Canadian
Society of Presbyterian History
September
25, 2004
"The
Formation of the Articles of Faith Committee:
Ascendant
Barthianism in the 1940s in the PCC"
Fifteen years after church union, the continuing Presbyterian Church
in Canada found itself no longer
preoccupied with concerns of survival. The Second World War was raging and
the future of Western civilization seemed at stake. The denomination was
ready and anxious to engage in serious theological discussion. Because there
was no forum for such a debate a
committee focusing on church doctrine, named the Articles of Faith
Committee, was formed.1
This paper will describe how the theological debate between old-time
liberals such as Stuart Parker, the Barthianism of Knox College Principal W
W Bryden and his followers, and the confessionalist response of men such as
W Stanford Reid and J Bernard Rhodes, defined the debate in the 1940s. It
will argue that the ultimate issue became the question of confessional
revision and the nature of the adherence of the Presbyterian Church in
Canada to the Westminster standards of 1643-7. By the end of the decade the
issue had been fought to a draw.
Material on the early days of the soon-to-be-called Articles of Faith
Committee is scarce. A single box is to be found in the Archives of the
Presbyterian Church in Canada. The only item of historical interest there is
the minute of a meeting on 9 March, 1943 (not 1942 as in the document) of
what would become the committee, and which any way is published verbatim in
the 1943 Acts and Proceedings. This lack is surprising because George
Douglas, first secretary of the committee and subsequently convener, was
librarian at Knox College and in that capacity started the archival
collections of the PCC around 1970. However there is considerable material
collected by W Stanford Reid, as a founding member of the committee, and
placed by him in the Archives, McLaughlin Library, University of Guelph, in
the W Stanford Reid archive, Box 7.
It was at the 1942 General Assembly of the PCC, held in Knox Crescent
church in downtown Montreal, that the first stirring of theological inquiry
took place. That Assembly received two overtures: Overture 18 from the
Presbytery of Hamilton, and Overture 24 from the Presbytery of Toronto. The
Presbytery of Hamilton was specifically directed toward the statement in
“the Basis of Union of 1875 [that] the Confession of the Church re ‘The
Civil Magistrate’ was declared to be not binding, but rather that full
freedom of conscience is permitted to everyone.” The result was that
“people, elders and clergy [were left] without definite guidance in the
important matter of how to affirm their loyalty to the State; and the State
on its part is left without assured knowledge of its powers and duties,
under the Lord Jesus Christ toward the Church.” The overtures asked “the
Venerable the General Assembly to provide for a Confession of Faith, with
respect to the powers and duties of the Civil Magistrate and the relation
which exists, under the Lord Jesus Christ, between the Church and the
State.” It would appear that the overture did not clear the Presbytery of
Hamilton without what was described as “long reasoning.” William Barclay
of Central Church and N D MacDonald of St John Church made the final motion
that carried, though C L Cowan of St Andrew’s was given leave to dissent
for two reasons: it was out of order, and further, reflecting the
skittishness of the post-Union church about any further disruption, “It is
divisive.”2
“Roman collar,” as Cowan was known as a regular contributor to the Presbyterian
Record, was speaking for many in the church who thought that the lion of
creedal revision should not be let out of its cage. The subordinate
standards should remain as they were, subordinate as well to the interests
of unity in the light of the losses inflicted on the denomination in 1925
and the attempt to paper over the cracks among the various groupings within
the post-Union denomination.
The second overture, Overture 24 from the Presbytery of Toronto, was
less controversial and seemed more preoccupied by lése-majesté,
though it dealt with a related theme. The state, it was claimed, had
proclaimed so-called “Days of Prayer” “without intimating to
ministers” and “without consultation with the courts of the church.”
It cited a variety of such occasions - St George’s Day service (would St
Andrew’s have been equally censured?), Torch services, Great Crusades,
arranged by civic authorities or voluntary national committees. It then took
a swipe at clergy who signed on to such organizations - Moderators of
General Assembly, the Clerk of the General Assembly, who styled themselves
as “Rt Rev” or “Very Rev “”without any consultation with, or
instruction from, the Courts of the Church.” It asked five specific
questions:
“(1)
Do we recognize the right of the State to call the Church to the observance
of days and seasons?
(2) Whose voice does the Church obey when she responds to these
proclamations?
(3)
Do we recognize the right of voluntary (national) committees to determine
what times and seasons the Church shall observe?
(4)
Do we approve the association of our ministers with these voluntary
(national) organizations, and the use of their official designations in such
a way as to allege, or to have it assumed, that they speak in some official
capacity and for the Church?
(5)
Do we approve the forms of religious service and the suggested forms of
prayer that are notable in their failure to confess Jesus Christ?”3
Stuart Parker, minister of St Andrew’s Toronto, and moderator of
the 1939 General Assembly (who delighted in calling himself Very Rev and
then Right Rev) was asked to consider these two overtures and report back to
the Assembly. Subsequently Parker brought in his report, ignored the
question of titles, and after responding to the five points raised in
Overture 24, harumphed “that no general ‘declaration’ is required.”
Allan S Reid (Stanford’s uncle) moved that debate continue at a later
session of the Assembly. Parker then proceeded to bring in a second report
on the civil magistrate, the question raised in the Presbytery of Hamilton
overture 18 and a further memorial from the Presbytery of Paris (“For a
Declaration of Liberty of Conscience, and the Lordship of Christ over the
State.”) Both had requested a new confession of faith in regards to
church-state relations. Parker stated that there was no need for such
clarification because relations between the two “are founded upon mutual
respect and goodwill” and - most significantly - “to make formal
pronouncements or claims in these circumstances would
provoke, without any good purpose being served, controversy and
division, not only between Church State, but within the Church itself.”4
Parker represented the old liberalism that had remained Presbyterian
in 1925 more for cultural than theological reasons. Coming to Canada from
Scotland two years before Union, his downtown congregation with its Scottish
baronial architecture, represented the acme of socialite conservative
Scotophilia. His assistant from 1929 to 1934, Frank W. Beare, was
fulminating against the noxious influence of so-called neo-orthodoxy. Beare
had been appointed to teach New Testament at Presbyterian College and was
continually bating not only the confessionalists but also enthusiasts for
the theology of Karl Barth. “Barthianism is not synonymous with Christian
theology ... I warn our Barthian friends that neither the Presbyterian
Church in Canada nor any church which is truly catholic will ever allow
itself to be chained in such a fashion.”5
It would appear that Parker felt that by avoiding theological debate
the Presbyterian Church in Canada would either slide into a theology he
would find compatible or, at the least, allow his own liberalism to remain
unchallenged. With like-minded F Scott MacKenzie, who in 1929 was appointed
Principal of Presbyterian College Montreal, he had taught systematic
theology at the reconstituted Knox College in 1925-1926, thus giving the lie
to anyone who saw the continuing Presbyterians as uniformly champions of
historic confessional orthodoxy. At the same time Walter Bryden was called
from Woodbridge to teach church history part-time. The Bryden-Parker axis
had begun, though Bryden’s espousal and advocacy of Barthianism was still
in the future.6
The future theological direction of the non-concurring Presbyterian Church
was uncertain.
The ensuing debate that
evening during the 1942 General Assembly sharply defined the issues. For the
first time the Bryden group emerged as a clearly identifiable group within
the denomination. They coalesced in opposition to Parker’s attempt to
throttle theological debate .Young Gordon Peddie, a student of Bryden’s,
rose to speak for the Presbytery of Paris memorial. He moved that Overture
18 from the Presbytery of Hamilton be sent down to presbyteries for study.
George Douglas, another Bryden protegé, seconded the motion. John McNair
and Allan Reid moved as an amendment to the amendment “That the Assembly
appoint a competent committee to take this matter into consideration and
bring in a finding at next Assembly.”7
That amendment carried and the motion, as amended, was approved. The
Articles of Faith Committee was on the way.
On 9 March 1943 the committee met, it would appear for the first
time, in the church offices at 100 Adelaide Street, Toronto, with E. G.
Thompson as convener. George Douglas was asked to be secretary, and G. P.
Duncan and James S. Short, retired the previous year after eighteen years at
St Andrew’s Barie, were present along with Walter Bryden. Before lunch the
moderator of General Assembly, Norman MacLeod of First Brockville, paid a
brief visit (accompanied by representatives of three other denominations)
with Mackenzie King complaining that the churches had been left out of
preparing civic services (in one the name of Jesus was not even mentioned).
They were assured this would not happen again.
The discussion following lunch focussed initially on the relationship
between the state and the Presbyterian Church in Canada as expressed in the
basis of union of 1875. “This led the discussion farther afield into other
parts of the Westminster Confession of Faith, its origin, the times in which
it was framed, the right place of a Church ever to examine its subordinate
standards in the light of Scripture, the place of a Confession of Faith in
the life of the Church, the question of the interpretation of Scripture, and
the final authority of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, as the Word of
God.” The final conclusion was that the forthcoming General Assembly be
informed that pronouncements could not be made “at the present time
without leading to misunderstanding and confusion; Further that these issues
are too weighty and far-reaching to be dealt with adequately by themselves,
since they form an integral part of our whole confessional position as
Church, and as such we feel that they are so important that the whole
situation should be carefully studied.”8
The recommendation sent on to the sixty-ninth General Assembly as it
met in Hamilton was “that a larger committee comprising the ablest men in
the Church be appointed for the purpose or reexamining our whole
confessional position as a church, with a view eventually to stating what we
believe as Reformed Church in language and concepts relevant to our own day
and situation.” On motion of the convener of the Special Committee,
seconded by Walter Bryden, the motion passed.
The following year the Special Committee was named and approved by
the seventieth General Assembly: men “representative of the various views
in regard to the Church’s Confession assumed to exist at present in the
Church.” Including the previous convener Edward Thompson, they were Peter
Dunn of St Paul’s Hamilton, Joseph Wasson of Calvin Toronto, Arthur
Cochrane of St Andrews Port Credit, Wardlaw Taylor, elected with J W
MacNamara in 1925 clerk of the General Assembly and a well-known
constitutional expert, Walter Bryden and W Stanford Reid. The seven chosen
certainly represented “the ablest men in the church” and were fairly
representative, though without any strong participation from theological
indifferentists or liberals. In the two colleges, only Bryden offered a
definite theological framework. There simply were no alternatives taught
that had either the academic rigour or the credibility he possessed.
This new Committee, which by 1946 settled on the name “Articles of
Faith,” was charged with submitting “if thought advisable” to the next
General Assembly “a brief statement of the faith of our Church and as based
on the Westminster Confession and Holy Scripture.” This report would then be
submitted to presbyteries and the final document would be presented to General
Assembly in 1946. It was an ambitious commitment.
The convener the committee chose from its ranks was Peter Dunn, the
secretary Joseph Wasson. Dunn had a strategic role in the early years, though
because of his deteriorating health, he only presented its report in 1945 and
1946, Bryden taking on that responsibility at the 1947 General Assembly in
Calgary. Peter Dunn, though born in 1884 in Stellarton Nova Scotia (where his
Scottish father was minister of St John’s Church from 1872), was educated at
the University of Edinburgh (M.A. and B.D.) and served congregations in
Scotland until moving to the Central Congregational Church in Boston. When
that congregation amalgamated with First Presbyterian to form the Church of
the Covenant in 1932, he accepted a call to St Paul’s Church, Hamilton, the
city of his wife’s birth. At his funeral (he died in 1949 at the age of 63)
William Barclay said: “He exemplified an all-round Presbyterianism, being
faithful in attendance at the courts of the Church, and a diligent student of
the Theology of our Reformation Fathers.” 9
When his health failed in 1947, Arthur Cochrane became Vice-Convener and de
facto chair. To the great impoverishment of the Presbyterian Church in
Canada, Cochrane left to teach at the seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, the following
year. Cochrane, a Canadian with an
Edinburgh Ph.D. had forged close links with the German Confessing Church in
the 1930s. Joseph Wasson, a crusty Irishman, and secretary of the committee,
served Calvin Church from its formation as a minority group out of Deer Park
Presbyterian Church in Toronto. As Walter Bryden’s minister, he had a
strategic role in the development of the committee’s agenda and tasks.
By 1947 the committee’s document, “The Doctrine of Revelation and
the Word of God” was ready for presentation, having had preliminary
documents vetted across the church. Only ten presbyteries had set up the
recommended committee for discussion. Criticisms had been received in regards
to the section on the knowledge of God and the lack of any specific doctrine
of the Holy Spirit. But it was particularly in response to concerns expressed
the previous year about the use of the term “Word of God” and the need for
greater clarity on the subject of revelation that the report tried to clear up
ambiguity.
In addressing these issues about revelation the committee was trying to
reconcile both Barthianism and traditional confessional orthodoxy. Stanford
Reid had tried to bring a coalition together between those who maintained
strict adherence to the Westminster Confession and
the advocates of Barth’s theology of crisis. It was risky for someone
in his camp to do so: in 1946 Westminster Seminary professor Cornelius van Til
had labelled Barthianism (in a book with that title) The New Modernism.
But he continued to value Walter Bryden as an ally who shared a common desire
to make the Presbyterian Church in Canada think theologically. He wrote in the
[Orthodox] Presbyterian Guardian:
While
one may feel that Professor Bryden and his supporters do not go as far as a
thoroughgoing Calvinist might wish, nevertheless it must be recognized that
their influence upon the church has been healthy. They have emphasized a
return to the Scriptures, a return to doctrine, and also have stressed the
doctrine of salvation by grace alone. True, they do not always place quite the
same content in these terms as we might wish. Nevertheless, they have
exercised a good influence on the church in calling people back to examine the
church’s standards, to see if the church is loyal to that which it
professes.10
It was over questions of epistemology that the divide between Reid and
the Bryden group first became apparent. In Bryden’s one definitive
expression of his theology, The Christian’s Knowledge of God, he
writes “when we consider revelation as it appears in the New Testament,
there is no solution, no explanation in terms of mere thought, no fitting
definition of it; just baffling paradoxes arise.”11
This existentialist view was questioned by traditionalists who wondered
whether what was called the Word of God was Jesus Himself, Holy Scripture, or
the proclamation of the word as preached.
The 1947 statement claimed to embrace all three as vehicles of
revelation. It spoke of Jesus Christ as “God’s one and complete
revelation.” It also used the word “infallibility” in speaking of
Scripture but it meant something different than the Westminster Confession of
Faith, when it refers to the Bible as “this infallible truth” (I.5) It
stated that “...every conversion of God’s Word into an infallible human
word or every conversion of a human word into an infallible Word of God is a
denial of the sovereign majesty of God’s grace and mercy in which the
eternal and incarnate Word condescends to be present to His Church by the Holy
Spirit in the human words of His witnesses.”12 The divide between the
two camps was becoming increasingly apparent.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the discussions on the committee were
becoming more heated and divisive. One parishioner of Stanford Reid’s in
Montreal recalls how he met Joseph Wasson at a Toronto church function, and
told him who his minister was. Reid at the time was struggling to establish a
new suburban congregation in the Town of Mount Royal without outside financial
help, and was a part-time lecturer (and in 1948 an Assistant Professor) at
McGill. Wasson waspishly replied: “Stanford Reid, eh? I always thought the
ministry was a vocation, not an avocation.”13
By its 1948 report the Committee on Articles of Faith was clearly and
publicly divided, with Stanford Reid appending a dissent from its statement on
Election and Predestination. It would appear, from records Reid left from that
fractious year, that he was lone man out. The Committee had coopted his old
nemesis Scott MacKenzie, but MacKenzie had been unable to attend. Robert
Lennox, who had replaced him as Principal of Presbyterian College, was added
as were J. G. Berry and W. Harold. Fuller, then minister at Jarvis. Fuller, a
member of the watershed Princeton Seminary class of 1927, was an American who
came to Canada in response to the request for clergy following union. From
1953 to 1968 he would be the
editor-in-chief of the Board of Christian Education of the PCC. He would
become secretary of the committee and, with George Douglas, play a vital role.
In an undated “commentary on Dr Bryden’s statement re Election and
Predestination,” representing discussion and he and his “ginger group”
in Montreal Presbytery had had, Reid accuses Bryden of having been unfair to
Calvin and having misrepresented the Westminster Confession of Faith. One of
the issues was Bryden’s denial of the doctrine of double predestination, God
electing humankind either to salvation or damnation, always a thorny subject.
Reid denied that this teaching was exclusive to Calvin, quoting Luther in
support of it. “In this matter,” Reid wrote, “the Scriptures are the
final authority, and if we really believe that this doctrine is ultimately a
mystery we must go as far as the Scriptures but no further. Therefore, we
should not reject the doctrine merely because it does not satisfy our wishes
or our demands.”14
In response to Bryden’s critique of Calvin’s view of predestination
being simply “philosophic determinism” Reid countered: “Rather, I would
say here that we have in the Scriptures two matters emphasized: I. That God
has chosen in Christ His people from all eternity; and ii. That they have the
responsibility of accepting Christ by faith as their saviour from sin. That we
cannot logically bring these together is perfectly true, but nonetheless both
are there and both must be accepted. This would appear to be Calvin’s view,
and it seems to me to be thoroughly Scriptural.”15
He then counters Bryden “Dr Bryden claims that Calvin lands in a logical
contradiction, which, however, should be any argument against Calvin, for
above he has rejected him really for being too logical and landing in a
philosophic determinism.”16
But the real nub of the argument was neither double predestination nor
the antinomy that Calvin proposed between the two apparently contradictory
statements of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. It was rather the
implicit universalism in Karl Barth’s formulation of divine election. “To
say that everybody is elect, means simply that there is no election at
all. Therefore, the whole use of [the]
term predestination is also changed, for it no longer means predestinate. One
cannot be truly predestinated to two diametrically opposed ends. What the term
predestinate means here I cannot say, but it certainly does not mean
predestination.” Reid’s conclusion: “Dr Bryden’s statement is faulty
because it seems to vacillate between a possible Arminianism and a possible
Universalism, both of which seem to be out of accord with Scriptural
teaching.”
It would appear (documents are undated and hence hard to sequence) that
Bryden’s statement was taken by members of the committee and
turned into a full-fledged “Doctrine of Election and
Predestination.” This was submitted to the full committee for discussion at
a meeting at Knox College on 27 January, 1948. Reid’s copy of the seven page
document is riddled with critical comments. The body of the statement is
double spaced, but inserted throughout are single-spaced critiques of the
position of the Westminster Confession of Faith. By the time it appeared as
Part II of “The Doctrine of God” on pages 131 to 137 of the 1948 Acts
and Proceedings of the Seventy-fourth General Assembly this distinction is
more difficult to follow but the text remains the same.
Appended to that Report were Reid’s three reasons for dissent. The
first was a general concern “that this statement is beyond the scope of the
work of the committee, as the committee seems never to have been authorized to
do anything more than state in simpler and clearer form the doctrines of the
church. This statement on election is setting-forth something which is
definitely not the doctrine held by the Westminster Confession of Faith.”
When the committee’s report came to the floor of the Assembly (Reid was a
commissioner and preached at short notice the opening sermon at the request of
C Ritchie Bell, the moderator to great acceptance) there was a concern, when
the document was sent down to presbyteries for study and comment that the
original purpose of the committee as stated in 1945 and 1946 was “to prepare
a statement of the faith of the Church as based on the Westminster Confession
and Holy Scripture” be reiterated. Reid had moved that the report “be sent
back to the committee with a strong reminder that the Westminster Confession
of Faith is still the statement of this Church’s faith, and that the report
be not printed in the Minutes.” He lost and the report was indeed published,
though not in pamphlet form, as a defeated third recommendation of the
committee had requested.
The position of the Westminster Confession of Faith as a subordinate
standard had been in debate since
the 1890s. Donald Harvey MacVicar had written in 1892: “We have said enough
to show in a general way the nature and extent of the current movement in
favour of revision, reconstruction or relaxed subscription. To Canada belongs
the honor of being conservative in this respect.”17
John MacBeath in an anti-Union tract (undated, early 1920s) titled The
Burning Bush and Canada had written”During these recent years we have
been constantly asked by the advocates of the corporate union of certain
churches to abandon our historic doctrinal standards, the Westminster
Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, to which Standards our
ministers and elders give adherence by their signatures ...The day will arise
in Canada when people will look back to our generation and thank God for the
men and women who resisted civil and ecclesiastical coercion, and who, in
spite of all the forces arrayed against them, became, in the spirit of their
forefathers, bulwarks, but the grace of God, against the tide that would have
devastated the fields of freedom in this wide new Dominion.”18As
Keith Clifford states: “Many opponents of union believe that secularization
was caused by the undermining of biblical authority by the higher critics and
the watering down of doctrine by the modernists. In order to stem the tide of
secularization, therefore, they insisted on adherence to the Westminster
Confession and demanded that their ministers subscribe to it.”19
Now the Bryden group had declared open war, it was asserted, on the
Westminster Confession of Faith and, by inference, on creedal subscription.
The hoped-for coalition between subscriptionists and the new neo-orthodox,
which seemed so promising at first, had completely broken down.
Reid’s third reason gained an appreciative response from lay people,
mystified by the high level of theological and philosophical speculation;
“This doctrine is set forth in such paradoxical forms, and with the term
‘elect’ being use in so many different connotations, that it is much more
obscure and difficult to understand, than the doctrine it is supposed to
clarify.”20
In a mimeographed supplement to their 1948 report and circulated to the
Assembly at the time, the committee defended itself: “...it is abundantly
clear that the Committee was appointed to reexamine our whole confessional
position as a Church in the light of Holy Scripture. The Westminster
Confession was to be a guide and subordinate standard, but not our ultimate
authority.”21
The committee then went on to distinguish between the purpose of the
Westminster Confession (“to bear witness to God’s free grace”) with
which it concurred and the formulation of the doctrine of election which
differed from the Confession. “In this particular doctrine,” it countered
Reid, “we have taken special pains to show wherein we have disagreed with
the Westminster [sic] and we have been careful to give our Scriptural and
theological reasons for doing so. Dr Reid has dissented because of what the
Committee did consciously and deliberately.” It concluded on a truculent
note: “Therefore we believe that the Committee on Articles of Faith not only
may but must examine the Westminster Confession of Faith in the light
of Scripture, if it is to be obedient to Christ, and if it is to be faithful
to the fundamental principle of the Westminster Confession of Faith itself.”22
Their victory was a pyrrhic one: Reid left the Articles of Faith
Committee, to return years later.
His confessional position was now represented by J Bernard Rhodes.23
The committee itself went on to consider a less controversial item, which was
part of its original mandate: the relationship between church and state, made
ever more pressing because of the Cold War, the emergence of Canada as a
sovereign nation on its own, and continuing demands in the 1950s for civil
religion - the last gasp of Christendom, as it later turned out to be.
The 1949 Assembly received a mimeographed report from the Articles of
Faith Committee was placed, as the convener noted, “in the hands of
commissioners.” The report on the sacraments was sent down to Presbyteries
for study and report on amendment by Doug Crocker24.
At the same Assembly a subcommittee of the Board of Evangelism and Social
Action was charged to work with the Articles of Faith Committee on a
Declaratory Clause in regards to Chapter 23 of the Westminster Confession, on
the Civil Magistrate.
At the 1950 General Assembly the two committees announced that they
were dovetailing their work to produce such a statement. George Douglas became
chair of both, with Wilfred Butcher as secretary of the joint committee on
church and nation and Harold Fuller as secretary of now dormant work of the
Committee on Articles of Faith. The result would be the Declaration of
Faith Concerning Church and Nation of 1954, which became a second
subordinate standard. In the meantime the Articles of Faith committee issued a
plaintive third recommendation: “That in view of the fact that the 75th
Anniversary of The Presbyterian Church in Canada is now being observed that
this General Assembly reaffirm our Church’s adherence to the historic
Reformed Faith, taught in the Westminster Standards”25
Walter Bryden died the next year, though his continuing impact on the
Presbyterian Church remained with the many students he had inspired.
The early years of the Committee on Articles of Faith exposed, in spite
of all attempts to plaster over the cracks, deep theological fissures in the
Presbyterian Church in Canada, and wide diversity as to what subscription to
the Westminster Confession of Faith as a subordinate standard really meant.
The attempted rapprochement between confessionalists and Barthians
Stanford Reid tried to bring about did not materialize. At the same time
theological debate had helped to encourage greater awareness as to the
heritage of the denomination and make clear the special historic
contribution of the Presbyterian Church in Canada to the life of the
nation as a Reformed community of faith. As a strong confessionalist, W
Stanford Reid never opposed updating the language of the church’s credo. “We
did not and do not object to a new confession in 20th century terms, but we do
object to a confession that is so vague that anyone, whatever his [or her]
beliefs, or even if he [or she] had none could enter our ministry.”1
Today the church at large is arguably less able theologically to
evaluate its faith and life than ever before. There is a widespread distaste
for dogma, and systematic theology often receives a bad press. The average
layperson, no longer having memorized the Shorter Catechism as in days of
yore, finds doctrine dry and uninteresting. Yet in no age of the church has it
been more crucial for a Reformed community of faith such as the Presbyterian
Church in Canada to think theologically. The struggle of the 1940s within the
denomination is instructive as to how this process can help us understand what
it means be bound by our subordinate standards. The way both Barthians and
confessionalists shaped that debate has much to teach us in our own time.
________________________________
6 As Brian Fraser states of the 1926 General Assembly appointees to the new Knox College faculty: “Eakin, Bryden, and Cunningham were grounded in the progressive orthodoxy and Biblical theology of their predecessors who entered union. Bryden, in the end, would question and challenge his roots more thoroughly than the others.” Church, College and Clergy (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1995), 145.
8 “Minutes of Special Committee Meeting of the General Assembly” found in the Archives of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, Don Mills, “Articles of Faith Committee” box. The minute is also to be found in the Acts and Proceedings of the Sixty-ninth General Assembly of the PCC [1943], 130-1. The date has been changed from 1942 to 1943 and spelling corrected.
10 Reid, “The Presbyterian Church in Canada 1. Historical Background.” The Presbyterian Guardian (10 May 1946): 141-2.
14 WSR, “Commentary on Dr Bryden’s statement re Election and Predestination,” undated three page paper in Box 7, W Stanford Reid archive, Special collections, University of Guelph Library, 1.
17 MacVicar, D. H. “The Westminster Confession of Faith,” Presbyterian College Journal, X, No. 1, November 1890, 9.
18 “Our Great Standards,” John MacBeath, in The Burning Bush and Canada (Toronto: John M. Poole, The Westminster Press), n.d., 41 and 52.
19 Clifford, N. Keith The Resistance to Church union in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1985), 239.
21 “Supplement to the Report of the Committee on ‘Articles of Faith’ - An Answer to Dr Reid’s Dissent” second page, undated unnumbered three page paper in Box 7, W Stanford Reid archive, Special collections, University of Guelph Library..
23 J Bernard Rhodes (1903-1953), son of China missionaries, studied at Princeton Seminary for a year and graduated from Knox College in 1929. He served first in Exeter, was called in 1933 to St Andrew’s Cobourg, where he rebuilt a fire-gutted sanctuary in 1937. Appointed to the staff of Toronto Bible College on 1 September 1939, in 1946 he became Principal, succeeding John McNicol. He received a Th.D. from Emmanuel College in 1949. Bryden had great regard for Rhodes, saying “We have had many students at Knox College, but we have not had any better than J.B.Rhodes.” (TBC Recorder, Dec. 1946, 61 as quoted by John Stackhouse in Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 233n61.
