“Mrs. Bagby was not a Cumberland Presbyterian but a member of the U.S. or Southern Presbyterian Church. I too am now a member of the Southern Church. I say nothing against the Cumberlands. They broke with the Presbyterian Church because they did not believe a preacher needed a lot of formal education. That is all right but they are not sound on Election. They do not fully accept it. I confess it is a hard doctrine, running contrary to our earthly ideas of fair play, but I can see no way around it. Read I Corinthians 6:13 and II Timothy 1:9, 10. Also I Peter 1:2, 19, 20 and Romans 11:7. There you have it. It was good enough for Paul and Silas and it is good enough for me. It is good enough for you too.”

True Grit, Charles Portis

For some it is quite easy to write off Christianity as myth, on par with the stories of Zeus, Athena, and Gilgamesh.  However, when we delve into the ancient worlds via the writings of historical figures we find words such as these from Irenaeus, who writes concerning his friend and mentor, Polycarp, who was himself a disciple of John the Apostle, the author of five New Testament books and eyewitness of the ministry of Jesus Christ.

I remember the events of those days more clearly than those which have happened recently, for what we learn as children grows up with the soul and becomes united to it, so I can speak even of the place in which the blessed Polycarp sat and disputed, how he came in and went out, the character of his life, the appearance of his body, the discourse which he made to the people, how he reported his converse with John [the apostle] and with the others who had seen the Lord, how he remembered their words, and what were the things concerning the Lord which he had heard from them, including his miracles and his teaching, and how Polycarp had received them from the eyewitnesses of the word of life, and reported all things in agreement with the Scriptures (H.E.V. xx. 5-6) {D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, (Eerdmans:  Grand Rapids, 1991), 26}

When we take the time to study such ancient history, the historic nature of the person and work of Jesus Christ is brought into increasingly sharp focus.  We are indeed surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.  We do good to not ignore them.

“How many persons are there in the Godhead?  There are three persons in the Godhead; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.”

While “Trinity” is not a biblical word, it is the word that theologians have agreed upon to voice the understanding of God put forth in Scripture and summarized in WSC #6.  The idea is that there is one God who exists in three persons.  The three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are all equally God and are one God.

Throughout history, there have been multiple attempts to illustrate or design an analogy to help explain the Trinity.  Some have, and still do, explain the Trinity using the analogy of water and its three states or modes, solid (ice), liquid, and gas (steam).  However, this analogy fails because God does not exist as one substance that is in different modes at different times. God exists at all times as one God in three persons.  The water analogy illustrates the heresy known as modalism.

Others have tried to use the analogy of Neapolitan ice cream.  The problem here is that the three flavors do not actually share the same substance and the only “oneness” they have is based on proximity.  Ultimately, Neapolitan ice cream beautifully illustrates tri-theism, three gods, but fails to properly explain Trinitarian monotheism.

In the end, there has never been an analogy for the Trinity that does not break down in some major way, so if you here the words, “The Trinity is like…” it is probably a good idea to listen with guarded ears.

Based on the biblical teaching the most that can really be said (without getting into longer more technical formulations) is that which has been handed down for generations in the Westminster Shorter Catechism.  “There are three persons in the Godhead; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.”

The Larger Catechism does take one more step saying the three persons can be distinguished by their personal properties, which it then explains in the next question.  “What are the personal properties of the three persons in the Godhead?  It is proper to the Father to beget the Son, and to the Son to be begotten of the Father, and to the Holy Ghost to proceed from the Father and the Son from all eternity.”

The doctrine of the Trinity is precious to the church; we would do good to master the simple formulation found in Westminster Shorter Catechism #6.

Religious skeptics such as Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins often simplistically boil down Christianity to thought and behavior control.  The critique, more or less says that we want people to act and think a certain way, so we make rules and say they came from a powerful god who is going to get mad if we do not do what he says.  Essentially, all religions are lumped together as legalistic – follow the rules and it will work out for you.  At times, Christians such as John Lennox have attempted to debate these men and explain where they have gone wrong in their boil-all-religions-down-to-a-common-denominator approach.  However, it is as if the explanations of the gospel fall on deaf ears.  Perhaps a greater problem is the debate the rages on within the ranks of those who would call themselves Christian.  Are people saved by faith alone or by faith plus works, or by faith or works, or by works alone?  As a quick answer, consider Ephesians 2.8-9.  “For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (ESV).

The Presbyterian Church in America is in a long line of protestant churches that teach that God saves people by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and the PCA has worked hard to protect that doctrine from heresy.  One avenue of protection is having a set of doctrinal standards, the Westminster Standards, to which the elders in the denomination must subscribe.  The Westminster Standards, as used by the PCA, consist of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Shorter Catechism, and the Larger Catechism.

Westminster Shorter Catechism #3 asks, “What do the Scriptures principally teach?”  The answer that the Westminster Divines, the cool name for the guys who wrote the standards, gave is, “The Scriptures principally teach, what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.”  On the surface, the answer to WSC #3 seems a bit out of place in a document that churches committed to salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone have long held up as one of the most biblically faithful doctrinal summaries.  WSC #3 seems to be affirming all that people already misunderstand about Christianity.  God is this way and he says you have to do such and such.  However, there is good reason to think through this a bit more.

There are two parts to the answer given by the divines.  First, the Scriptures teach what we are to believe about God.  Second, the Scriptures teach what God requires of us.  In the Bible Belt, our tendency is to think in terms of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5), the Golden Rule (Matthew 7.12), or the Great Commandment (Matthew 22.34-40) first.  Our thought process goes like this, “The Bible is our Basic Instructions before Leaving Earth, our owners manual.  So, if we look inside and see what it says to do, then all this is left is to do it.”  We too often start with the rule(s) and define the god behind the rules accordingly.

When the Westminster Divines made these two statements, they were summarizing the gospel.  The Shorter Catechism is organized as follows:

1. Introduction – questions 1-3
2. What man is to believe concerning God – questions 4-38
3. What duty God requires of man – questions 39-107

If we read the Shorter Catechism with this intentional structure in mind we quickly find, in questions 4-38, God defined not only as lawgiver and judge but also as the author of redemption at the cost of his only Son, Jesus Christ.  Therefore, part of what man is to believe concerning God is that God has sovereignly worked out a salvation for his people that is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.  When we continue reading questions 39-107, we find truths that are equally as precious.  While God does have an exacting standard for all people, he also came in the flesh as the God-man, Jesus.  Jesus fulfilled the law on behalf of his people and died in the place of his people.  Salvation comes to the people of God by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

Therefore, WSC #3 in no way teaches legalism but summarizes gospel in two loaded statements.  What is man to believer concerning God?  God is the Lawgiver, and God secured redemption for his people.  What duty does God require of man?  God requires perfect obedience to his law from every person, and God came in the flesh to satisfy every demand of the law for his people.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, died as a substitute to pay the price for the sins of his people; therefore, all those who profess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in their hear that God raised him from the dead will be saved.  In this series of articles, we are asking the question, “How does the gospel apply to the church?”  The simple answer is, “Without the gospel there is no church.”

We can talk about the church in a couple of different ways.  We can talk about the universal church, or we can talk about a local church.  The universal church consists of all those from every age and place that rest in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation.  People from every race, nationality, gender, and time period are part of the one universal church.  Some also refer to the universal church as the invisible church.

A local church is a particular congregation of folks that profess faith in Jesus Christ.  In Conway, there are over 120 local churches.  Any local church will contain among its membership some who are not true believers and therefore not part of the universal church.  Also, local churches are necessarily bound by time and location and therefore less diverse that the universal church.  While a local church is necessarily less diverse than the universal church – as it simply cannot contain people from every age or place, it is a grievous situation that the majority of local churches are also less diverse in race and class than the community in which the exist.  Some also refer to local churches as the visible church.

Whether the universal or the local church is in view, belief in Jesus Christ is (in the case of the universal church) and should be (in the case of the particular church), the criterion by which individuals are included as members.  So, “How does the gospel apply to the church?”  Without the gospel there is no church.

Throughout history, there have been churches that have compromised the gospel in numerous ways.  Some have said Jesus was not really the Son of God.  Some have denied that Jesus was born of a virgin.  Some have held that Jesus was not actually sinless.  Some have denied the atoning power of Jesus’ death.  The list could go on.  Those churches that have denied the vitals of the gospel have been referred to as theologically liberal (this is entirely different than being socially or politically liberal).

If the gospel is vital to the church, then redefining the content of the gospel redefines the church. Paul said, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1.8, ESV).  In 1923, J. Gresham Machen, a Professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary, wrote Christianity and Liberalism.  The premise of his book is that Christianity, that is biblically faithful Christianity, and Liberalism, that is theological liberalism, are not two varieties of the same thing but two completely different things.  Machen was right.  If by Jesus Christ I mean God in the flesh and you mean merely a man then we are talking about two completely different ideas.  One, as God, has the power and authority to save men from God’s wrath, and one, as merely a man, has no more power to do so than you or I.

The Bible leaves no room, on the matter of the gospel, for theologically liberal churches and biblically faithful churches to be considered under the same umbrella of being in Christ.  Either the gospel, as it is given in Scripture, is true, or it is not.  We do not have the freedom to alter the gospel in order to make it true. Either the gospel, as it is given in Scripture, defines the church, or it does not.  We do not have the freedom to alter the gospel to make it fit the church.  And frankly, if the gospel needs to be altered to be true or relevant, why bother?  So, again, “How does the gospel apply to the church?”  Without the gospel, as defined by Scripture, there is no church, only country clubs that don’t serve liquor.

Too often, Christians have given trite, smart-aleck answers to the real questions that people have regarding Christianity or some aspect of it.  1 Peter 3.15 is often quoted as an encouragement to Christians in the task of apologetics.  Peter writes, “…but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you…”  If you have been around the church for long at all, then you have probably heard this verse quoted.  However, the last clause of the verse, in my experience, is typically left off.  It says, “yet do it with gentleness and respect.”  Peter not only is calling folks to participate in the task of apologetics and evangelism, but also Peter is calling folks to participate in this task in a particular way, with gentleness and respect.

Consider the question that has often come from skeptics, “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?”  The bottom line is we do not know, yet in our pride we come up with all kinds of ridiculous answers to this question.  Some have said (and only some have said this in jest), “He was preparing Hell for people who pry into mysteries.”  What an arrogant, prideful answer.  Saint Augustine addresses this very issue in book XI section 12 of his Confessions.

My answer to those who ask ‘What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?’ is not ‘He was preparing Hell for people who pry into mysteries.’  This frivolous retort has been made before now, so we are told, in order to evade the point of the question.  But it is one thing to make fun of the questioner and another to find the answer.  So I shall refrain from giving this reply.  For in matters of which I am ignorant I would rather admit the fact than gain credit by giving the wrong answer and making a laughing-stock of a man who asks a serious question.

May we continue in such humility.

Let me first state that what follows is a very brief (despite its appearance) and therefore a very general overview of American Presbyterianism.  If you want more information, I recommend Seeking a Better Country:  300 Years of American Presbyterianism by D. G. Hart and John R. Muether.

The first presbytery meeting in the United States was in Philadelphia in 1706.  A presbytery meeting is a meeting of the elders in a given geographical region to conduct church business.  The church grew, other presbyteries formed, and the first synod convened in 1717.  A synod is a group of presbyteries that gather to conduct church business.  Overtime, the synod became too large to function efficiently, so in 1786 the sixteen presbyteries that made up the synod were divided into four separate synods.  Three years later, in 1789 the first General Assembly (meeting of all the synods) convened. 

However, the eighty-three year journey from the first presbytery meeting to the first General Assembly was not without bumps.  From 1741 to 1758, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America split between the Old Side and New Side over the issue of revivalism.  The New Side, following men such as George Whitfield and Gilbert Tennent were pro-revivalism and viewed by the Old Side, represented by John Thomson and George Gillespie, as emotional and theatrical in their preaching.  When the two sides came back together in 1758 the influence of the New Side was apparent.

While the Old Side and New Side were able to reunite, the issue of revivalism continued to cause controversy in the Presbyterian Church.  Following the tradition of the New Side, the Cumberland Presbytery, located in Kentucky, began ordaining men who did not meet the education requirements of the Presbyterian Church and who only loosely subscribed to the Westminster Confession of Faith, the long standing doctrinal standard of Presbyterians.  The Cumberland Presbyterian Church began pulling away in 1810, and in 1825, the Presbyterian Church in United States of America officially excluded the Cumberland Presbyterians from the General Assembly. 

In the 1830’s a new debate, or perhaps the same debate with a new focus, arose.  The two sides were the Old School and the New School.  The Old School party pushed for a strict subscription to the Westminster Standards, and accused the New School party of unbiblical views of the depravity of man, the headship of Adam, and other central doctrines.  The split was official in 1838 when the Old School constituents to the General Assembly effectively locked the New School constituents out of the assembly meeting. 

As the Old School New School controversy lingered on, the issues of slavery and states’ rights, the hot political issues of the day, further complicated the debate.  Holding a higher view of states’ rights and seeing slavery as not necessarily condemned in Scripture, the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America organized in 1861.  The organizing churches were southern and predominately Old School congregations.  With the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America was renamed the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS). 

In 1869, eight years after the Southern church formed, the Old School and New School sides came back together to form the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA).  The reuniting of the Old and New School in the North established two main Presbyterian bodies divided less over theological issues and more over Civil War era politics.  The Northern Church was the PCUSA, and the Southern Church was the PCUS.

Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, theological liberalism grew within the PCUSA, the Northern Church.  In the 1920’s, the debate between fundamentalism and liberalism reached fever pitch.  Harry Emerson Fosdick, a liberal Baptist minister preached a sermon titled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win” at the First Presbyterian Church of New York City in 1922.  In his sermon, Fosdick openly denied fundamentals of the faith such as the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, the inspiration of Scripture, and the second coming of Jesus Christ.  In 1923 the General Assembly responded by affirming five fundamentals:  1) the inerrancy of Scripture; 2) the miracles of Christ; 3) the virgin birth of Christ; 4) the substitutionary atonement (the doctrine that Christ died in place of his people, as a substitute); and 5) the bodily resurrection.  In addition, J. Gresham Machen, a leading conservative theologian and Princeton professor, sought to address the issue with a book titled, Christianity and Liberalism.  Machen’s argument was that the debate between fundamentalism and liberalism was not a debate between two different varieties of Christianity but a debate between Christianity and a different religion altogether, liberalism.  The liberal camp responded in 1924 with the Auburn Affirmation, a document calling into question the need for men to affirm the five fundamentals in order to be ordained as ministers in the PCUSA.

The controversy continued, resulting in Machen and the fundamentalists opening Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929 and forming the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions in 1933.  These separatist actions by Machen and others resulted in their suspension from the ministry by the PCUSA in 1935.  In 1936, Machen and the others organized the Presbyterian Church in America, which then changed its name to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) in 1939.  Westminster Theological Seminary and the OPC still stand as biblically faithful institutions today.

Forms of liberalism, similar to that in the Northern Church, crept into the Southern Church in the late 20’s and early 30’s.  By the 1940’s, liberalism had firmly taken root in the PCUS.  One of the landmark cases within the PCUS involved Hay Watson Smith, a minister in Little Rock, AR whom the Arkansas Presbytery received as a minister despite his denial of Biblical inerrancy and affirmation of other liberal positions.  In 1929, the General Assembly requested that the Arkansas Presbytery open a disciplinary investigation regarding Smith’s beliefs.  The investigation went on until 1934 and ended with the Presbytery refusing to discipline Smith for his unorthodox and even heretical views. 

As the fight against liberalism in the Southern Church grew, several groups emerged to uphold the conservative, biblical position.  Dr. L. Nelson Bell, Billy Graham’s father-in-law, began the Southern Presbyterian Journal in 1942, which joined with the Association for the Preservation of the Southern Presbyterian Church in 1954.  In 1964, a group of laymen formed the Concerned Presbyterians and joined a conservative group of clergy known as the Presbyterian Churchmen United.  The Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship formed in the same year and eventually formed the Executive Committee on Overseas Missions in 1971.  This group was concerned with carrying out biblically faithful evangelism in the U.S. and abroad.  The education of ministers had always been important to most Presbyterians.  Therefore, a group of men started Reformed Theological Seminary in 1966 in Jackson, MS to educate men to be biblically faithful ministers.  Representatives from each of these groups drafted a Declaration of Commitment in 1969, which was a commitment to take the necessary action in the event that the doctrine of the church was further compromised. 

Only a few years later a Plan of Union was introduced which forced the hand of the conservative groups in the PCUS resulting in a meeting at Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL at which the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA – originally called the National Presbyterian Church) was formed.  In 1982, the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod (RPCES), a micro-denomination made up of groups from various Presbyterian and Reformed backgrounds including the OPC, merged with the PCA.  The RPCES brought with it Covenant College (Lookout Mountain, GA) and Covenant Seminary (St. Louis, MO) which remain as the denominational undergraduate college and seminary of the PCA.

In 1983, the remaining liberal sides of the Southern Church (PCUS) and the Northern Church (PCUSA), which had come to be known as the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, reunited to form the Presbyterian Church (USA).  The OPC and the PCA remain biblically faithful “sister” denominations ministering alongside and in conjunction with one another.

The history of American Presbyterianism is eye opening.  What I have presented in this article is only a fraction of the divisions and mergers that have taken place between various groups over the last 300-or-so years.  With good reason, many refer to Presbyterian history as “split-pea-soup.”  However, the reality is that every denomination shares a similar history made up of various episodes of divisiveness and grace.  

The PCA does not claim to be a perfect denomination.  Nor does the PCA claim to be the only true Christian denomination.  We recognize that there are other biblically sound and faithful denominations alongside whom we have the privilege of proclaiming the wonderful gospel of Jesus Christ.  If our history teaches us anything, it teaches us that we are great sinners in need of a great Savior.