5/01/07
Recently on a
Yahoo list I received this response to a question:
|
From: |
Christopher Cole <ccnc1999@yahoo.com> |
|
Date: |
Mon, Apr 30, 2007 6:12 pm |
|
To: |
Ø I would be very interested
to hear a FCC man explain
> the reasons for
> the difference between the FCS and FPCS today.
>
>
> - Parnell McCarter
>
>
I asked the pastor of the FCS-C in Atlanta, GA, that
very question. The only thing he said is that FPC
requires a minority to stand down, once the Synod has
sent down a ruling. In contrast, the FCS-C permits
appellants to continue their appeals until either
their consciences are satisfied, or the Synod changes
its mind in their favor.
Chris
I would first
suggest that the differences between the Free Church of Scotland- Continuing
(FCC) and the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland (FPCS) are greater than this
issue of the “right” of continued protest, as I point out in my article at http://www.puritans.net/news/fcc042007.htm
. But this FCC minister’s response
raises the whole question of the “right” of continued protest, which the Free
Church of Scotland- Continuing alleges.
It is not often that I find myself agreeing with Rev. David Robertson of
the Free Church of Scotland (indeed, in the past Rev. Robertson told me I would
not be welcome in his church, after I informed him that my political philosophy
matched that of Westminster commissioners Gillespie and Rutherford), but on the
narrow issue he speaks of below, I do:
“The FCC did not agree and decided to go ahead with the
court case. The main reason is apparently something called the ‘right of
continued protest’. Neither I, nor anyone else, are quite sure what this is.
The way the system works in the Church is that if you disagree with something
done by one of the Church courts you can dissent and protest to the next court.
So let us say that someone in my congregation does not like something we do and
they feel so strongly about it they complain to the local elders (the Kirk
Session). If the Kirk Session reject their complaint they can dissent and
protest to the Presbytery. If the Presbytery reject it, they can complain and
protest to the Synod. If the Synod reject it then they can go to the highest
court of the Church, the General Assembly. If the Assembly rejects their
complaint then they can protest and appeal to God. By doing so they absolve
themselves of the decision and we leave it up to the day of judgement.
Obviously if they did not accept that and went back and started all over again
you would end up with anarchy and chaos within the Church. However in the Free
Church you can protest and disagree with the Assembly. What you cannot do is
keep coming back, again and again and again, until eventually you wear everyone
down and get what you want. Which is what this ‘right of continued protest’
seems to be.” (see http://www.freechurch.org/issues/2004/sept04.htm
)
The Ecclesiastical
Law Journal offers this helpful information at journals.cambridge.org/production/action/cjoGetFulltext?fulltextid=648968
:
“THE RIGHT OF CONTINUED PROTEST
For the pursuers, the crux of the
matter was the right of continued protest as a fundamental principle inherent
in the Constitution, it being essential to the nature and the fabric of the
church and its development. The right
was linked to the ordination vows of the office-bearers to assert, maintain,and
defend the Constitution of the Free Church ....The ordination vows, when read
together, required
the Constitution to be defended, provided
that lawful decisions of the church courts were not disobeyed while so doing. The
right of protest did not extend to decisions reached after due observance of
the laws of the church, but did extend to decisions which had not been taken in
accordance with due constitutional process.13 They
also relied upon the toleration extended by the FC to the members of the
original Free Church Defence
Association, formed during the latter half of the nineteenth century, with Dr
James Begg as convener,to resist the proposed union with the United
Presbyterian Church.14
The defenders
averred that there was no such principle. ‘Protest ’is a term of art in
presbyterian canon law. It was by
protest that Thomas Chalmers, David Welsh and their colleagues left the Church
of
Scotland and founded the Free
Church during the 1843 General Assembly; and it was by protest that Donald
Macfarlane of Raasay left the Free Church in 1893, after the Act Declaratory
anent the Westminster Confession was passed, and founded the Free Presbyterian
Church (hereafter, FPC).
We have been here before. Brentnall
v Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland 15 turned
precisely on the nature of protest. Two ministers, John Brentnall and Moshe
Radcliffe, overtured their presbytery as to whether a protest against a decision
of Synod 16 might be necessary on grounds of
conscience. When their overture was rejected, they took it to Synod, only to
have it dismissed without discussion. They then entered a protest against the
refusal by Synod ‘of a scriptural discussion anent protest ’but avowing that we
hereby declare that by this protest we do in no way separate ourselves from the
Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland or resign our respective charges or act
contrary to our ordination vows or impugn the authority of this Venerable Court
or call the integrity of this Venerable Court into
question. Nevertheless, they were promptly suspended sine
die –hence their action for reparation.
Protest remains of enormous
importance to the Free Presbyterian Church but, it would appear, for entirely
different reasons from those espoused by the FCS(C). Many Free Presbyterians still regard the FC as having fallen into
heresy in 1893 when it passed the Declaratory Act anent the Westminster Confession
as a prelude to union with the United Presbyterians: so, unless Donald
Macfarlane’s protest at the Free Church General Assembly immediately separated
him and his two colleagues from the ‘heretical ’Free Church, then the FPC ’s
continuity with the ‘pure ’pre-Declaratory Act Free Church was broken and, consequently,
their claim to be the one true Reformed Church of Scotland falls. On the FPC ’s
analysis ‘continued protest ’is an intellectual impossibility, because a
protest immediately severs the protester from the Church…
LADY PATON ’S OPINION
The Lord Ordinary found for the
defenders on several grounds; but she began by ruling that she had only limited
jurisdiction in the matter, following Lord President Cooper ’s conclusions in Mackay
and others v MacLeod and others 18 (in
which the parties were members of the FPC) that, in a case where the court was
invited to adjudicate between two parties, each claiming to be the beneficiaries
entitled to certain trust property, it is the duty of the court to take
cognisance of relevant matters of belief, doctrine and church government for
the purpose, but only for the purpose, of informing themselves as to the
essential and distinguishing tenets of the church in question, and of
discovering the differences, if any, which can be detected in the principles to
which the competing claimants respectively profess adherence.For us all such
matters are matters of pure fact, which we investigate with the limited object
of enabling us to apply the provisions of the trust; and it is not our province
to form, still less to express,any view of our own upon the truth, reasonableness,
propriety or relative importance of the various doctrines, standards, or
matters of ecclesiastical polity to which our attention may be
directed, nor to decide any
question of ecclesiastical principle which is not inseparable from the question
of patrimonial right. She concluded that the supposed right of continued
protest did not constitute a
fundamental constitutional
principle of the FC.Neither the preamble to the Act of Assembly of 1851,19 nor any of the other foundational documents, disclosed any
fundamental right of continued protest.20 Nor
did the toleration of the activities of Dr Begg and the original FCDA
demonstrate such a right…”
My own personal
view corresponds with that of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland on this
issue.