to introduce our speaker now. Dr. Alan Strange comes to us from South Holland, Illinois. He is a professor of church history and apologetics, as well as a librarian at Mid-America Reform Seminary in Dyer, Indiana. Also an associate pastor at the New Covenant Community Church, OPC, in Joliet, Illinois, and formerly served as the pastor of Providence OPC in Glassboro, New Jersey. Also learned just a few minutes before we got here tonight that he, in the last three weeks, is a new grandfather. Three grandchildren born here in the last three weeks. They're not here, in Michigan and in Illinois. So a proud grandfather now. He's also active in the Presbytery of the Midwest. He serves the Orthodox Presbyterian Church on several committees, including the Committee on Appeals and Complaints, the Psalter-Hymnal Committee, Committee on Christian Education and Board of Trustees for the Great Commission Publications, has served as chairman on the Committee of Creation Views and vice chairman of the Justification Committee and Committee on Updating the Language of the Westminster Standards, teaches the Ministerial Training Institutes of the OPC course on the form of government, has written extensively on church polity, also served as the moderator of the 75th OPC General Assembly and as general editor of the Trinity Psalter Hymnal, from which we just sang. He's a frequent contributor to OPC denominational magazines, New Horizons, and Ordained Servant. Mid-America Journal of Theology, as well, has written for and serves as the contributing editor to the Confessional Presbyterian, and has recently published a few books. One, the Doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church in the Ecclesiology of Charles Hodge, his dissertation, and also a shorter work, The Imputation of the Act of Obedience of Christ at the Westminster Assembly, and What is the OPC? He has a forthcoming book with Crossway on a very topic that we'll be considering a bit tonight and more tomorrow morning, the spirituality of the church, and we believe that his contributions, especially in that area, will be of help to us tonight and tomorrow. Dr. Strange, Welcome you. Thank you, Reverend Swale. I would like to thank the consistories, the councils of the respective churches that invited me for this conference so that we can have this time together. conflict, resolving conflict in church history. He did tell you I'm a church historian. I'm going to read the Bible in just a moment, but you will understand that I'm speaking chiefly from church history. So what we're talking about here today and tomorrow, though a little bit more tomorrow from scripture, is not an exposition of scripture. You get that from the professor of New Testament, who'll be speaking in the morning. So I always sort of have to make that, if you come hear me preach, you'll hear the scripture. You'll hear me preach strictly God's word. But we teach a number of things. And it's interesting, I'm thinking about, as we think about conflict, it's always with us. That song we just sang, I Love Thy Kingdom was written, as you can see, in 1800 by Timothy Dwight. And Timothy Dwight was one of the grandsons of Jonathan Edwards. He was president of Yale. He was instrumental in the early part of the second Great Awakening. You might be familiar that the first Great Awakening tended to be Calvinistic, and the second became Arminian, if not Pelagian. But this was the earlier Calvinistic part. that Edward's grandson, Timothy Dwight, led. But his other grandson, we don't have any hymns from him, because he was Aaron Burr the Younger, who was something of a scoundrel. He was the vice president, but he was charged with treason. Great opponent of Thomas Jefferson. Killed Mr. Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton, in a duel. So conflict is in families. Conflict is in the church and it's important, it's very important then that we pray for peace because our contribution to things is warfare. Ever since we took that fruit that wasn't on God's diet, it's been in a certain sense, as Hobbes says, the war of all against all. That's what we witness in this world. And this is why Jesus came. He came on a divine rescue mission to bring about that peace, that shalom that Reverend Swale read about. And this is why we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, which is the peace of his house, the peace of his people, the peace of his kingdom, the peace of his church throughout the world. You say, well, don't we automatically just have peace? Well, I think you know the answer to that. All of these things are extraneous to us as sinners, and they're a gift of God, and he brings us to himself. He brings us into union with Christ. He makes us new men and women so that we can live at peace. But naturally, we're never gonna get peace. The world isn't gonna get peace by having the United Nations or like organizations jerry-rig it and bring it about. It's not gonna happen. So you heard from Psalm 122. I'd just like to read Psalm 133. Psalm 133. Of course, you were hearing one of the earlier songs of ascents, and this is the penultimate of the songs of ascents, Psalm 133. It's the psalm that really describes, you might say, the result of peace. Peace with God. Peace of God's people with God. And peace with each other. What does that create in the body of Christ? What does that create in His kingdom? It creates unity. It creates unity, which is one of the most blessed things there is. We can't create it. We can't just will it into being. We have to pray for it. We have to seek it. We have to do all that we can. Live as peaceably as possible, Paul says. As much as lieth within you. Now he's even talking about with unbelievers, but certainly he's talking about within the household of God. And so as we pray for peace, and God gives us that blessed peace, Here's the result, Psalm 133. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It's like the precious oil upon the head running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron, running down on the edge of his garments. It's like the dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord commanded the blessing life forevermore. Now to be honest with you, I really want to preach on this. I read it and I really would love to just exposit it. but I want to be at peace with the organizers of the conference. That's not what they've assigned me to do. So I'm going to do what I've been assigned and asked to do, and I'm happy to do it. It's just, I really love this song, don't you? Isn't that a beautiful song? It's gorgeous. Doesn't it make you, in this sin-filled, war-torn world, does your heart cry out as you hear that? You say, God grant it. Grant the peace of which the pastor spoke, and grant the unity that is a result of that shalom. The word, I mean, I say that, you know, we don't like to just throw around Hebrew and Greek words, we know that we don't all study that, but everybody knows shalom. And you know, you've heard it enough, that it doesn't just mean an absence of war, yes, but it means something very positive. It means well-being. It means salvation. It means all that which makes for the good. And certainly, how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity. In the URC, the Canadian Reform, I'm sure there are Canadian Reform brothers here, in the OPC, Yes, we're in different bodies, but I can tell you something. Particularly as the times continue to darken, as the culture darkens about us, we need more and more peace among ourselves. We need more and more unity. Because as I often say to people in different churches that really are committed to Christ, to the King of our faith, to the one who loves us and gave himself for us, who are reformed in doctrine. All those who are true Presbyterians are reformed in doctrine. We all have that in common. Just as you're Presbyterial in your polity, that is to say you have not only ministers but elders. joining together. We need, as the culture darkens, to work as much together as we can. That's why that Psalter hymnal was such a great, great thing, a wonderful thing to work together on. Because I can tell you, the people out there, the people that hate us, the world, whatever differences we can see among ourselves, they don't see them. I'll be blunt about it. If they were lining us up to shoot, And you said, well, strange as a Presbyterian, I'm united reform. They would say, OK, pow, pow. They wouldn't care. Because we're saying, in essence, what is so close. Yes, we have differences. But they're not about the heart of the matter. They're not about the heart of the matter. And I just say that because that's necessary for conflict resolution. Well, as you know, half a dozen years ago, we had a conference down in Indiana at the seminary in which we sought to address this question of conflict in the church. That's what you're going to hear in the morning from Dr. Menninger. I think you've also been hearing it if you listen to our podcasts from Professor Vander Hart, who I had hoped would be here tonight, but he's not. But if you listen to the podcasts, he's talking about these things, about dealing with conflict. Since church history is replete with such conflicts, Let me just say this, if you really study church history and understand it, certainly if that's your profession and your life, you don't have any, you don't have any sort of Pollyannish ideas about who we are. You study church history, you'll see that the best of us, whoever that is, desperately need Jesus Christ and his saving grace. And that's one reason why we want to study church history properly, we don't want to read those godly men and women as if they were some sort of plastic saints, different sort of people than us. They wouldn't want to be read that way. It's interesting sometimes how people read Calvin, and you read what Calvin says about himself. Calvin had a great sense of his own sin and weakness. He would have no room for a kind of, well, let's turn Calvin into this perfectly perfect, practically perfect parson, you know? He would have no room for that. He knew his weakness and his need of saving. So one of the greatest conflicts in the history of the American Presbyterian Church, and I'm particularly a historian of that, was over slavery. You can imagine. an issue that not only played a role in the old school, new school division in 1837, but also engendered conflict among the old school, particularly with regard to the construction of the doctrine of the spirituality or the spiritual independency of the church, a doctrine that emphasized the differing spheres of church and state, highlighting that the calling of the church was chiefly spiritual, the task of gathering and perfecting the saints. It's this conviction of the doctrine of the spirituality the church will speak more about in the morning, as has been said, that this can serve the church and even the broader culture, particularly in the resolution of conflicts that might arise within and without the church. And what we're looking at now, Charles Hodge, whose dates were 1797 to 1878, so we're going to be in the 19th century. Charles Hodge, the renowned theology professor at Princeton Seminary, opposed those in 1859 and 1860 who would define the spirituality of the church, and these were particularly some southern theologians who would define the spirituality of the church so narrowly as, and this is quoting Hodge, to stop the mouth of the church and prevent her bearing her testimony to the kings and rulers, magistrates and people in behalf of the truth and law of God. The doctrine of the spirituality of the church, wrongly defined and employed, can wreak havoc on the church and society. Thus, Hodge opposed the overly narrow approaches of Stuart Robinson and James Henley Thornwell, both of which ultimately proved to be inconsistently applied, depending on whose ox was being gored. The way we handle conflict, though, is important. We need to keep our heads about us when others are losing theirs. Hodge did this, and we're gonna look particularly at his 1861 opposition to the Gardner Spring Resolution, in which he showed himself to have a balanced view of the spirituality of the church, the church being able to speak where needed, and be silent where needed. A failure then, we can say, to address conflict rightly, can lead to disastrous consequences in the political sphere of the U.S. Civil War. The U.S. Civil War was in American history the greatest challenge and conflict that ever faced the nation. And the split of the Presbyterian Church along sectional lines in 1861 into the Northern and Southern Presbyterian Churches. Politics became paramount over theology during the Civil War so that in 1869, after the war, As they were coming back together in old school and new school, political matters seemed more important than theological ones in the reunion of the Presbyterian church. The doctrine of the spirituality of the church serves to make sure then that the church keeps her spiritual head and keeps on task. So what we're gonna be talking about here are some extended, some portions of my dissertation, and this is a fairly long manuscript tonight. It's 33 tight, close pages. Don't worry, I'm going to be skipping a lot of it. See, I tell you that, I get you to panic, and then I tell you I'm not going to read it all. But I believe, as I've summarily argued at the end of my dissertation, and I'll go there tomorrow, the spirituality of the church is something that could be recovered for the ongoing dialogue of how the church is to relate to the world in which it finds itself, both, and I've sort of developed this little statement that I'm really trying to capture this with. The spirituality of the church can speak to us about how the church distinguishes itself from the world and how it gives itself to the world. You understand we're supposed to do both of those things. If we don't distinguish ourself from the world, then we're gonna be overrun with liberalism, unbelief. We're not the world, we're God's people. But then that doesn't mean we're supposed to be in a holy huddle and not witness to the world, and not seek to preach the gospel to the world, and be uncaring about the impact we have on the world. We have to give ourselves to the world. I've just been struck again, as I was preaching recently from Matthew 9, we all know it well, 35 to 38, Jesus looks at the multitude. He sees that the fields are white for harvest, the laborers are few, and he tells us to pray for laborers. But it says specifically with respect to the crowd, and it says this when he looks at the 5,000, the disciples want to send them away, and he says, give them something to eat, the 4,000, same thing. It's kind of interesting. They're like, how can we do that? And he said, we just did the 5,000 a couple of days ago. Well, did you not pay attention? Do you not know I can do this? But the word that's so important when he looked at the crowd, and when he looked at the crowd there in Matthew 9, 36, it says he had compassion. He had compassion. How are you when you look at a crowd? I think if we're honest, there's much in us looking at a crowd. Think about being at Toronto in a sporting event, a concert. It's very easy to look on a crowd as a believer and go, yuck. That's not what the Lord did. That's not what Jesus Christ did. Compassion, He moved towards the crowd. His heart was moved for the crowd. And his heart has always and ever moved towards us. We sometimes think that when we're in sin, I counsel a lot. And I say to people who have been struggling with something, maybe something has come out, and I say, has God gone away from you? Yes. He said, no, he hasn't. You've gone away from him. He never went anywhere. And you know this when you repent and come back to him. You always sense, he didn't go anywhere. He is always moving towards you. You say, yeah, but he's not moving towards me when I'm sinning. Yes, he is. You're moving away from him. That's part of what your sin involves. He's always moving towards you. You say, yeah, well, he loves us, but he kind of doesn't like us because, you know, I get that. There are a lot of people in the church I love but I don't like. You're just nuts. That's not the way God sees anything. Stop thinking of God as if he's you. He's not. He doesn't have all your foibles, which we're likely to baptize and say, well, that's a good thing. There's nothing wrong with loving people but not liking them. Well, keep talking to yourself like that and telling yourself maybe God does that too. He doesn't. Do we know him? You say, is this the topic? No, it's not, but I want to preach. You guys never saw this in class, did you? Well, slavery, as we mentioned earlier, is something, unfortunately, that came to define the doctrine of the spirituality of the church in the 1830s and 40s, because it came to define, in America, just about everything. As sectional conflict increased through the 50s, the 1850s, it's often the case, as is often the case when serious social tensions exist, politics became more and more dominant, threatening to overshadow all concerns, resulting in pervasive politicization. The churches, was the case with other institutions, could not escape the pull of such politicization, and the question of the spirituality of the church became paramount at that time. The issue became, can the church resist cultural pressures to dissolve into political differences? The church was hard-pressed to maintain its integrity in the midst of such intense political pressure. remembering its calling and its province to preach the gospel, and not simply to be one more social agent that has chosen a side among competing political climes, as if the political climes were always paramount. It's always an interesting thing when the church seems to think that the political climes are more significant than the doctrinal climes, than the spiritual climes. It's a mark of a declining church. You could say, on the other hand, what if what's driving the political is not merely political? What if the differences that are fueling conflict are profoundly moral or have profoundly moral implications? The church cannot be, nor should it appear to be indifferent to its times and insensitive to the suffering of the poor and the oppressed in its midst. The situation with slavery in America had inarguably a distinct political dimension, but unlike a matter of, say, congressional term limits, there was a moral aspect to that slavery crisis. For those who argue that slavery was mostly a political question, something that the Bible allowed and even regulated for the good of master and slave, the contention tended to be that the churches and institutions should let slavery alone. On this construction, slavery was a civil matter. It was not the province of the church. properly to intrude into civil matters. For those, however, who found American slavery morally repugnant, contrary to Scripture, the church as an institution had every right, indeed a responsibility, to address it, calling both the members of the church particularly and civil society more broadly to obey God's commands. Old school men of all stripes. And when we say old school, we mean old school Presbyterianism is a shorthanded way. It's talking about that part of the church that existed from 1837 to 1869 when the church was split into old and new school. And basically the old school were the more biblically faithful. You could say a lot more about that, but that was the general upshot. Some saw the spirituality of the church acting as a kind of regulative principle, while others saw the spirituality of the church as broader and looser in its conception. And so many, many questions arise that we can consider here. The American founding fathers, let's step back a little bit now. How did we get into this mess with slavery? The American founding fathers did not deal with the difficult issues relating to slavery for fear of disunion. I'm sure those of you who have studied that realize that. They punted. They punted on the question to future generations. But to be fair to them, had they really addressed it, like say John Adams from Massachusetts wanted to. And he opposed it. He vigorously opposed it. The Adams always did. But he was warned by Washington and others, if you really press this, we're not even going to come together as a nation. So that was sort of what they were dealing with. This fear of disunion necessitating compromise also actuated old school Presbyterianism. Now let's again step back into the history. Even though the slave trade ended by the Constitution's mandate In 1808, slavery continued and was increasingly profitable. Slavery was really on the wane in the 1780s, 1770s and 1780s. It didn't appear to be that helpful or useful or necessary until 1793 when Mr. Whitney invented the cotton gin. And then it became very profitable. Very profitable because it took a slave so long to separate the fibers from the seeds to make it usable to be spun. And all of a sudden, cotton gin made that far more workable. So, we move on and slavery is waxing now, not waning. Events after the War of 1812 forced compromise. Now, Reverend James Sinkey, where's Herb? You have to tell him I mentioned the War of 1812, because he always liked to mention it about every other day in my classes, that Canada won that. The United States was not fighting Canada in the War of 1812, OK? It was fighting Great Britain, but we'll just let that go. And Thomas and, well, yes. Andrew Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans. and that ended it. But events after the War of 1812 forced compromise, beginning with the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which helped maintain the balance of slave and free states. And they're always doing that in the following years, that sort of thing. The Mexican War in the 1840s also disrupted this balance, leading to an acute crisis that the Compromise of 1850 sought to address. Compromise of 1850 is this big civil thing to try to bring about peace and deal with the conflict. But it actually served to heighten the sexual conflict, mainly because slavery was such a, I realize I have my phone on here because I wanted to make sure I heard things about my grandchildren. I've just turned it down. the sectional conflict was heightened because slavery was just an inescapable thing. In the 1820s, 30s, 40s, but especially in the 40s and 50s, if you were in America, slavery was always the elephant in the room. You can't, I mean, some of you may have studied some of these things and you just think something like, I don't know what you think, but you might think, well, Black Lives Matter or something like that is exaggerating. the deal that this was, no, no, not at all. I mean, they've got their whole Marxist agenda, but the notion that slavery was a blip on the radar just means you don't know this history. It was not. It was monumental in America, particularly. Britain, of course, did deal with it peaceably, more or less, but that wasn't the way things were shaping up here. So I go on to talk about a couple of Hodge's political heroes who are Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, and they're working on this compromise. Hodge himself believed that slavery, there were many abuses, but he believed that slavery in say, slavery in and of itself was not unbiblical, though it was problematic in its American form, it warranted regulation. But he particularly did argue against abolition. The abolitionists were generally seen as wanting this ended at all costs, if it meant the whole nation coming apart. And Hodge wanted it ended. He was what you would call an emancipationist. He wanted it ended, but he also wanted the American nation to continue on. John Calhoun was the third member of this triumvirate of Clay and Webster. And he argued, it's interesting, particularly, I'll just take a little shot here at those who have written and said, well, natural law teaches us many things. I do think natural law does teach many things. The question is, do we hear them, do we see them, or do we so suppress the truth of unrighteousness that we can't tell? I mean, it's interesting how with the LGBTQT plus agenda, It's interesting how 50 years ago people even were arguing that natural law would teach that heterosexuality is what's normal and in accordance with the law. And it's clear that that which isn't that is out of accord with the natural law. I agree with that. You agree with that. But people today say, oh no, I'm being true to what I really am and true to who I'm meant to be, whatever society has assigned me at birth. I'm being true, and there are even discussions about natural law saying natural means doing what you're really meant to do. So that's all perverted. Well, I've had people say, well, natural law always would show that slavery is wrong. I don't disagree that it would show slavery is wrong, rightly understood. But John C. Calhoun used the natural law to argue for slavery. He used natural law to argue for slavery. And you can imagine, you say, well, how do you do that? Oh, come on. He was a white supremacist. I mean, you should know because, again, we can become knee-jerk about these things. I've had conversations with some people in more recent times who said to me, because they're being knee-jerk about what's going on in the mainstream press and politics, and they said, I don't think there is such a thing as white supremacy. I said, do you mean that historically? And they said, yeah. And I said, well, you don't know what you're talking about. There certainly is. I mean, it's not arguable. And you can read what John C. Calhoun says, and he says, it's natural for the white man to be over the black man and for him to be in the place and to support a certain lifestyle. And the so-called cornerstone speech of the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stevenson, pretty much said this. He said, slavery is the cornerstone of our civilization. It's what allows well-educated wealthy white men to enjoy a certain lifestyle. And it's on the backs of these. And that was said unashamedly. That was said, you know, no blushing to say that. And so that's part of what's all in the air with Mr. Calhoun and others. John Calhoun, let me just say this, actually adopted, his reading of the Constitution was a kind of, it was a kind of, a certain approach to the Constitution that was actually a more radical approach to the Constitution than had been taken. And this trend, there was a growing trend in the 1840s, especially in the 50s, Calhoun exemplified it, of this so-called strict interpretation of the Constitution. They called it a strict interpretation. That was a fairly new thing. Jefferson and Madison and all of them, they weren't even sure the Constitution was going to last. And they said, you know, certainly it should be amended a lot. Jefferson very famously says the earth belongs to the living, meaning you don't just necessarily put together a government in the past that is binding forever on a people. They need to be free to change that according to circumstances and so forth in certain respects. And so Calhoun's so-called strict interpretation was, It's relevant to the church because something similar was happening among old school Presbyterians. Certain old school men began emphasizing a kind of literalistic strict interpretation of the church's constitution, particularly its church order, containing its form of government and book of discipline. And there came to be the conviction, not what had always been there among Reformed and Presbyterian, that the form of government and the book of discipline is where it states what it does, it's the ways we agree together to operate as the church. This is how we operate as the church, and this is how we do these things together. But there was never the notion or suggestion that the book of church order was exhaustive, that if something occurs that's not described there, the church hands are tied, it can do nothing. They would have found that to be a very odd thing. They would say, no, the church order is just how we're agreeing to act together in these ways. It doesn't mean that a particular local church or a larger body can't be facing something that's not described in the church order. And they're free to act. They're not constricted from acting as if the church order is an exhaustive grant of all authority. That was not understood that way. And so Peter Wallace, who has argued pervasively, or persuasively I should say, impervasively if you know Peter, but persuasively that the debate at this point in the history of the old school church about the spirituality of the church was a matter of hermeneutics in constitutional law. Wallace has reference to evidence that even as Calhoun who I've been talking about, was pressing a similar line of argument in the United States Senate. The younger generation of Southern Presbyterians took a particularly hard line stand on a strict construal, both of the Bible and Presbyterian church order, a very strict construal. It's interesting, in other words, as Thornwell and others against Hodge, it's a view of church order in government Brother Swell, rightly, and I'm happy that he mentioned the regulative principle of worship. We have a regulative principle of doctrine, that is to say, we understand that in our three forms of unity, in the case of most people here, the Westminster Standards, we set forth what we take to be the essential doctrines of the church. We also don't think that there's nothing else that we believe, that one may believe, other than what is in the confessions. It may not be contra-confessional, But all sorts of things are extra confessional. In other words, perhaps your particular interpretation of the millennium. because that's not exhaustively put forth. It doesn't mean because the three forms or the Westminster doesn't say real definite things about it that that means you can't be post or you can't be ah or you must be ah or post or something like that. We understand that. There's room for some of these differences like that. But we do believe in a regular principle of doctrine. Where we agree together, this is what we agree upon. I mean, we don't think this is an exhaustive statement of everything the Bible teaches. I trust nobody in this room thinks that. The doctrinal standards don't come close to saying everything that the Bible says. But they say what we think is particularly important and what we want to agree on together. It's similar in regular principle of worship. We believe the Bible directs our worship, it governs our worship. And we're not to worship except in ways that the scripture sets forth. So the scripture tells us what the elements of worship, now it doesn't give us all the circumstances, but it defines our worship. We've never taken, however, as whole churches, That sort of view of our church order, that we have a regulative principle of government in the same way we have a regulative principle of worship, that all the details of government are worked out. We leave, I hope you in the URC don't think that because you have a very slim church order. You can compare it to other church orders and your own consistories, your own local churches are called to carry out all the tasks Christ has given you. And that task isn't defined in every detail in your church orders. It simply isn't. You could choose to put more there if you wished. That's an interesting question. There's a good argument for putting less in the church order, is what I'm saying to you. We don't specify every sort of thing. There's actually a good deal of freedom in the way consistories or sessions operate within boundaries. They operate within boundaries. But they don't operate with straitjackets. That's just not true. They don't operate that way. But there was this kind of a trying to straitjacket things here. It was a certain, among Presbyterians, they call it just divinum Presbyterian, divine right Presbyterianism. And that means that the scripture not only ordains the principles and the outlines of office and of Presbyterian order, which is what Charles Hodge believed, but it ordains the details This is why Hodge in his debates with Thornwell, Thornwell thinking that the details in a sense were there, he said in exasperation on the floor of the General Assembly in response to Dr. Thornwell, Dr. Thornwell seems to think that something like the whole of our book of discipline is found in the Bible. And his point was, no, you don't just find the book of discipline in the Bible. The book of discipline, or the form of government, is us saying, taking Bible principles, this is how we understand it best works out. This is how we understand it best manifests itself. So, Wallace talks about this coming over into the church, and he says, and of course, that's gonna affect the question of conflict, because if you think, If you think, A, you can't do anything if it's not clearly defined in the church order, or B, you know, you're always trying to micromanage at that level and there not be a proper kind of liberty within boundaries. I mean, some people are this way doctrinally. They will narrowly construe doctrines and say, You know, if it's not found in the three forms, you can't believe this. Well, is it contrary to the three forms? That's the question. Is it contrary to it? Again, the three forms don't say a lot of things that's in the Bible. I'll give you a proof of that. There's a lot of things in the Westminster Standards the three forms don't address. And we happen to think the things that Westminster Standards say are in the Bible. That's a funny little joke, sort of. But the point is we have a fuller document. You have to understand we think this is all biblical. But it's also fine that you have a lesser or less full expression of it. There's nothing wrong with that. There's even lesser full expressions of it. They're called things like the Nicene Creed. the Apostles' Creed, the Athanasian Creed. Now we understand the Reformation, these things were not being understood properly and part of the Reformation is to get this thing all back on track and to properly understand the Nicene Creed and to understand it through this lens. So, here's what happened in 1846. A minister was nominated by his presbytery to serve as a GA commissioner. This is just a little example of this. But inclement weather prohibited the presbytery from meeting, and so it was never actually able to elect him. So he was nominated to serve by his presbytery as a GA commissioner, but the weather forbade his actually being elected. Since the form of government stipulated that commissioners be elected to the GA by their presbyteries, it would be a clear violation of the letter of the Constitution to allow him a seat. He had a letter from the moderator attesting to his nomination and opining he surely would have been elected, but it was through. And again, this is back in a day when travel and this was all far harder than it is for us. So if you're thinking, well, how hard is it to get to a presbytery meeting? In the mid-19th century, a lot harder than anything you ever go to, right? Fifteen commissioners protested his being seated, not for personal reasons, but on constitutional grounds. Here's the reason for the protest. Fearing that setting aside constitutional rules would lead back to the committeeman of the new school, that's a whole other matter, the protest warned that this action would establish a precedent of laxness. The assembly responded to the protest, and this was very much in keeping with its historic kind of practice, responded to the protest by noting that the assembly was not bound merely to the letter of the law, but to the equity of the law. the principles of justice established by the Constitution. Having historically appointed a committee of elections, they had a committee of elections, to examine and report on defective claims and doubtful cases, which demonstrated that the spirit and not the mere letter of our form of government is to be our guide in all such cases. Wallace discovered that of the 15 press protesters, only four were from the North, while several others were prominent Southerners of the rising generation. Older leading Southerners did not tend to sign the protest. Wallace argues that evidently the older generation found the more nuanced argument for equity persuasive and the strict constructionist argument of their younger colleagues less satisfying. So this strict constructionist approach, far from being the time-honored Presbyterian procedure, was arguably novel and even threatening to many like Hodge who were accustomed to doing things more with a view to equity than to an approach that he felt that was slavishly bound to the church order. The doctrine of the spirituality of the church takes on its own shape in the 19th century due to slavery and those that adopt, like Calhoun, in the civil realm, a strict constructionist stance in the church. Perhaps the two greatest champions of this strict constructionist approach to Presbyterianism and the doctrine of the spirituality were Stuart Robinson and James Henley Thornwell. Stuart Jones is a personal friend of mine. I saw in the footnote a Jones in it. I've got scads of footnotes here. Robinson, particularly gloried in the American experiment in the separation of church and state, seeing it as an opportunity, denied his Scottish forebears, who as part of an established church, had to contend with Erastianism, that's a system in which the state is over the church. and other aspects of the continuing impurities fostered by the heritage of Constantine. You know in the British circumstance that's the case. In the Dutch circumstance that was the case, right? The Dutch church from the Senate of Dort to 1816 wanted to meet many, many times. Why didn't they meet? Because the Dutch government basically said they couldn't meet. Is that the way the church should be run? Well, John Calvin didn't think so, neither did any of the people there. None of the faithful men in the church in the Netherlands thought that the state properly should be telling the church that it couldn't have a synod when they needed to deal with particular doctrinal issues and to have a synod. So Robinson, his view on church and state and the spirituality of the church, which he talked about a lot, was expressed in his 1858 work entitled, The Church of God as an Essential Element of the Gospel. And I'm going to talk more about the spirituality tomorrow, so I'm going to just let that go. But just to say this, even Stuart Robinson, particularly when the issue had nothing to do with slavery, could be found the church addressing the state with respect to legislation deemed to be of interest to the church. Normally he wanted such a separation of church and state. It was as if the church had no prophetic voice. It could never say anything. It should never say anything under any circumstances. He expresses this in a number of ways in his writings to the state. And the Westminster Confession of Faith does say in Westminster in 31.4, sentence and counsels are to handle or to conclude nothing but that which is ecclesiastical. and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary or by way of advice for satisfaction of conscience if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate. I can assure you the civil magistrate hasn't been asking the OPC much lately what we think about what it should do. We can tell him if he does. Or in cases extraordinary, we can speak to them. And we've done this in our General Assembly in recent years. We've spoken about the issue of marriage to the civil magistrate very directly. We've sent letters to the President of the United States and many other officials calling for repentance and calling for the honoring of life when it comes to abortion. So we've spoken very clearly because these are moral issues. These are clear moral issues. Abortion is a violation of God's holy word. Sex outside of marriage is a violation of that. There are other things that we could say about that. And there are times and times like that where it's appropriate that you address the civil magistracy. In the Scottish context, you can imagine, because they had an established church, it was more common for the Kirk, the church, to find occasion to address civil affairs. Not so in the American context, but here's Stuart Robinson, very much spirituality of the church, But he didn't hesitate to argue that the 1852 General Assembly should petition the President of the United States to order that all treaties with foreign nations should include provision made for securing to the American citizen traveling or resident in foreign countries, me right now I guess, the right to profess his faith and worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. I have Prime Minister Trudeau on text, no. This was fiercely debated and opposed by some leading figures as undue intermeddling in civil affairs, but it did pass the GA in 1853. What's important here is not so much the GA ultimately decided to petition the President and Congress, but that Stuart Robinson, leading proponent of the spirituality of the church, one that Hodge thought was too to hidebound on that, and he was. I assure you he was. I believe he was. Now, you say, does everybody in the OPC believe that? Oh, no. I have good friends in the OPC who think Stuart Robinson is the best thing since whatever, sliced bread. But I have my hesitancies with him because during the Civil War, he escaped up here. He was in Toronto. A lot of Southerners were. And when he was down there in Kentucky, he said, you know, slavery is nothing the church should say anything about. Leave it alone. Don't touch it whatsoever. It's purely political. And he came up here and he preached in Toronto in a church a whole series of sermons on slavery, singing its praises. So again, it's sort of whose ox is being gored. It wasn't that he wouldn't say anything about slavery. It's not that a lot of the southern preachers wouldn't say things about slavery. It was well known that a favorite text was, slaves obey your masters. Slaves obey your masters. So that kind of compromises you saying, you know, spirituality of the church. This was one of the problems with the spirituality of the church. So, I'm skipping lots of stuff here, you'll be happy to know. The general assemblies, and if you want to read about all this, it's online. We can make this available. It's in the Mid-America Journal, but it's also in books that I've published, but you don't have to go buy those. But it's easily available online. If you go to the Mid-America website, you go to resources, you'll see the Mid-America Journal there, you can do a drop down, and we can furnish when these articles and other articles that pertain to these conferences are available. If you want to get more into them, and that's something you can do maybe if you have insomnia or something like that, this will help. I have helped many people to sleep. I once was on a tour somewhere, and I had a bunch of homeschooling students I had been teaching. This was when I was in the pastorate. And I was told that this was one of the parents. And I heard he was an anesthesiologist. So I said, hello, doctor. He says, hi, how are you? And I said, I'm glad to meet you. You know, we're both sort of in the same business. And he looked at me, he said, how's that? I said, we put people to sleep. Except you get paid a lot more money for it than I do. And good, you know what he said? You can imagine. Because if you know anything about this, and I'm sure many of you do, he said, my malpractice insurance is a lot higher than yours. Which is true, especially for that. But the 1859 and 60 General Assemblies, they really debated this whole thing about what is the nature of Presbyterianism? Is it a divine right Presbyterianism that's very strict? So strict, for example, that the Presbyterian Church, which had a board of publication, a board of Christian education, a board of home missions, a board of foreign missions, Thornwell argued that only the judicatories themselves, only the presbyteries and the General Assembly acting itself can do all this work that these boards were doing, and Hodge argued that The scriptures did not give us that detail so narrowly. And he said, how would this work be done? And he talked about what these, these were under the General Assembly. And he talked about what these boards were doing. And he said, how is this work gonna get done if it's just left to the adjudicatory as a whole? I mean, and presbyteries only meet rather more occasionally, unlike local churches, which are all the time meeting. And he said, you certainly don't think local churches are gonna do the kind of publishing that we do as a denomination. No, they're not. They don't have the capacity to do it. And if you looked at what the Presbyterian Church of the 19th century published, some fantastic stuff. Just like the old Christian Reformed Church used to publish some really good stuff. But really good stuff from that. And Hodge's point was, if we don't have, if it's just every local session or presbytery or general assembly somehow as a body has to do it. And, you know, Thornwell's argument was, where is it in the Bible that you can have this? And Hodge says, the church is called to this kind of work and it can It can develop in different ways exactly how it does the work, using office bearers, using, and a lot of you are probably thinking a lot of different things as you hear this. So whatever it is you're thinking, I can tell you this, it's been thought before. In other words, oh, you mean they've argued before about how best to organize the church, and are all the details in the Bible, or is a general outline and principles given, and yeah, we have officers, we have judicatories, We understand that, but how does the work go forward? And they were arguing about that in 1859 and 60 and the real nature of Presbyterianism. But the 1861 General Assembly, now you want to see some conflict. Oh my, I wish I could really set the plate for you with the great drama. But we come to the 1861 General Assembly in Philadelphia, May 1861. This is back in the days when General Assemblies were two weeks, two to three weeks sometime. But they were always two weeks. And so I say this. There was a new urgency, a crisis atmosphere at the 1861 General Assembly because of what had happened in civil society. And here's stuff in civil society affecting and impacting the church. I'm sure...Reverend Sewell kept talking about the last two years. I have no idea what he's talking about. Has something been going on? Civil society impacts the church. I mean, there's an impact. Whatever you think of it, I mean, people have different opinions about it. We're going to talk more about that. But what happened in 1861? Well, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States in November 1860. Because Lincoln had campaigned and been elected on a platform opposing all extension of slavery into the territories. So he didn't say he was going to do away with slavery. He didn't say I'm going to make an Emancipation Proclamation. He did that as a war necessity, as a war was going on. But he did say, I oppose any extension of slavery in the territory. So slavery can only exist where it currently exists, and the South really wanted it to go out. That's not mine, because I did silence it. The South, if that's about my grandchildren, I'll answer it, no. The South, one of the things is, I should tell you this, my daughter, Margaret, I have to say this, because I'm so, I'm just delighted about it. She had two twins. Two twins. She had twins. That's really dumb. She had twins in the same sack, which is a high-risk pregnancy. It was a very high-risk pregnancy. And they delivered at 32 weeks. That's the way they do it. I mean, that's what the high-risk people say we're going to do. There's too much possibility of caudal entanglement. And they said it would be ideal if they could actually get to four pounds. There were 4'6 and 4'4. Gus was 4'6 and Leo was 4'4. Those are their nicknames. And so they also had not seen Gus's kidney. And they had seen a little thing they couldn't tell on his spine. Well, it was just a blemish that's gone away. And we found out today he does have two kidneys. They had been told he probably only has one. They said that's not very uncommon with multiple births. And of course they were told, there's no problem, you can live that way. And I said to my wife, I understand, but I would like my grandson coming into the world with the two, you know? I mean, I understand you can live that way, you can live a lot of ways, but... Oh, so we were really rejoicing as a family today when we learned that Gus had two kidneys and they're all, and their lungs are great, everything's great, so they're beautiful. Sorry to, I knew this would happen when this happened to me. You know, you guys, guys who are grandfathers, they get it. But, and you'll all get it someday, hopefully. But Lincoln had campaigned on this platform opposing the extension of slavery into the territories limiting it to where it existed, preventing its spread to the southern states. These developments, particularly secession and the specter of war were distressing to old school Presbyterians. To Thornwell no less than Hodge. Let's be clear about this with Thornwell. Thornwell was a union man. It's interesting, all the leading Old school, Southern Presbyterians, Dabney, Thornwell, all of them. I mean, you're like, well, Dabney, he was, wasn't he chaplain to Stonewall Jackson? All of them were union men. They opposed the war. They wanted to keep the union. They were Union men. And Thornwell, in fact, came, Thornwell was overseas. He returned from Europe in 1860, and he proposed, a lot of people don't know this about him, he proposed the emancipation of the slaves in order to save the Union. Thornwell, Southerner, said, look, if it takes freeing the slaves to save the Union, let's do that. Because the Union was so important to them. And you'll hear more tomorrow about why that's so. You say, is that kind of a national superiority thing of the American? Of course. I don't have to come here and tell you as an American that Americans have a superiority thing going on. You know that. They do. It's historic. I mean, white supremacy, yes, it exists. Americans, we're superior. The world depends on us, yes. They have thought that and they do think that. They say, but you're talking like you're not one of them. I'm speaking as a historian. I'm speaking in accordance with my craft. I can be honest about my people. If you can't, you're worth nothing. Actually, ministers who can't be honest about the church are worth nothing because you can't call to repentance if you don't think there's anything wrong. There's plenty wrong, I can assure you. And you're a good-looking bunch. You don't look like you got anything wrong. You look pretty good. But I know my own heart. And we're not that different. Nobody is. We all need the Lord profoundly. Well, Hodge was really distressed by all of this. Hodge was a Lincoln man. He was a Republican to the core. He had been a Federalist, he was a Whig. Some of you, you don't know anything about American politics, that's fine. But he was a Whig, he was a Free Soiler, and then he was a Republican. The Republican Party, I mean, Lincoln was the first Republican elected. I think a lot of you do know that. And so Hodge wrote a couple of articles in the Princeton Theological Journal. It was called the Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review. on the state of the country and the church in the country. And he even said, I don't usually talk about this sort of thing in the theological journal, but because of the crisis, it rises to that. He did, though, distinguish, I'm not preaching a sermon in a pulpit. He did make some distinctions there and said, I'm not doing that. But I'm very concerned about our nation because it looks like we're all gonna start killing each other. And I really pray that that doesn't happen. I pray that the scourge of war would pass from us and we could peacefully resolve these things. You say, well he wanted to do away with slavery. He did want slavery done away with, thankfully. Hodges hopes for the church as an institution maintaining her proper spirituality and avoiding improper political pronouncements, though, that would threaten the bonds of the union of the Presbyterian Church, though the times were tempestuous. Having said all that, I mean, he was a Lincoln man. He had all those personal views. He didn't wish to bring this into the pulpit in an inappropriate way or to bring it into the church in an inappropriate way. Stuart, John Stuart says, this is not the late night talk show host, this is a Hodge scholar, says, in the history of American Presbyterianism, no general assembly can equal the one that met in Philadelphia in May of 1861 for drama and long-range consequences, it is without peer. It was hot, they had the windows open, and the whole city was there listening. And what were they particularly listening for? They were listening for this, for this assembly to make some statement supporting the federal government. Now remember, the Presbyterian Church is united, the North and the South. So if they make a statement supporting the federal government, All of the Southerners by dent of that are going to be alienated from that. Their loyalty is to their states or to the Confederacy. It's not to this. But right now their loyalty is to King Jesus and His church. This is in the church. And so on May 18th, This is quoting Hodge. He says this, Dr. Gardner Spring offered a resolution that a special committee be appointed to inquire into the expediency of this assembly, making some expression of their devotion to the union of these states and their loyalty to the federal government of the United States. And if in their judgment it is expedient to do so, they report what that expression shall be. Now see, Hodge isn't actually saying that it would be wrong for those in a country that was unified to say, let us all support and pray for our federal government. He wouldn't argue against that, but he's saying now we're in a position to where that's the very thing that's at issue. Does all the power vest properly in this federal government or do provinces, to use your kind of language, do provincial powers, have due powers, lesser magistrates, that they can exercise these powers at this point, and that that would have a proper command upon their people. So you hear what's being said, and here's what got passed. So I talk about, in the dissertation, I go on for pages talking about all the maneuvering, which I mean, especially the parliamentary maneuvering. When things are, when things, the more conflict there is, and I've even, I've even had a couple people come up to me as I've been Fraternal Delegate to URC Synods, I've been Fraternal Delegate, I think totaled about five, going back to Hudsonville, but then a whole bunch in more recent years when we were working on the Psalter Hymnal. And I remember somebody coming up and laughing and saying, this is getting to be like you Presbyterians here. We got all these motions and, and indefinitely postpone or table this. And I said, that's just an indication that there's conflict. There's just an indication. I mean, don't, you know, deal with it. Work through it. You can't escape it in a measure. I mean, you don't want to just throw up your hands and say, well, I don't like all this parliamentary stuff. You got to work through it. You got to work with it. So there's a lot of things going on. Now here's what the General Assembly said, resolved, that in view of the present agitated and unhappy condition of this country, the first day of July next, be hereby set apart as a day of prayer throughout our bounds, and that on that day ministers and people are called upon humbly to confess and bewail our national sins, that's good, to offer our thanks to the Father of light for His abundant and undeserved goodness to us as a nation, to seek His guidance and blessing upon our rulers and their councils as well as on the Congress of the United States about to assemble and to implore Him, in the name of Jesus Christ, the great high priest of the Christian profession, to turn away His anger from us and speedily restore us the blessings of an honorable peace. And secondly, resolved that this General Assembly, in the spirit of that Christian patriotism which the scriptures enjoin and which has always characterized this church, do hereby acknowledge and declare our obligations as a church, to promote and perpetuate, so far as in us lies, the integrity of these United States, and to strengthen, uphold, and encourage the federal government in the exercise of all its functions under our noble constitution, and to this constitution and all its provisions, requirements, and principles, we profess our unabated loyalty. Now, Charles Hodge personally agreed with every word of that. He was a Lincoln man, as he said on the floor in debate. He was a union man. But here's what he said. He voted against it. The vote, interestingly, the vote was 156 in favor, 66 against. But let me just give you this little tidbit. The ayes were ministers 87, elders 69. The nays were ministers 49, elders 17. What does that mean? I think it means that the ministers resisted more being drawn in to just the purely political question. They resisted it more. It's just a fact. What do you mean by that? I just give you the fact there. You can make of it what you will. I mean, I think it has to do with their training. I think it has to do with their thinking. We must not just rush to this. And you can imagine the pressure on elders to do so. as they would go back and speak to their people. And like I say, it was hot and the windows were open and all Philadelphia was there. I mean, they were, it was an aspect of threat. Like if you don't say something against the rebels, against those nasty southerners, some of whom were in that building in these arguments. The Senate of Mississippi was actually fairly well represented at this General Assembly. But Hodge said, how can we ask the Senate of Mississippi, as an example, to vote for this and to vote against everything in their own localities? We shouldn't be doing this. So here's what Hodge, he entered this protest, and he says, we make this protest not because we do not acknowledge loyalty to our country to be a moral and religious duty according to the word of God, which requires us to be subject to the powers that be, Not because we deny the right of the, nor because we deny the right of the assembly to enjoin that and all other like duties on the ministers and churches under its care. In other words, the assembly can tell us to be, to submit to the powers that be. That's properly ministering scripture. But, he says, because we deny the right of the general assembly to decide the political question to what government the allegiance of Presbyterians as citizens is due. And it's right to make that decision a condition of membership in our church. That's a condition of membership. And he says, it's not a condition in the Bible, it's not a condition, he goes on to say all this, in the doctrinal standards, it's not a condition in our book of church order. It's a new condition we just made on the floor of the General Assembly. saying, unless you support Abraham Lincoln and the federal government, you can't be a part of the Presbyterian Church. That's the implications of it. And Hodge said, I protest. I protest. Well, there's more that we can say, and we will say. There's more that I could say here. Let me just end with this. as we consider Hodge's development and use of the spirituality of the church. Because Hodge, as I've said, was very skeptical of this hidebound, strongly strict constructionist use of the spirituality of the church in the 1840s and 1850s. He opposed Thornwell's stuff. He said, you know, you think something like the whole of the Book of Discipline, as I said earlier, is in the Bible. No, it's not. He called it a, he called, this was on the debates on the floors. They're not always so, you know, so glorious. He called it high, high, high Presbyterianism. on the part of Thornwell, who said in response to him, this is no, no, no Presbyterianism, Dr. Hodge. They were going at it in 1860 on the floor of the General Assembly. That was, you know, these were the two, so to speak, giants in their day in the Presbyterian Church, so that must have been something. Dr. Hodge rarely came to the General Assembly. That was only his third. He didn't have great health. He lived to a fairly old age, but he was He was a hypochondriac, I think. I wrote an article about this. Ministers, that's one of the temptations of ministers is hypochondria, interestingly. I've found this to be true as a historian. But he had put on his grave, I told you I was sick. That was the... As we consider Hodge's use of the spirituality of the church in a time of unparalleled conflict in the church and the nation, we must determine, as did he, not to let conflict in the nation, and you don't get more conflict than a civil war. or in whatever context we find ourselves unduly influence us and cause conflict among ourselves. Hodge was saying, I want to be at peace with my southern brothers. I don't agree with them politically at all in their secessionism. I think they're wrong politically. But as far as the pulpit is concerned, the Bible doesn't say or make clear that. But it doesn't. It doesn't make clear a lot of things. This is why we say let's take our standards as a way of thinking about agreement. Not a whole extra confessional set of things. Whether it's masks or vaccines or whatever. How do we, we divide? We might have strong feelings about it. That's fine to have strong feelings. He had strong feelings, I think rightly so stronger feelings than anything about those two things, involving some of the most basic issues. But he said, we're one Presbyterian church. And I'm not gonna throw out my brethren who think that it's fine for Jefferson Davis to be their head to be a citizen of Alabama first than a citizen of the United States. I don't agree with that. And we might even be at war with it. You said, well, you can't be at war with somebody and regard them as a believer in the same church. Where did you make that up from? Christian nations have been at war with each other. I'm not telling you they should. And it's pretty hard historically to always say who's right. Was the American Revolution right? You can argue. Now, I love the people who think they know for sure. They don't know for sure. You don't. That's just not the way that works. I'm happy to talk to you about it if you think it is. We need to be tentative about what we should be tentative about in a proper way and dogmatic about dogma. Let's save our dogmatism for dogma. How about that? Because if we, I had an old pastor who used to tell me this, if we major on the minors, we're gonna start minoring on the majors. That's the problem. If you start emphasizing, this is so important, what really is important won't be as important. It always happens throughout history. It always happens. So, whatever context we find ourselves in, Let not conflict unduly influence us and cause conflict among ourselves, even as we must not let unity in the nation be the primary cause of our seeking unity among ourselves. That's what Hodge was doing. Some people were saying there's nothing more important than national unity. And he's saying, yes, there is unity in the kingdom. There is something more important than national unity. And you know what? And I don't, I love my nation. But every person in this room who is a true believer in Jesus Christ, and it's full of you. I have more in common with you than I do with every pagan in the United States of America in any ultimate sense. I hope we realize these kinds of things. I love thy kingdom. I love thy kingdom. We can and should recognize how this applies to things in the church, like political parties, voluntary societies, whatever it may be. It's not having the same political or economic convictions that form the basis for our unity in the church, rather it's the truth of God's word as that's expressed in our secondary standards that's the basis for our unity. We must never pit unity against truth, as perhaps was done in preserving the unity of nation and church at all costs in the face of the iniquity of slavery. Nor may we pit truth against unity, as is done when we divide over narrow sectarian matters instead. We must work as we all pledge, this is Presbyterians take this pledge, to preserve the purity, peace, and unity of the church. Hodge furnishes a good model of engaging conflict. He was temperate without lacking conviction. He was moderate without compromising the truth. Not perfectly so, far from it. There's things I disagree with Hodge about, but sufficiently so to provide an example and to furnish guidance for us. Thank you.