creature as such, and particularly by the sinful creature. He who believes in God without reserve, and is determined that God shall be God to him in all his thinking, feeling, willing – in the entire compass of his life-activities, intellectual, moral, spiritual, throughout all his individual, social, religious relations – is, by the force of that strictest of all logic which presides over the outworking of principles into thought and life, by the very necessity of the case, a Calvinist.
“In Calvinism then, objectively speaking, theism comes to its rights; subjectively speaking, the religious relation attains its purity; soteriologically speaking, Evangelical religion finds at length its full expression and its secure stability. Theism comes to its rights only in a teleological conception of the universe, which perceives in the entire course of events the orderly outworking of the plan of God, who is the author, preserver and governor of all things, whose will is consequently the ultimate cause of all. The religious relation attains its purity only when an attitude of absolute dependence on God is not merely temporarily assumed in the act, say, of prayer, but is sustained through all the activities of life, intellectual, emotional, executive. And Evangelical religion reaches stability only when the sinful soul rests in humble, self-emptying trust purely on the God of grace as the immediate and sole source of all the efficiency which enters into its salvation. And these things are the formative principles of Calvinism.”
J G Vos asserted that the battle is between consistent theism, or Calvinism, and consistent humanism – between “God unlimited by man” and “man unlimited by God”. He went on to say: “Between these two logical opposites we find the whole range of inconsistently theistic views (including Arminianism), of which the most basic concept is ‘God limited by man’. These inconsistent views must ultimately break down, and it must finally be recognised that the real issue is man as conceived by humanism versus God as conceived by Calvinism.”6
We shall not try to assess the extent to which the term Reformed as currently applied by those who accept this definition is a guarantee of commitment to what we understand to be the Reformed Faith in its entirety. Instead, we shall conclude by emphasising our goodly heritage, and especially the obligation laid upon us by commitment to everything properly involved in the terms Christian, Protestant, Bible-believing, Evangelical and Reformed. As a Church we assert that we are Reformed in doctrine, worship and practice. What we mean by Reformed doctrine is indicated in our wholehearted commitment to the Westminster Confession of Faith. What we mean by Reformed worship is indicated by the way in which the Regulative Principle of Worship is applied. What we mean by being Reformed in practice is indicated in our commitment to the Presbyterian form of Church government, to the exercise of a Biblical discipline and to the endeavour by grace to “cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1).
We must ever guard against, and seek to be preserved from, any slackening of commitment to any of the doctrines which we have avowed in our reception of the Westminster Confession of Faith as the confession of our faith. And in the spirit of the gospel we must maintain the very truths on which compromise is sought for whatever reason. Martin Luther is quoted as saying: “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ”.
Thomas M’Crie in his Two Discourses on the Unity of the Church asserts that “schism is always evil; separation may be either good or evil, according to circumstances”. He then comments on what he calls “latitudinarian schemes of unity”: “The ground on which this plan is ordinarily made to rest is a distinction made among the articles of religion. Some of these are called essential, or fundamental, or necessary, or principal; others circumstantial, or non-fundamental, or unnecessary, or less important. The former, it is pleaded, are embraced by all true Christians; the latter form the subjects of difference among them, and ought not to enter into the terms of ecclesiastical fellowship.
“On this principle some of them would conciliate and unite all the Christian denominations, not excepting Papists, Arians and Socinians; while others restrict their plan to those called Evangelical, who differ mainly in their views and practice as to the worship, order and discipline of the Church. . . . The relations of truths, especially those of a supernatural kind, are manifold, and incomprehensible by us; it is not our part to pronounce a judgement on them. And if we could see them, as God does, in all their extent and at once, we would behold the lesser joined to the greater, the most remote connected with the primary, by necessary and indissoluble links, and all together comprising to form one beautiful and harmonious and indivisible whole. Whatever God has revealed, we are bound to receive and hold fast; whatever He has enjoined, we are bound to obey; and the liberty which we dare not arrogate to ourselves we cannot give to others.”
A similar statement is made in the articles on the 1892 Declaratory Act republished in the History of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland (1893-1970): “Certain points are said not to enter into the substance of the faith. No one, we maintain, has a right to cut and carve the faith in this fashion. We are bound to receive and profess the whole revealed will of God, and to receive and profess less is sin and error. What creature then has a right to give his fellows a dispensation in the things of God? . . . We do not deny that there have been and are Christians eminent for personal piety in Churches, such as the Episcopal, where views are held that are contrary to the Word of God. But we are not aware that any Church has a right on this account to set a lower standard before her people than the Word of God sets.”
We must also value and ever seek to enter into the spirit of the Presbyterian form of Church government and the exercise of Biblical Church discipline which is part of our Reformed heritage. Introducing his discussion of Church Government, The Apostolic Church – which is it? Thomas Witherow comments that “though every statement in the Scripture cannot be regarded as absolutely essential to salvation, yet everything there is essential to some other wise and important end, else it would not find a place in the good Word of God. . . . Every divine truth is important, though it may be that all divine truths are not of equal importance. . . . Few would go so far as to assert that correct views on Church government are essential to salvation, and yet it is a subject whose importance it were folly to attempt to depreciate. The Holy Spirit, speaking in the Scriptures, treats of this theme. The Christian world has been divided in opinion about it ever since the Reformation. We cannot attach ourselves to any denomination of Christians without giving our influence either to truth or error on this very point; and the views we adopt upon this subject go far to colour our opinions on matters of Christian faith and practice.”
The doctrine of the Church, its government and its discipline, has an important place in the Reformed understanding of the truth. In the history of the Reformed Church in Scotland it was intimately connected with struggles for the crown rights of the Redeemer. It should be our aim to endeavour to maintain the truth in all its fulness in the context of a Church conformed in its practice to the revealed will of the Lord.
We must seek grace to live – individually, domestically, ecclesiastically and socially – as those to whom the glorious doctrines which we avow are not simply a matter of intellectual satisfaction but the very food of our souls, stimulating us to love the Lord our God and to conduct ourselves as those who know and love and fear Him should. Each must seek grace to be a real Calvinist, truly Reformed – the person, described by Warfield, “who believes in God without reserve, and is determined that God shall be God to him in all his thinking, feeling, willing – in the entire compass of his life-activities, intellectual, moral, spiritual, throughout all his individual, social, religious relations”.
In so far as others adhere to Evangelical, Reformed truth we wish them well in the name of the Lord. But love to the Lord, and to His truth and cause and people, should constrain us to adhere to the truth in all its fulness – to endeavour to conform, personally and ecclesiastically to all that is truly involved in being Christian, Protestant, Bible-believing, Evangelical and Reformed – and to call others to join us in that conformity. The history of the Church, and of that line from which we are descended, calls us to value the heritage which we have and to take heed to ourselves that we hold fast that which we have, that no man take our crown (Rev 3:11).
1The final section of a shortened and adapted version of a paper given at the 2003 Theological Conference.
22P 277.
3P 20.
4P 43.
5That is, always requiring to be reformed.
6Banner of Truth, September 1961.