THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN AMERICA
AND THIS PARTICULAR PASTOR –

A Review in Principle
of the author's action of separation in 1998 from this body,
which through one, speaks to many
and exhibits some of the chief issues
which, like thunder clouds, do not go away through looking down.

After over 30 years in good standing with this body, with grief but with duty
to the Lord paramount, one has left what now has even formally added
to the accepted word of God, the Bible, authorising what it does not show.
This is only to confirm my concerns and occasion response,
Here is an Assembly statement that requires answer, with a warning
for the culmination.

It is not to condemn the body, but the doctrine
that this step has been taken,
nor can one find any way in all conscience that one should stay,
for to authorise what is both contrary to and additional to the word of God
sets a new standard based on desire, and not on the Bible alone.
 

This may be regarded as an open letter to the PCA, in terms of its declaration
in review of the creation record. .

For the Exposure of the New Doctrine in Detail, see Here

September 2008

In Its most basic form, the relationship is and has been as follows.

The PC in America elected to solve a crisis in its faith testimony in the arena of creation.

There were many who believed that the creation was indubitably, scripturally defined as a matter of days, 6 of them, definable in the basic category of what the vocabulary drew on, in the normal parlance of day and night, morning and evening, light shining and not doing so, action and rest; that the earth was moved into format, as so shown, and the heavens, each of these in detail. In fact, these come in two major divisions in the text of Genesis 1, one after the other.

Just as there was the vocabulary of ‘light’ and ‘darkness’, ‘morning and evening’, divine direction by word and creative response in material, mental and spiritual domains resulting, moving without intermission into the generations of man as Genesis proceeded, persons and groups named in individuality and reality, so the preceding terminology was not intended to be diffuse, suggestive, misleading, or in the words of Proverbs 8:8, ‘wraithed’, complex, contrived, or imbued with ambiguous observations, misaligned with the context and its stated mode of making and furnishing the universe and the populace of earth in explanatory  mode. Nor is it a substitute of mystery for maestro and magnificence in the area of the beginning and the institution of the plight of man. In understandable terms, it is declares what God did in the beginning, using terms to be understood in relation to what IS, for it is to this that it moves in indubitable explanation.

This it does as history proceeds in complete composure and summary integration (Genesis 2:1ff.) with creation, its terminology un-mutated, its agents unaltered, its processes in contiguity and continuity alike, before coming in one cohesive unit to the matter of generations, summaries of persons and events as ongoing history spread like the branches of a tree.  From the mode of generation of heavens and earth, it proceeds seamlessly to that of man in his families.

Another approach would have it that there was simply no telling what such terminology, and indeed numbered sequence of days would mean, as the  text moved on to the continued use of such terms in the days of mankind. In that case, definitions unaccountably change, terms wobble as the grand divulgement proceeds, confusion reigns. Such is not a permissible degradation of the continuity of the text, but an imaginative poultice to tone it down. It adds the word of man to the word of God in an unseemly insurgence, like a clever child who, instructed concerning life, will not listen.

It could be, it was held, that the terms changed meaning without notice or indication, that definitions were wholly indistinct, yes unknowable, that the account in terms in normal use, in a sequence of numbered units of days, and logically sequential operations in the earth and in the heavens, merging into world and national history, in high, authoritative explicatory mode, was without significance, except what the mind of man might invent, allowing him then meaningfully and masterfully then to insert into the text at will, for the convenience, it appears, of melding with a massively blind culture, of which we are warned as to type and time for its invasion (Colossians 2:8, II Timothy 3-4).

Indeed, one might add. The truth is even more extreme, true to model and resistant to remodelling by this sort of gnostic 'knowledge' which invents and mars, marrying the word of God to man's imagination with results as varied as the stars (cf. Mark 7:7ff.).

The actual data of the Genesis text here have a heavy burden of integration with other events. In the fluency of truth, there are applications, links. As with the DNA as now found, if you alter one thing you find yourself in the midst of multiple results in other regions, regards, modes and applications. Its integrality  is profound.

Thus in the Genesis text of institutions, creation and composition, the use of the one day rest in seven  is just that for God.  Even in Christ, as Lord of the Sabbath rest day (Mark 2:27-28), it is not for man - whether on the Saturday rest-day as was, or on the Sunday, as attested in the rest of His physical return on Sunday, the real one -  to depart from this analogy to God's own 6 day labour, with one day rest. That has not changed, nor its cause, nor its time, nor its timing.

That one in seven sequence and timing is a creation mode, and departure from it is to falsify the 'notes' . It is a creation specification, just as manufacturer's of lesser things may present handbook concerning understanding and thus care of the item. Thus, by His will and all-containing purpose, it was effectually ingrained into His product, man, so that it was required of him expressly and statedly.  Christ Himself came, He declared, not to destroy but to fulfil the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:27-30). He was always the ultimate and blessed rest (Isaiah 58:13-14, 30:15), but its expression each week ingrained its keeping, commemorated its creation; and moreover, it aided the awareness of man's direct derivation from God, operating as a constant anti-myth agency (cf. Bulletin 142).
 

This weekly arrangement therefore has the advantage of reminding escapists who do not care about a day of rest, that divine creation is not to be seen as a figure of speech, but a  mode of construction as in a factory. For maintenance, follow the times of the institution of the item. Follow the factory report; it is not written for your entertainment, but acceptance and use.

Of what ? Of man. By whom ? by God. Do not attempt to instruct Him: He does, literally, know it all!
 

To lengthen this set of defined time-units, days, is to insult God, defile the transfer to the working model, man as made, as in the generation passages in Genesis 5:1, 6:9, ..., and abort the text which moves freely into normal history. It is to make God's account of creation a theme and presentation subject to man and his imaginings, precisely as in other aspects of corrupted theology.  That God in His glorious superintendence should choose to speak of the generations of the heaven and the earth (Genesis 2:4), and then of those of individual human families in a sequence of meaning and declaration, and this should be ignored, rather than seen as different forms of generation, but with the same basic thrust, actual events in the department of generation, seems a ghastly intrusion, exceedingly hard to differentiate from intentional blindness.

Taking a megaphone, man in this would supervene God, but it never works. The word of God always remains, right from the first, right despite many idolatries, to the last.

In this parallel to Adam and Eve in evasive thought, there would appear only presumption if not arrogance, and that wayward elevation of man into becoming nothing less than co-author of clear text, muddying it. I for my part desire no function as co-author for God, whether in Romanist or pseudo-Protestant culture,  or anything else. Nor do I even dare to follow so profane an admixture, since I not only love God, the God of my life, but fear Him with delight, as in Psalm 2:11.

Often on this site, such matters have been reviewed in major detail, with only one conclusion for the word of God as it defines itself to be. Here it is necessary merely to indicate that it is past all argumentation that it is NOT POSSIBLE to DEDUCE from the biblical text any account of the creation which has it NOT in the sequence given, NOT in the logical development, in step by step in coherence of thought and action, as provided, but instead something different: equipped with concepts of vague vistas on divine action given in varied assortment, or of natural processes with a divine oversight of some non-sovereign kind. This is a wise provision in the Westminster Confession (Section 1.6, with XXX1.4). If it is not WARRANTABLE from the biblical text, you are not authorised in His name to apply it. If you do, you are then ultra vires. Contract with your standards is centrally contradicted.

In reality, by contrast, in the coverage of creation in the Bible, the word and the need are expressly related in such a style that the divine mind and mentality, view and desire are directly implemented with nothing whatever contrary to His thought as stated and actions in correlation with this, constituting creation of the universe (Genesis 2:1-4). God takes words of defined character, moves through them to events of normal nature, implements in text what He did in fact, and says so. THUS the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. It was not in some other way. It was " thus", says Genesis 2, in oversight. You can take it or leave it. Rest in it, this is the authority of God which speaks. To harass it with permission for adventitious additives born of invasive imagination makes a dual authorship for this book, on the part of a church. It is to signify another source, another word, another authority, to break connections.

Thus views along those inventive and intrusive lines noted are NOT able to be shown as IN the  text by its statements or to be gained by necessary implication from it, to use the words of the Westminster Confession, its system of doctrine here aborted.

It is not relevant to consider as relevant to the point,  literal or other ‘interpretation’. We are told how it was done in words given by One who undertakes not to present confusion, but clarity (Proverbs 8:8). Thoughts of something else, not textually presented, as the ‘real’ meaning may be held; they cannot be shown to be so. These are real to the subjective imagination as the Bible is made a joint product! The text is clear, explicit, normative and so described. It gives neither licence nor liberty to vary from it. It is arithmetic in steps, it is sequential in logical operation, it is decisive in utterance and it is of GOD whom it speaks. Let those who would tell God what He did in such a situation, by unlicensed verbal fiddle with the Genesis text, be ashamed. HE is telling us items constituting elements which we CANNOT know of ourselves, and declaring that this is how the  done, and when. Other inventions and of what and when are not even relevant, being nothing but addition, contradiction and what would appear cocksure assertion, if allowed by authority as just. For a Minister to vary is a matter of concern; for a Church to do so, is to establish a new authority and annul a connection in its formal reality.

WHO IS this authority which can so allow and so add to the word of God, by its own! One thing it CANNOT be is the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is bound by His word to other practices than this, as to purity, and not profundity of pollution. Beyond the word of God, the Church of Jesus Christ has NO authority (Matthew 23:8-10, Proverbs 30:6), as we shall shortly see further. To use what is absent is anomaly if not enormity. It does not, and it cannot bind. To bind fundamentals which God has not bound is an abuse of ecclesiastical power; to add, a contradiction of divine prohibition. Indeed, it resembles Ephraim, as in Hosea 5:11, of whom the Lord says in vast  disparagement, this: "he willingly walked by human precept."

Hence the AUTHORISATION of such views by a Church CONSTITUTES not only a defilement of the purity required for treating the word of God by that same word, but in fact, it even transgresses the fundamental counsel of the Westminster Confession.  Therefore a breach of the most fundamental basis not only of the word of God but even of Presbyterianism has here occurred. It remains important carefully to give ground for its rejection.
 

Here the just concern is with presenting what the infallible word of God has to say with NO addition, and this in the name of the Lord, the Gospel itself and the depiction of the Lord Jesus Christ being no exceptions. Any Church or Presbytery therefore which indulges in such endorsement, authorisation or acceptance as the decision of the Church, is in principle, as much adding to the word of God as are the exponents of Romanism. It  must speak and testify, faithful to the authority of One over all, rather than act as if faith were by permission, even in fundamentals such as creation (cf. II Corinthians 4:13). In the Presbyterian system, there is no member or body which can bind what is not biblically demonstrable and no ground for hesitation in this.

It was expedient for Rome to add to the Bible to achieve its goals; and in this case, the PC in America has proceeded to do the same thing in type. Teaching for commandments the word of man however is expressly excluded by Jesus Christ (Mark 7:7ff.). Those who do this are not appropriate for fellowship (Romans 16:17). Whether such new material is required or merely authorised, the standards are being treated in the same way. It constitutes a severance which occasions one. The word of God is not bound, and to fail to maintain it, is the trumpet that will not sound for its part, in battle, a result in which one cannot join. Here lies the death of not a few churches.

It is not possible to relate to such liberties, which breach the basis of union between pastor and Church, with impunity or loyalty to the Lord in this field. Confusion may keep some, but responsibility must be met by all. Authority is lost when it is based in part on ultra-biblical imaginations.

A Christian Church must be prepared to adhere to its biblical fundamentals, and not simply, or unconstitutionally rollick in whatever appeals, whether for its own imagined ‘survival’ or any other reason. Saving your life, indeed, individual or organisational, is in principle a method of LOSING it (Matthew 16:25ff.). To lose life is not the purpose of the Lord but that it be given more abundantly (John 10:10). This is better achieved when one adheres strictly to what He gives when teaching in His name.

The narrow stream (cf. Matthew 7:15ff.) may seem in a worldly aspect, not as attractive as the broad flowing river; but its force in its in flow of purity in its course, not in making of the environment, a flood plain of human  self-indulgence, self-reliance and self-expression. It is God who is expressing Himself, and what is required of man is fidelity. If one wants to write a novel, fine; but if one wants to so indulge in the NAME of the Church of Jesus Christ, it is as Proverbs 30:6 declares, a perilous exercise, making one apt for the rebuke: LIAR! How dare man use his own words where those of God are in view, and even do so in the name of Jesus Christ.

From such a Church one therefore had unilaterally to separate, for where such liberties are taken, the authority of God is supervened, and one can only appeal as one has done, to the Lord of all for His acceptance, as one seeks to be faithful to His unamendable word, and unimpugnable authority in all its singularity and sovereignty. This one does concerning one’s unchanging basis, the unchanging God, the competent speaker, the lucid Lord (Proverbs 8:8), and this as a matter of fact, in accordance with the wise counsel of the subordinate confession, the Westminster, at the point noted above, which in this is wholly biblical in approach. Its system is superlatively its excellence, precisely here. We are not bound by the word of man, it declares, and indeed how could we be, since as it states, this can err.

In so doing, one does not as such either condemn the PC in America, though one exposes this decisive drift into multilateral mutilation of the word of God by the word of man; nor does one assume  any kind of personal authority. One STAYS where one was on entry into this denomination, in the place where ONLY this word of God, the Bible, as taught and presented with what may OF NECESSITY be shown from it, may be asserted, authorised, proclaimed or taught as doctrine: that is, NOTHING, nothing but what is clearly and categorically shown. In fact, this is as rightly shown and emphasised in the Westminster Confession, Chapter 1, VI.  Preaching and teaching, and authorising of the doctrine of the faith  is of and through the word of God, with NO additives. It is not under  the heel of the  Church but from the mouth of the Lord. The humility here in the Confession is both remarkable and faithful.

The authority remains just where it was before, during and after my residence in the PC in America, and in that denomination where I entered before the PCA began, one which later became absorbed by it, namely the RPCES, though my faith in the Lord of His word and the Word of the Lord did not change, since it follows the Bible. It is as it was, in propositional form, the Bible as decisively, doctrinally definitive, and in personal form, God Almighty Himself, as depicted in that word and personally definitive in the Lord Jesus Christ whom it exhibits with its pervasive aptitude, reliability and certainty. There is authority, and that is what may and must be decisively believed and taught. Every word of it is that by which man is to live (Matthew 4:4), and this is not only a suggestion, but a requirement. The authority is Jesus Christ, and He Himself is such that before Abraham was, as He declared, "I am", as in John 8:58.

Thus this particular Pastor or Minister, Robert Donaldson,  has changed in nothing concerning these matters, and is by faith as firmly fixed in the basic Presbyterian setting of entry in 1967, as ordained before that entry; but the Church having changed, one has been left like a Jeremiah, outside of it and saddened for it, though one’s heart has not changed. Often in Church history, people have had to do this; and this Pastor is no different in that. Faith in Him who made us and in His word is not to be subverted but expressed, the essence of my concern as expressed for so long to an unresponsive Presbytery. We  must believe and speak, confined by no other authority.

Finally, one should further clarify a particular point. If some Minister teaches beyond the scripture, then that is a mistake. He can of course give opinions or make reasonable constructions for Christian Apologetics, so long as the actual teaching in them does not go beyond the Bible in doctrine. To show how a matter may be resolved, is not to bind it as the result, but to remove assault merely. That is a logical and not a doctrinal process. It does not bind, but blend, giving a reason for the faith.

Even if someone errs demonstrably, this is to be taken up with concern and reasonableness. Pastors are not the premises of the Church, but executives for the Lord, in it. How any such Pastor, so erring,  is dealt with depends on  earnest thought, careful evaluation and biblical principles. He may be cautioned or asked to redefine the WAY in which he is presenting opinion and so on, and carefully to distinguish it from the word of God, while emphasising as decisive doctrine, ONLY what IS the word of God.

Frequently, as in the Auburn Affirmation case early in the twentieth century, this careful compassion is misused to allow red-necked assaults on biblical doctrine, and church bodies, or camps are organised, or even manipulative efforts made to gain a majority as at Princeton in the 1920s. Thus the entire approach of the body may be changed. Pity is often misused by guile, and godless departures from the word of God are authorised as an absolute priority. So the word of God is fulfilled that thus awry and mistaught many will come as the Age goes (II Peter 2, II Timothy 3).
 

I dare not fear man because I fear God, in delighted love and awe (cf. Psalm 2:11).

However, this impending apostasy, predicted further to defile the world and invade many churches,  is no reason to discard, qualify, compromise or add to or subtract from the truth, the word of the living God, Himself. It is indeed, now as always for faithfulness to proceed with the unchanged requirement of purity in the presentation of the word of God AS SUCH.

As to this, neither is it arraignable by the word of man (I Thessalonians 2:13), nor attainable by or subject to invasion by the thoughts of man (Isaiah 55:8-9), as if the thoughts of the infinite God and those of man could be conjoined in any kind of mere collaboration. Isaiah is us ed to show anything such both naive and laughable, lèse-majesté on a grand scale. Even with an earthly author, this would be anomalous; but with God it approaches an act of categorical unfaithfulness, to which none may with impunity submit; nor dare I.

Thus it is one thing – one of great testing for any Church, to consider any vagrant, personal teaching by any one Pastor and how to bring blessing and restoration most wisely to the Church from any such variation from the word of God. It is one situation when dealing with any teaching given as if it were sure or His or to be entertained with any confidence, when the Bible does not warrant this. What is acceptable in this domain is to be either merely what is written or else necessarily implied in the Bible, as the Westminster Confession so justly says, relaying in this, biblical doctrine (cf. Isaiah 8:20, Mark 7:7ff.). It is quite another domain when the Church itself as a body sets up a STANDARD of any TEACHING which is NOT so demonstrable from the Bible, and endorses it, or acts to suffer it.

THIS is what has happened; and this is the error which most unhappily has defiled the PC in America. Is it well to wait mounting months before the folly is cleansed, so that instead a document of submission to error is published for acceptance, as happened after I had duly severed! Subversion by continuance has been too major a matter to require more rehearsal. Paul acted on very different principles (Galatians 2:5).

In leaving it, without any mode of detachment but severance, as a Minister in good standing in it at that time, as always, one has acted as seemed best and needful, to testify, to protest and even to evacuate, not accepting the testimony or organizational propriety of a body in connivance with such action ("avoid" does not mean conjugate - and this is the commanded response to such error, as shown in Romans 16:17). In departing one does as is found directed, with apostolic authority, their command as backing, and makes one's appeal to the Lord Himself in view of it and His direction, "He who does not love Me, does not keep My words," Genesis 2 14:24. The ordination requirement to seek the purity of the Church has not withered, nor has culture become king. What one undertook to do, in this one has done. Nor did one fail for long to seek correction instead of vagrancy in the Church which was in this developing, quasi-faith and statements of it!

If any in the PC in America wish to condemn this, one's action of severance, after their movement and change in doctrine, and one’s continued unmet protestations about biblical purity, and after one’s own morally required separation, so be it. This is not unusual in history, that a body, when biblically confronted, attacks what so acts in the name of the Lord, the watchman who dare not close his mouth at the peril; indeed it is habitual in the historical presentation of the Bible, as seen for example in Matthew 23:34-35, Acts 7:51-53. Athanasius in his day,  like Stephen before  him,  in early New Testament Church times, is just such a case; and of course many of the English Reformers like Cranmer, Ridley were not well received by the ‘Church’ of the time, when they exposed its errors, in fact being denied the means of continuing life on this earth and not merely executed verbally but physically, allied with drastic ritual gobbledegook.

Thus while one does not condemn such a Church as this, one does and must condemn its actions in doctrine in this field, its compromise, its enhanced peril for so adding to the testimony of the word of God by formal authorisation;  and so there is need sincerely to declare that to belong to such a body in such an excursion is in train to be spiritually and morally compromising for the Christian (Romans 16:17). This by no means excludes prayer for its return to the pure word of God, not only in word but in deed, nor does it expunge hope that it may yet escape this devastating misuse of convenience and this encumbrance with the intrusive thoughts of man.

It does however make manifest the cleavage that must separate from its fellowship, as also in such former follies as those of Numbers 16, when the penalty of refusal to dissociate from the self-willed was made outstandingly clear,. There was in this tilt at what God had made clear, no provision for the dalliance of flesh, and much was simply swallowed, in an opening up of the ground, so that continuance with the rebellion had self correction. Those doing so were no longer there, for this was no rational act, but simple departure from what God had long shown and confirmed, adding their weight to the situation. The soaring height of any such trand is shown in I Timothy 6:20. Of this, it is well to warn.

Whether in the one or the other  or the generic case last named, there is the sheer unwillingness, in such theological engineering,  to follow the appointed authority, to be patient before downgrading the divine direction, before avoiding the wholesome words of leading, extending or amending the deposit of faith, the biblical text, before teaching more or less or otherwise, and so holding to another authority; or whether it be to a different desire (Romans 16:17, II Corinthians 10-11): there is one thing in common. Before the flexibility of man is injected into the intelligence of the will of the Lord, what appears is this. There is but one direction of flow and one direction of go; and in this case, it is well to be followed, for there is but one Lord, one written word of God, defined and definitive, immiscible and polluted at peril.

Who knows how the good Lord in His providential mercies may re-organise as the time of His return draws near. Meanwhile, all who love Him must keep to HIS word and neither add nor subtract, nor authorise such things with any pretended authority. From first to last the Church which is that of Jesus Christ has NO authority except to present what HE has presented (cf. John 12:48-50, 17:14-19, Revelation 22:18-19).

As noted, in reasonings to show the truth of His word (I Peter 3:15, II Corinthians 10:5, Philippians 1:7), one may present many things; but as to what is acceptable in doctrine itself, this is limited to what is written and what is necessarily implied. The Bible not a field or sports day for contrivance and innovation, but a field of the majestic speech of the Almighty. It is the infallible word of Him who governs all, and is governed by none, nor by the thoughts or say-so of any, including those who dare to use His name while so polluting and opining as did false prophets of old (Jeremiah 23).

Thus is the mode of Presbyterianism, of Reformed doctrine in its classic presentation, where in the realities of the horror of Romanist persecution, even to the death, the purity of the word of God was seen, striven for and declared. God is not part of a crowd. If any, in so doing, faltered, failed or erred, without so intending, this at least was NOT the same as merely making declarations without scriptural warrant. It is not as if possibility, even if this were present, were necessity; or as though the thoughts of man were attributable to the acceptance of God, by mere human authority, as if they were pleasing to Him. As the Father sent Him (John 12:48-50), so He sent the apostles (John 20:21), not as innovators but instruments of service. What is accepted in His name as doctrine, yet delivered without biblical warrant by the mind of man, is like a blight: it is as if He were their publisher!

His own WORD declares what is acceptable to Him, and is in need of no decoration (I Thessalonians 2:13, I Corinthians 2:9ff., Proverbs 30:6, Galatians 1:6-9, Matthew 5:17-20, Isaiah 34:16, Matthew 23:8-10). Fiddling with it readily has the place of fiddlesticks, a tangled mountain of confusion, ready to fall.
 

To whatever warnings and endeavours to help have been given before, this is now added with all good will and good hope, while in conformity with biblical directions.