Truth and Justice as the Foundation for Ecclesiastical Unity – 2, No Binding to Confession (1)

One of the grounds for the liberation of LRCA was the lack of binding to confession among members of the Orthodox Presbyterian Churches (‘lack of confessional membership’). In 1977, the CanRC had declared that the OPC was the true church of Christ. However, there were several other significant points of dispute that delayed a move towards unity until 2001. One of the major points of contention was the absence of binding to confession. This matter was discussed at multiple CanRC synods (we will return to this when we discuss the ecclesiastical path preceding LRCA’s liberation).

GS Groningen 2014-2015
Firstly, a passage from the committee report approved by GS Groningen 2014-2015, which was not contradicted by GS Lutten 2021:
      Regarding binding to confession, it is noted that this is not in force for members in the OPC, nor even for office bearers. Concerning members: at the CanRC synod of 1998, representatives of the OPC stated:
       The OPC has the right to admit to membership and to the Lord’s table those who do not make profession of the Reformed faith

It was further stated:
     We (OPC) affirm what you (CanRC) reject – that the church is competent to determine as valid and credible a confession of the Christian faith for communicant membership that is not also in accord with the church’s confession.

This was reported to the synod of Emmen in BBK report-1, page 59.

These statements concerning the church service and practice within the OPC, which are not in accordance with HC Q&A 82, art. 61 CO, and our Form for the Public Profession of Faith, were not an obstacle for the CanRC synod of 2001 to proceed with a sister church relationship with the OPC, and thus open communion to guests who cannot be confirmed as sound in doctrine and life. Attestations are also not always issued.

Subsequently, in a letter from deputies BBK of DGK to the CanRC synod of Carman, it was documented and brought to attention that Baptists can simply participate in the OPC’s communion (see BBK report to synod of Groningen 2014, page 48). Baptists can also participate in the celebration of communion in the URC; see also GS Emmen BBK report 1, page 61; BBK report 2, footnote on page 103, and point 6 on page 116.

Regarding the ministers, it applies that as office bearers, they are not entirely bound to the entirety of the church’s confession (Westminster Standards) but to an unspecified ‘system of doctrine’ within it (GS Emmen BBK report 1, page 61.

This concludes the committee report from GS Groningen.

OTHER SOURCES:
Now, we present what other sources have written about binding to confession.
Firstly, a quote from what the OPC mentions in their official Book of Church Order:
Book of Church Order OPC (current version, as of 2023) states regarding public profession of faith giving assent to the following questions:
(1) Do you believe the Bible, consisting of the Old and New Testaments, to be the Word of God, and its doctrine of salvation to be the perfect and only true doctrine of salvation?
(2) Do you believe in one living and true God, in whom eternally there are three distinct persons—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—who are the same in being and equal in power and glory, and that Jesus Christ is God the Son, come in the flesh?
(3) Do you confess that because of your sinfulness you abhor and humble yourself before God, that you repent of your sin, and that you trust for salvation not in yourself but in Jesus Christ alone?
(4) Do you acknowledge Jesus Christ as your sovereign Lord, and do you promise that, in reliance on the grace of God, you will serve him with all that is in you, forsake the world, resist the devil, put to death your sinful deeds and desires, and lead a godly life?
(5) Do you promise to participate faithfully in this church’s worship and service, to submit in the Lord to its government, and to heed its discipline, even in case you should be found delinquent in doctrine or life?
Source: https://www.opc.org/BCO/DPW.html#Chapter_III[1]

By this assent one is not bound to any confession of faith. Arminians, Baptists, evangelicals, and members of Pentecostal congregations can affirm this and become members. They are not excluded from the celebration of the Lord’s Supper because of to their convictions.

Sources: https://www.opc.org/qa.html?question_id=148[2];  https://opc.org/qa.html?question_id=224 https://www.opc.org/qa.html?question_id=282;  https://www.opc.org/qa.html?question_id=305; https://opc.org/qa.html?question_id=453[3]

Similar practices have been noted in reports by CanRC deputies regarding other Presbyterian sister-churches.

Regarding the Free Church of Scotland, it was reported in 2007 that there are no catechism schools but there is a Bible school. However, children can sometimes become confessing members as early as the ages of 8-12. People with Baptist and Pentecostal ideas are also welcome as members.

Below is a chronological selection of what has been written in Canada outside the general synods.”

1986 – Is the OPC indeed a confessional church?
Rev. K.A. Kok, a minister of the Canadian Reformed Churches, was formerly a minister of the OPC. In 1986, he wrote an important article about the OPC titled ‘Presbyterian or Reformed?

To be Reformed is to be a type of Christianity, but there is no binding force in the confession of the church. All are but “denominations,” different names for the same reality. Notice the Romanish language of laity and clergy. Is it any wonder that with ardent defenders of the faith such as Dabney and Hodge that liberalism came to dominate both the Northern and Southern churches? And is it any wonder that their spiritual heirs are either fundamentalists or evangelicals? Is it any wonder that on two occasions General Assemblies of the OPC have determined that members are not to be examined for membership according to the standards? Moreover, they decided that those who deny baptism to their children, as well as Arminians and other ‘evangelicals’ may be admitted to membership as the individual sessions see fit.10

This information is information which ought to have been considered by our own General Synods in 1977, 1980, 1983, and 1986. This is information which ought to have been uncovered by our committees for contact over the past 11 years.
Yet, we still seem to believe that the OPC is committed to its standards in the same way that we are committed to the Three Forms of Unity. But this is simply not the case.
There are, of course, manifold problems with the position of the OPC. A distinction is made between saving faith and the confession of the church. As a result, one is left saying either that the ministers and elders are the only ones who truly make up the church, for they alone hold to the whole confession, or one says that the ministers and elders believe for the people; that is, the people are bound to the confession by implicit faith. If saving faith is different from the confession of the church, then why is there a confession? If the confession goes. beyond what is necessary to be saved, is it not a human tradition and something which represents a binding above Scripture?
It is, I believe, clear that the insistent pluriformity of the OPC works to absolve them of the responsibility to be the church. If, after all, the church as ‘organism’, or the church ‘invisible’, is the real church, then there is no ultimate call for the visible denomination to be the church. Christians are found hither, thither, and yon, and are not to be bound together by confession and obedience, but by the ‘mystical union’ of ‘saving faith’ in Jesus as the Christ. If all Christians are, as B.B. Warfield avers, Calvinists on their knees, then there is no urgency, save that, of ‘systemic consistency, to get them to be Calvinists (or,, better, Reformed) when they are off their knees.11 Calvin, who quotes Cyprian, is anathema to these people when he says that “No man has God for his Father who does not have the Church for his Mother.”12

Conclusion.
We have seen that the OPC cannot be called a confessional church. The members of the church are not bound to the Standards. Only ministers and elders are bound to the Standards and then only to the system of doctrine contained within the Standards. For the OPC to be seen as a confessional church, then, either the church must. be defined as its office-bearers, or a doctrine of implicit faith must be brought in, i.e. the people implicitly believe what the ministers and elders believe.

2007 Ds. G. I. Williamson (OPC)
G. I. Williamson (OPC) paints the differences between our respective churches in the following manner: “As I understand it, the CanRC says that those who make a public profession of faith in their churches do, by that act, explicitly subscribe to the Three Forms of Unity. In the OPC, on the other hand, public profession of faith has never been seen as equivalent to full subscription to the Westminster Standards.” Furthermore, he writes that while communicant members in the OPC have a relationship to the church’s confessional standards, it is more “implicit” than “explicit.”

Source: Ds. J. Visscher in Clarion 2007, 27 april

                                                                                                              (To be continued)