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The OPC split from the PCUSA back in the early 1930's when the PCUSA kicked Machen out.
 
Oh, so the OPC is older than the PCA? I did not know that. What was the issue over which Machen was kicked out of the PCUSA? What was the effect on Westminster Seminary?
 
Northern Mainline Church (UPCUS/PCUSA)---> OPC

Southern Mainline Church (PCUS) --> PCA

shortly after the PCA was formed, the Northern and Southern Mainline churches united to form the PCUSA.
 
Originally posted by doulosChristou
Oh, so the OPC is older than the PCA? I did not know that. What was the issue over which Machen was kicked out of the PCUSA? What was the effect on Westminster Seminary?
Click to expand...

Greg,

This is a long a convoluted issue. Westminster was formed briefly before the OPC - the takeover of Princeton by the liberals and founding of Westminster was one of the last battles in the mainline church.

The best resource I have found is Longfield's The Presbyterian Controversy
 
Originally posted by fredtgreco
Northern Mainline Church (UPCUS/PCUSA)---> OPC

Southern Mainline Church (PCUS) --> PCA

shortly after the PCA was formed, the Northern and Southern Mainline churches united to form the PCUSA.
Click to expand...

Actually it was about a decade after the PCA was formed that the UPCUS and PCUS united. About the time that the PCA received the RPCES.

Ironically it was the PCUS desire to omit an escape clause that lead to the formation of the PCA. It was the inclusion of an escape clause that was only an option to the former PCUS churches that lead to the formation of the EPC by a number of UPCUS churches.
 
I apologize and I don't mean to hijack this post (If required, I will start a new post) , but why didn't the newly born PCA join the OPC?

Were the differences, at the inception of the PCA, that distinctive from the OPC that it required starting a new denomination?
 
Originally posted by sntijerina
I apologize and I don't mean to hijack this post (If required, I will start a new post) , but why didn't the newly born PCA join the OPC?

Were the differences, at the inception of the PCA, that distinctive from the OPC that it required starting a new denomination?
Click to expand...

In fact having the OPC join the PCA was considered in the early 80's as the RPCES did. (As I recall the PCA vote to invite the OPC failed by one presbytery.)

speculation ON
The OPC might have been happier that the mass of departing PCUS churches did form the PCA just because of the numbers involved.
speculation OFF
 
The best chance for PCA/OPC unification was right at the beginning (mid '70s). If such an event had occurred, the resulting church would look different from the present PCA. (How much different????) The church's center might be a bit closer to the ideal envisioned by the PCA founders. Receiving only the RPCES joiners produced a "shift" that produced a new balance-point. Think of a see-saw upon which a weight is set on one side. The fulcrum must move toward the added weight in order to rebalance. Had the OPC come in at the same time, I think the "center" would not have moved as far.

A few years later the OPC entertained another invitationto join, but the OPC had different ideas this time--the condition they countered with was that the churches formally merge, and not simply that the OPC join the PCA by adopting its Standards as in the first invitation (in particular the PCA BCO, the WCF and Catechisms already being the same). These conditions were not agreed to by the PCA, and those talks foundered.

I do not think the OPC and PCA will merge as the present bodies are constituted. I think it is more likely that the PCA will eventually merge with the EPC. If that happened, not every PCA church (or Presbytery) would agree to union, and new alignments would take place. This could (though far from certain) result in another sister-denomination to the OPC (which could split too, who knows? Over what? Who knows?). The OPC, being smaller, retains a greater semblance of internal unity--I don't see its break-up on the horizon (yet).

I regret that our unity is not broader. It seems like we can only agree when we are small. Thus we have tiny splinter-presbyteries who have ultra-narrow fellowship, besides the better know denominations. Far be it from me to suggest that we should have no standards, but modernism's lies and now post-modernism's polylogism have produced too many men who cannot agree on the plain meaning of words!

Speaking for myself alone, I would like to see a confessional successor church to both the OPC and the PCA, one that embraces the best of both, one that truly brings together the confessional stream split in 1861. But I don't see it coming for a few years yet, and a lot can happen in a short period of time. The OPC of today may be something different tomorrow that no confessional PCA church could merge with in good conscience (just as the Southern Presbyterians could not re-align with the northerners after the War because of the changes in the northern church in only five short years).
 
Good book on the history of the PCA titled: I am Reminded by: Kennedy Smart

gives all the inside dope.
R
 
I regret that our unity is not broader. It seems like we can only agree when we are small.

i really would like to understand what is going on when we see things like this.
I have to agree that things appear this way, but why? What is it that keeps theologically aware churches smaller, and allows country-club type of churches to get huge?

numbers aren't everything, i realize that, but they are important.
something important is being captured in this statement, and i 'd like to understand what it is.
 
i start teaching a Sunday School class on the History of American Presbyterianism at a PCA church this Sunday. I am rather nervous as i am not a teacher, nor a seminary graduate. the first class is at:
http://www.dakotacom.net/~rmwillia/hap1.html

i'd dearly love to get help on it while i can start incorporate the discussions into the notes. i'll printout this for the class Saturday june 4th afternoon.

the printout version of the lesson is:

History of American Presbyterianism


Introduction to the Class

I. overview of the class

purpose-
To study Church history with the objective of understanding what God intends for us to learn from history particularly in reference to the issues of today. It is not an academic interest or knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but preparation for answering the questions posed in the denomination today and tomorrow. It is studying with a purpose, that purpose being a consistent striving for godly conduct and doctrine in our Church.(#4)
"Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes."
---Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, Saturday, March 4, 1865

It seems just a little arrogant to claim any special or particular insight into God's will or God's intentions in history, the best i can offer is a little of what i've found is important in the history of our Church. So each class, each idea is explicitly labelled as 'i think' or 'i hope that or 'maybe you will find this useful'. As such it reveals a little more of myself then i am comfort with and will consciously and systematically attempt to walk a boundary between sharing and teaching, staying on the sharing side as much as i possibly can.(#8) But the big point of the class is that God has a purpose for history and we ought to heed it's message, that the Church is of great importance to God and Church history is significant. Lincoln's warning in the light of:
Isa 55:8 For my thoughts [are] not your thoughts, neither [are] your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
Isa 55:9 For [as] the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
means we should begin this class with humility and trepidation.


Introduction:

I'd like this class to be an interesting and enjoyable experience for everyone. I believe that the way to do this is to show how the details of our Church's history are not dry and arid facts about names, dates and obtruse theological doctrines that no one understands but rather it is alive in each of us here, as well as in the several million people in our country who call themselves Presbyterians. I take my main task to be a motivational one, how to interest each of us in the somewhat daunting task of studying "The History of American Presbyterianism".

Motivation of adults has one major principle- relevance and personal involvement. If i can show you how the debates of the last 300 years effect you today, or how the struggles of various people over these issues are your struggles as you walk today with Jesus, or how the forces that influenced them still influence and shape us; then my task is almost accomplished. For people are interested in their own lives, we live out our struggles in sleepless nights, we fight our battles with our dreams, hopes and passions. Well, today i am here to tell you that the debates we are going to label Old Side/New Side, Old Lights/New Lights, The Union of 1801, Old School/New School, the extraordinarily passionate debates about slavery that lead to the Civil War, that the ongoing battle between modernism and conservativism are in fact part of your very identity as a Presbyterian and as a Christian. That these labels mark things of importance and relevance for each of us is probably not as certain in your minds as it is in mine, at this moment, but my prayer is that the next 12 weeks will change that. For i believe the issue is how to present these topics in a way that does justice to the big questions while not getting bogged down so much in the details that everyone is overwhelmed with the facts and gives up on the whole learning process. That, simply put, is my purpose for being here in front of the class today.

This class is on three levels and you choose just how involved you want to be. The first and obvious level is the roughly 12 hours we will spend together in this classroom, the second level is the about 60 page notebook i have printed up and is available in the back of the room(#7), the third is the webpages i've written for the class, there is a fourth level and that is the bibliography i wrote up as i did the reading for this study, but those who will follow it up--know what to do with book and reading lists, so i only mention it for completeness. It is my intention in the class to concentrate on the issues and the big forces that appear to be involved in the crucial periods of Presbyterian history. I hope that in doing so, people will make the connections between the forces they experience as part of their Church and spiritual life and these forces we shall talk about.

Now if we were several miles west on Speedway at the University, the discussion of impersonal historical forces would end with them being foundational. Here, today, i am bound by no scientific or historist ideals but rather I am informed by my faith that the world is not the arena of the impersonal but rather is the created domain of a very personal and loving God. I am sure that over the next couple of months i will slip into the secular practice that i am familiar and comfort with and speak of forces as if they were the ultimate powers. But i do know better and hope to present history as the place where God works. These forces, say the desire to maintain a purity of the faith within the Church by monitoring and enforcing boundaries, are not just or only psychological or sociological ideas but rather are evidence of the finger of God working in our universe and in human history to accomplish His sovereign goals. I sincerely hope we all keep this principle foremost in our thinking, history like the universe itself, is a creation of God's; both of which are the certain unfolding of His sovereign Will, with history being over time in the world of people.

foundational

1. Big Ideas the class should come away with would include "how has God worked in the American Presbyterian Church down through the centuries?" and "What does that teach us today about where He may be leading us?" or "where we need to be careful not to go "again"?"

using history
1-to see God's hands at work
2-to learn the lessons that He has designed and taught to our forefathers for our benefit.


So the straightforward foundational principle for this class is to learn what God has to teach us concerning the nature of the Church by looking carefully at the history of the American Presbyterian Church. The reason is so that we can more intelligently engage in the discussions and battles of tomorrow. Again, studying with a purpose.

Now, what are these big issues, these threads that run through this history and help us both tie things together and to follow them in the learning/studying process? That is these threads as giving unity and coherence to our study.

I have just two threads to work with during the entire class time: one-creeds/confessions/subscription and two-how the church reacts to and absorbs from the greater culture surrounding it. Both of these are questions of boundaries and concern the gates(and gatekeepers) that are part of these boundaries. The easiest thing is to present these ideas first as diagrams, as pictures and explain how the different relationships are represented.

II. Sketching the boundaries

figure one- venn diagrams: visible-invisible church, membership, elders, and teaching elders/preacher boundaries. gates: into the visible church, into the session, ordination. The paper itself is the general culture, and this includes history, which we and every other person carries within us across the boundaries. Things to note: the invisible church cuts across all the inner circles, this represents the fact that not all those in the visible church are elect, there is also a little sliver of invisible outside of visible, this represents the insight that "outside of the church there is no ordinary means of salvation". Entry into the visible church is twofold-confession of faith and/or infant baptism. Entry into the elders circle is via subscription to the WCF. Entry into the teaching elders circle is via a seminary education and ordination. The gates outward are: defrocking, impeachment and excommunication.(#3)

just two big issues:
first: creedalism/confessionalism/subscriptionism
second: the relationship of the church to the greater culture,
---especially in these 3 areas: training of pastors, missions/evangelism, hermeneutics

figure two- creeds-to-subscription concentric circles
The first issue, that i am going to try to refer to consistently as subscription/ism is almost totally a question of boundary drawing, gate creation and the subsequent enforcement of these lines and gates/gatekeepers. I'm just going to outline the issue now, most of class 2 will be concerned with subscription. It is a set of concentric circles, the first is the boundaries of the visible church, this is the issue of creedalism. The second is the boundary of the denomination or better understood as the boundaries around a small set of sister denominations- this is confessionalism. The third is the issue of gates, who draws them and who enforces them- this is the issue of subscriptionism. It is an ongoing debate in our church, it is my intention to inform on this question, to make everyone aware of all the issues, but it should be impossible to tell from my presentation in this class what my particular view is. My task here is to fairly present the acceptable viewpoints within the constraints of our Church's positions, if you desire advice on how to personally 'come to grips' with one of the views as being more Scriptural please address those 'ought to' questions to members of our session or to our Pastors.

The second major thread is the issue of how the greater culture is allowed to effect the practice and theology of the Church. This too is a boundary issue, what is allowed in from the outside, the complication is that the source of the ideas from the greater culture are from within us, from within the boundary of the Church. The problem of the outside culture is that it is within each of us, and the question is more what is expressed in public or as a matter of record, or what becomes practice or acceptable theology. There are three fields where this issue arises most naturally and consistently through our history: the education of pastor-teachers, the mission field (in particular) and evangelism in general and in hermeneutics. I plan to tackle each of these as they first make a strong appearance in history, basically to inductively see how the forces of enculturation or cultural opposition are evident in the debates we will study. But the big motif will be how the church reacts to culture, either accepting it uncritically(encultural capitulation), fighting it as a dangerous outside force (opposition or withdrawal) or striving for some kind of competitive pluralism (cultural transformation), these 3 being the extremes in the discussion, most efforts in the past have been mixtures of all 3 in varying portions. We will start with the details in two weeks with the Old/New Side division as a reaction to new techniques of evangelism imported from outside of the church.

III. The Train Motif

My wife, being my greatest critic, tells me that my best teaching is when i present pictures for illustration and remembrance. So at this point i want to introduce the motif of the train, which will be the controlling illustration for the entire class.

figure 3 the train

First, look at the tracks. It is trying to capture the strong determinism that is evident in Calvinism. A competing image would be from the days that i owned a Jeep and went driving out in the country, no roads, just fields and trees, i could go anywhere i desired. To the contrary, a train travels on tracks, the engineers of our train, despite their own protestations that they are controlling the direction and fate of the Church, are on God's train tracks. God knows where and is, through very special providence(#5), controlling the train. Now the scenery is new to the occupants of the train, they have never travelled this way before, but this fact that they are driving on train doesn't mean that they are really in charge. They can determine how fast or where to stop(maybe that is stretching the purpose of the analogy), but the really big issue of where are we going is truely in God's hands, and i wish to capture this with railroad tracks not the metaphor of a jeep trail.

Second, the people in the engine are us, our Church's session, the theologians alive and writing the books we read, the position papers of the denomination, last years General Assembly etc., the active living Church as we see her today. The cars behind are the big issues we are going to cover in the class, the last car is the oldest, back to the mid 1700's. Imagine that periodically the train pulls over and a new car is inserted between the engine and the rest of the train, then the current engineers retire to it and a new generation takes over in the engine cab. As we discuss things in the cab we can walk back through the train, but we start at the last car that was added on, this is the immedate past. We can continue through the other cars, but our visit to the further cars always starts with the first car. History is learned from our present backwards. Even though this class starts at the beginning and works towards our time, the natural way we understand things is the other way around---present to immediate past to more remote. I am trying to capture this essential insight by seeing that the conversations we have with the past are always colored from the nearby first(#6). That is the effect of reaching the distant cars by walking through those closer to us, first. I actually thought seriously about teaching in this order, from today backwards, but it poses some other foundational issues that are better solved in presenting history in our usual order---older to newer. The newer often hides the issues in too much complexity for beginning out, the past in many ways is easier and simpler, so teaching from the older to us is a better learning curve. But this issue of the past being colored in our eyes by the present will be a problem we need to be aware of, for we will never read books exactly like their authors wrote them, we will always re-interpret them with respect to their subsequent history as known to us now.

The train cars are, from caboose to engine: Old/New Side, Presbygation-Ecumenism, Old/New School, slavery, modernism/progressiveism/liberalism vs conservative, the caboose is European Calvinism and the engine is the handful of sister denominations: OPC, PCA, EvP, CRC, ARP, but not the mainline modern PCUS, although that institution is the primary institutional concern for the train's occupants, however varying the initials have been.

Sketch of the train and its cars:

European Calvinism:
point: this country was not settled uniformly, the contribution and settlement patterns of Scottish, Irish, Scotch-Irish, English and Dutch immigrants is important, we will pay attention to both the times they arrived and where they settled, as well as the theological issues they brought with them.

Old Side vs New Side
point: intellectualism vs experientalism, membership admission requirements plus a testimony, the effect of revival and emotions on both theology and the institutions of the Church. This is the First Great Awakening.

Presbygation- the union of 1801---ecumenism
point: disestablished churches competing for market share, pastor education requirements, numbers as a criteria of success, broad churchism vs narrow doctrinal emphasis, the effect of the frontier and the failure of Presbyterians to educate enough pastors to keep up. The union as a response to these problems.

Old School vs New School
point: pietism, relationship of church to new techniques, evangelism as numerial goal vs depth of theological understanding=broad or deep. It is a continuation of the Union of 1801, divided simply for learning ease, the reunion of 1869.

slavery
point: church's loss of moral authority, adiaphoria, relationship of institutional church to its own power centers, relationship of theology to greater cultural forces. hermeneutical issues. Look at 3 pieces: the Civil War itself, the preamble, and the aftermath.

modernism/liberalism/progressive
point: 3 way battle in church(right, left, center), what is liberal theology?, who defines the boundaries and polices/enforces them?, does doctrine matter? relationship of science to theology. progressivism as major player and driving force. Using two church trials to bracket the railroad car: Charles Briggs and J.G. Machen.

the first car is the engine-today, us.

-----
IV. Perspectives

I have one more image, metaphor, controlling picture i'd like to introduce. It is the image of 3 big suma wrestlers, playing an odd 3 way tug of war, image the boxing ring ropes and the poles as big guys pushing outwards to make their area longer. The 3 guys(tugging at the apexs of a triangle) are trying to capture the insight that the battle is not a polarized into 2 opposites one, but rather is a 3 way tug of war. The issues are taken directly from our elders' and members' confessions/oaths: peace, purity and unity of the church.

figure 4 3 way tug of war over peace, purity and unity of the visible church. (#1)

The truth is that God intents for us to honor all 3 of these ideals, something like a equilateral triangle. But because of our perspectives we tend to accent one or the other and thus deform the triangle. The same thing happens historically, sometimes one or the other, sometimes 2 big guys gang up on one and deform the triangle that way. What i am trying to understand is that the issues are seldom clearly two opposing opposites with every doctrine and ideal in opposition- a radical polarization. But rather often times this is a problem of properly framing the debate, and if i keep all three in mind i find myself much better able to understand the debate and the issues near and dear to the participants. Looking at the issues this way helps to avoid the either-or thinking that seems to frame too much of the debates in church history.

Well, this appears to be about 45 minutes worth of material. That will be my objective for the class discussions, leaving 10 minutes for questions routinely on each Sunday morning, i intend to stop and ask for questions, leaving the remaining material on the paper to be read by interested parties. It is more important to deal with the questions then to finish the lesson.

So i will leave you with our primary task, making sense of this:
figure 5 chart of American Presbyterian denominations
understanding the schisms, the reunions, the battles, and become aware of the personalities that make up the History of American Presbyterians.
It is also a constant reminder that this class is about American Presbyterianism not just about the Presbyterian Church in America.
To a great extend this class is preoccupied with understanding and explanining this one sheet of paper with a few lines and letters on it, doesn't seem that complex, does it? *grin*
Click to expand...
 
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