4. Doctrinal Error
Rev A W MacColl
We proceed now to consider the third part of the treatise, which deals with doctrinal error. Error, Durham asserts, is not less heinous than gross scandal in a person’s practice, and its consequences are equally calculated to stumble God’s people. Scripture maintains an awful testimony against false doctrine and threatens fearful vengeance on those who promote
1This Theological Conference paper dealt with James Durham’s volume, A Dying Man’s Testament to the Church of Scotland, or, A Treatise Concerning Scandal. Last month’s article summarised Section 2 of the Treatise, which discusses public sins and how to deal with them. All page references in the text of this article refer to the Naphtali Press edition of the book.
it. It is not only a lie in itself but it is to charge a lie upon the God of truth Himself. Indeed, it is rebellion against God, and to teach it is to encourage such rebellion.
Error destroys the Church’s purity and peace and ruins the souls of men. It is of such a pernicious nature that even unconverted heathen are less intractable than those professing false doctrine within the Church, as the false teachers in Corinth and Galatia abundantly evidence. “It is no easy thing to recover a people misled into error” (p 131). Durham notices that error has a tendency to get worse and worse. Notorious heretics contract a judicial blindness which leads them further and further on in error, as the examples of Socinus and Servetus prove. Heresy, Durham states, is not a sin of passion or infirmity proceeding from some fit of temptation. It is a deliberate sin. He also remarks that the more promising a Church is, the more the evil one tempts to error. When the gospel flourishes, erroneous teaching seems to flourish alongside it.
It is needful to make distinctions in prosecuting false doctrine, for not every error is alike in extent and tendency. Teachers of false doctrine, he argues, must be dealt with more severely than those who have been led astray by such false teachers. While some errors strike at the fundamentals of Christian truth and godliness, others may be sincerely held by true believers in Christ. But even these can only be tolerated if the erring person does not promote his views. A Congregationalist or Episcopalian may be forborne in a Presbyterian Church, but if he starts to divide the Church by venting his opinions then he must be put to silence (p 170).
Durham exhorts every minister to examine himself when any error breaks out in the Church, since error breaking out in a congregation may well be the Lord’s displeasure at his own ministry. Once more, a long list follows of practical duties ministers should take notice of in such circumstances, including the need to be thorough in his preaching of “the whole body of divinity and grounds of Christian religion”. They should endeavour to cure the plague as wise spiritual physicians and be affectionate and beyond reproach in all dealings with their people, so that they do not give the least ground for alienating them from their ministry (pp 177-81).
Durham’s application of this subject to the civil magistrate is one of the most useful parts of the whole treatise. He holds, as a matter of course, to the duty of magistrates to use their civil power for the good of the Church (p 198). His arguments against toleration of heresy are powerful and pithy. Soul-destroying errors, such as Popery, he argues, ought to be suppressed by the civil powers. If Christ will condemn Christian ministers at the last day for not purging out heresy, how will Christian magistrates be exempted?
Indeed, the Bible commends those rulers in Israel who were most zealous in this respect, and is God any less zealous and are souls any less precious under the New Testament than under the Old? Furthermore, an absolute toleration of error puts Satan’s kingdom on an equal footing with the kingdom of Christ, and such a policy has ever been destructive to the Church’s prosperity. Certainly, these statements must be qualified by the fact that not every error is to be prosecuted by the magistrate but only those of the most serious and offensive kind.
Magistrates, he suggests, are not so much to force people in religion as to preserve them from dishonouring God by corrupt religion: “It is no just liberty to have liberty to hurt others” (pp 208-9). This would preserve the rights of conscience and private judgement and yet preserve the purity of the Church at the same time. They may use their influence to bring resolution to controversies in the Church, and Durham approvingly notes the conciliatory actions of the Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nice in this connection.