Truth and Justice as the Foundation for Ecclesiastical Unity – 8, Non-closed Lord’s Supper (5)

History of the OPC: Relationship between church view and celebration of communion

Prof. J. Geertsema wrote in the Clarion about the celebration of communion in the OPC, referring to the Blue Bell congregation of the OPC that joined the CanRC in 1985 (see previous articles). It is good to read more about this matter from the former OPC minister Rev. K.A. Kok himself, who led this liberation. He provides some background and describes in more detail the actual positions of the OPC.

We quote passages from the speech of Rev. K.A. Kok “Presbyterian or Reformed,” delivered in 1985 and published in “Shield and Sword.” The content is the same as his more extensive text with the same title found on the Spindleworks website.

Rev. Kok also establishes the connection between the pluriform church view in Presbyterian churches and the admission policy of the Lord’s Supper.

This matter is relevant regarding our (DGK) relationship with our sister church LRC Abbotsford and our relationship with GKN, which entered into a church relationship with the OPC at their last synod (Weerklank December 2023). It is also instructive regarding the open communion practice in churches in the Netherlands that have contact with us as DGK.

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From: Rev. K.A. Kok: Presbyterian or Reformed, speech in Orangeville, Canada in 1986 (published in Shield & Sword). (Content corresponds to his more extensive text under the same title https://spindleworks.com/library/kok/presorref.htm)

First part:
Now, from there, from 1729, I’d like to move into the 1800’s to Charles Hodge, the great Presbyterian theologian of Princeton, New Jersey, who has long been thought of as one of the fathers of the O.P.C., one of the men they look to.  And he wrote a very important book that has been largely ignored and it’s a book that we as reformed people cannot overlook. It’s his book on church polity (SdM: “The Church and it’s Polity”).

Now you see in Hodge what we saw in the Westminster Confession, what we saw in the Adopting Act, becoming very concrete, beginning to be the program of the American Presbyterian Church. Again for Hodge, the church is equal to God’s secret election.

Indeed he says
“the church is not a visible society; all visible union, all external organization may cease, and yet so long as there are saints who have communion, the church exists.

If the church is the communion of the saints, that communion may be in faith, in love, in obedience to a common Lord, it may have its origin in something still deeper, in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

This union is far more real, the members are joined as one body, far more intimate than subsists between members of any visible Society as such. The church may continue under any external organization or without any visible organization at all. What matters is that there are elect people out there in the world; and the visible church, the sacraments, the preaching of the Word, doesn’t matter that much. The church exists apart from all of that.”

And so you find Charles Hodge arguing for the unity of all Christians. In his commentary on Ephesians, when he comments on the passage, “one faith, one Lord, one baptism,” he says “that’s the ideal, and in heaven we’ll have that, but on earth we have to realize that Christians wilt never have one faith, one Lord, one baptism, and we just need to recognize Christians wherever we find them.”

He also writes in his church polity
“that we recognize them (them being Baptists, Episcopalians and Lutherans) as Christians and it is as fellow Christians that we sit with them at the table of the  Lord to which they have a common right and great is the guilt of those who refuse that right to anyone to whom it properly belongs. All Christians regardless of doctrine, regardless of profession are one.”

And so under Charles Hodge the Presbyterian church adopted the position that it has to this very day. You accept as members all who give credible evidence of belonging to Christ. You do not judge their profession by the standards of the church; you merely try to see if they are sincere about their commitment to Jesus.

Christian character, not doctrine, but saving faith is what is important to being a member of the church. And since Charles Hodge would allow an Arminian, a Baptist and Episcopalian to be members of the Presbyterian church; that means that the doctrine of election, the doctrine of baptism and the doctrine of the church are unessential to him.

Now following Hodge, American Presbyterianism has taken the same line. Hodge’s son writes that we can require no more for church membership than Christ requires to get into heaven.

And the southern Presbyterian theologian Robert Dabney says
“that though we as Presbyterians can discipline somebody, discipline a minister for not holding to Reformed doctrine, we can even excommunicate him, all that that means is that we’re telling him to go to a Christian group where he feels more comfortable.”

You also find the doctrine of the covenant coming under attack.

James Henry Thornwell, another southern Presbyterian theologian of the last century, writes, “That the children of believers are to be treated as the children of unbelievers.”

So too, when you come to the Lord’s Supper, all that you require for someone to come to the Lord’s Supper, is that they say, I trust in Jesus for my salvation. Church membership is irrelevant;
it is only up to the individual to decide whether or not he should take the supper.

And so in church government as well, we see developing through the last century a view that exalts the presbytery, that pushes down the position of the local church and what makes important the power of the ministers of presbytery.

Now all of this is background to the O.P.C. What we find in the O.P.C. is a development of, a consistent development of American Presbyterian thought.

J. Gresham Machen, the founder of the O.P.C., wrote in his book Christianity and Liberalism, “that the church is a voluntary association of likeminded people.”

The O.P.C. says that the members of the church, are all those in every nation together with their children who make profession of saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Those are the people who belong to the church. And though they recognize the existence of false churches, the only false churches that they recognize are the Roman Catholic church and the Unitarian church. With everyone else, all other Christians, you must seek union.

I ‘ll read again from the Form of Government of the O.P.C.:

“the visible unity of the body of Christ is greatly obscured by the division of the Christian church into different groups or denominations. In such denominations Christians exercise fellowship toward each other in doctrine, worship and order that they do not exercise toward other Christians. Although some are subject to grave error, all of these maintain a sufficient discipline to the Word of God in sacraments, in their fundamental integrity and are to be recognized as true manifestations of the Church of Jesus Christ.”

(…)
So membership in the O.P.C., as a member of the congregation, does not require that you be Reformed. You need not hold to the doctrines that are historically called reformed to be a member in the O.P.C., rather all you have to say is that you accept the Bible as God’s Word and will live by it.

Now in 1966 a question was asked of the General Assembly of the O.P.C., and that question was this; can we allow Baptists, people who refuse to baptize their children, to be members of our church. Later on that question was expanded to include Arminians and Pentacostals.  The answer that the General Assembly gave was this; yes, they can be members because to be a member does not mean that you are committed to the standards of the church.

Even John Murray, who opposed allowing them to be members, said that though they can’t be members you should give them the Lord’s Supper, and ministers, similarly, are not bound to the confession. When you go for licensure you are given opportunity to list your objections to the confession and then all the ministers get together and they decide whether or not your objections are sufficient enough to keep you out.

(…)
Now with regards to the Lord’s Supper, the practice of the O.P.C. is this.

Attestations are not required. Membership in a true church is not required. All that is required is that you give an oral warning before the elements are distributed. Now, that’s all that’s required, but different churches can do it in different ways. If you want to have people meet with the consistory beforehand, you can do that. If you want to make the requirements a little bit higher, you can do that, but you don’t have to.

Now in 1983 Rev. Barry Hofford brought a complaint concerning this to the General Assembly of the O.P.C. What did the General Assembly decide? They decided this: it is up to the local session or consistory to decide how the Lord’s Supper, how the Lord’s Table is to be fenced, to be guarded.

They said there are two ways you can do it, one way, which they say is historically Presbyterian, is just to give an oral warning. The other, which they say is historically Reformed, is to have the people meet with the elders. You can do it either way. You don’t have to do it the Reformed way, you don’t have to do it the Presbyterian way, but you can decide on your own how you are going to conduct the Lord’s Supper. This is an official decision of the O.P.C. So is the decision to allow Baptists and Arminians to be members.

                                                                                                               (to be continued)