Distinctions of Presbyterian Heritage

Arnold Toynbee had somewhere commented that Englishmen in the days of his youth were unaware of history. History was something which happened to other people. Those of us who have been reared in the South are aware of history, for our lives have been shaped by it. We bear its marks in our personalities, as well as in our corporate lives. History is something which has happened to us. We are what we are in large measure because of our history. Presbyterians, likewise, have a second reason for being aware of history. It is one of our deepest convictions, as I will speak to indicate later. God is the Lord of history, that his sovereignty is acted in history, and that his purposes are being worked at in this time and in this place. So it is very appropriate that as Presbyterians we should remind ourselves about history, as we have been doing during recent years.

In 1959, we celebrated the 400th anniversary of the first organization of presbyterian of the multinational scale, where the graded court, the presbyterary session centered in General Assembly in France. And we observed the 400th anniversary of the definitive edition of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian religion. In 1560, we observed the 400th anniversary of the Reformation in Scotland. And in 1961, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of our existence as a particular denomination. Now, let us ask ourselves, what is the distinctive heritage which sets us apart as Presbyterians. We face the question, when did we begin to be Presbyterians? What is the origin of our tradition? When did the Presbyterian church begin? Now, one of the favorite polemics of Roman Catholicism is to say that Presbyterianism began with John Calvin or John Knox.

And Lutherism began with Martin Luther. At Wesley was the originator of the Methodist Church. But the Roman Catholic Church began with Jesus Christ. Now, this interpretation of the events of the 16th century would not have been accepted by any of the reformers. They did not think of themselves as beginning a new church. As a matter of fact, the reformers thought of themselves as a continuation of the people of God, a continuation of a people which had been in existence since men and women first heard in faith the word of God and responded in love and in obedience. In order to make no mistake about this, the Scottish Confession of Faith states very explicitly that the church had its beginnings with Adam. So, our Protestant forefathers trace the origin of the Presbyterian church, of the Christian community of which the Presbyterian church is an expression back to Adam himself.

For our purposes today, let us trace back the origin of the church to the Reformation. And this is not to deny the significance of the fact that there is one continual people of God since the very beginning of time. Certainly the thrilling fact to recollect here this day that between us and the folk who gathered in the upper room with Jesus. There is an unbroken succession of believing men and women. This is the continuity of faith through all the centuries. It is a thrilling fact to recall, and for almost two thousand years, perhaps not a day, certainly not a week has passed, and somewhere on this planet, men and women have gathered around this table of our laws. So it is surely a thrilling and very significant fact to recall that through all the long ages of mankind’s history there is an unbroken succession of believing men and women and yet the particular history which has given us our shape, our characteristics as a people and as a society began with the Reformation, and it is at this point that we shall take our departure.

During the past year and a half we heard a great deal in political campaigns about the irrelevance of religion unto politics and to society. Now as to the matter of determining the choice for president, there may have been something to this. And yet it is a very dangerous and also an absurd notion to cite that religion has nothing to do with society. As a matter of fact, if you want to know the real difference which exists between religions, the place to find that difference is not so much in the textbooks, but in the personalities which embody those religions, in the societies which have been shaped by those religions. This is the point, this is the focus where the real difference between religions becomes clear. We are different personalities from what we We would have been, and we are a different society from what we would have been, because this morning, individually and as members of our church and of our nation, we are heirs of three great events.

One of these is the Protestant Reformation. The second is the Puritan Revolution, and the third is the Evangelical Awakening. If these events had not occurred, you and I today would be different personalities from what we are, and our society, in its structure, in its ethos, in its outlook, would be different from what it is. Heritage shapes the future, and we have been shaped by this heritage which is ours in the Protestant Reformation, which insisted that every man must be responsible for his faith before God and for his neighbor’s faith. As Martin Luther once put it, every man must believe for himself because similarly, every man must die by himself. The Protestant insistence upon the capacity for independent thought an independent action has shaped our personalities in the society to which we belong.

Curtainers with its emphasis upon discipline, upon the virtues of sobriety through gallant, and the economic use of time, ability, and money has formed our personalities and shaped our character, and if we are ever to lose these heritages from the Protestant Reformation and the Puritan Revolution, we can be certain that our children will have different personalities from the personalities which we have today, and our society will lose some of its characteristics which are most precious to us. Now, within this Protestant Puritan tradition, we have been distinguished as Presbyterians by certain emphases. These emphases set us apart from other Christians, and the first emphasis which distinguishes our classic heritage from Europe and from Britain is an intellectualism.

Our forefathers were unashamedly, they were proudly intellectualistic in their understanding of Christian faith. They believed that ideas are important and that the only sound and safe religion is a religion which is intellectually sound and intellectually Our Protestant Presbyterian forefathers emphasize the life of the mind as a service of God. Our religion has three basic components, the life of the mind, the life of the heart, and the life of the hands and feet, the life of activity. In our Presbyterian tradition, we are distinguished because we have been historically the folk who have said that it is first of all important to think right in the matter of religion. Calvin insisted that it was important for a man to feel rightly, to feel deeply his religion.

But as Presbyterians, we belong to a tradition which has always been afraid to put too much trust in a man’s feelings. For our Presbyterian forefathers knew that while feeling religious, men have committed every crime in the book from murder to adultery. As I will seek to indicate a little later, our Presbyterian ancestors placed a great deal of emphasis upon doing the will of God. And yet their first emphasis was upon the life of the mind, knowing the will of God. Presbyterians historically were folks who knew what they believed and where they believed. Karl Holl, the great German historian, has said that no small measure of the success of Presbyterianism in the Western world was due simply to this intellectualism, to the fact that Presbyterians knew what they believed, and why they believed.

Now, this intellectualism of Presbyterians was not simply a matter of knowing the kings of Israel or knowing the names of the Twelve Apostles. it was the capacity to talk intelligently about one’s face. Someone has said that whatever may be the typical religion of the typical American, it is not something about which he can talk intelligently. You can put that to yourself. We can talk intelligently about baseball. We can talk intelligently about politics, at least sometimes. We can talk intelligently about our business. We can talk intelligently about bridge, but can we talk intelligently about our religion? Can we talk intelligently about what we really believe, about God, about man, about Jesus Christ, about the church, about life after death?

We belong to a tradition which has said that sound religions include this intellectual capacity to talk intelligently about one’s understanding of the world in which one lives and the life which one lives in that world. We’re in danger of losing that tradition today. I am not sure that the Presbyterian Church in our time is distinguished by its understanding of the faith. I am not sure that you can recognize a Presbyterian by virtue of the fact that he can talk more intelligently about his faith than can his Methodist or Baptist or Episcopal neighbor. But this is our heritage. It is a heritage which has come to focus in three areas of our church’s life. One has been in the area of education, because we believe it is important for a man to know, to speak intelligently about his faith.

We have been builders of schools, colleges, and universities. One of the crowning achievements of Calvin in Geneva was the establishment of the University of Geneva in 1559. And wherever the descendants of Calvin have gone, they have built schools beside the church. John Knox insisted that the old endowments of the church in Scotland should be used to establish schools in every parish and to bring to fruition the great hopes of the Scottish reformers for Scottish universities. The first polity, first book of church order in Scotland insisted that if a Presbyterian minister was put in a parish where there was no school, he must assume the responsibility of being the headmaster of a parish school. And when the disciples of Calvin came to America, they established along with their churches, schools, and universities.

And today, most of the universities which spawned the aristocracy of American education were established by the descendants of John Calvin, a second area in which this emphasis upon intelligibility comes to focus, has been in the liturgy of the church. Calvin, in his preface to the Geneva liturgy, insisted that church worship must be intelligible. This meant, first of all, the liturgy must be in the language of the common people. What the Reformation did was to take the prayer books of the medieval church, the liturgy books of the medieval church, which had been reserved for the choir, that is, for the monks, and gave the liturgy to the people, so that the people could participate in the service. Worship was to be a people’s service, and the emphasis in worship is instruction, approximation of the word of God, and the intelligible response to that word.

This is the reason Calvin insisted that the songs should not be in Latin, but should be in the language of the people. This is the reason he insisted that the organ should not be used in worship. Calvin did not take the organ out of the church because he hated music. He wanted the organ out of the church, however, because he had such a great appreciation of the capacity of music to move the spirits of men. And he believed that the organ would detract from the attention which was given to the words of the hymns or the priors. In other words, that worship would not be intelligible. So, the fundamental requirement that Calvin said about found worship is intelligible. Men and women must know what the will of God is, and they must intelligibly respond to that wish.

This is the reason the sermon came to occupy so prominent a place in the Calvinist liturgy. The first liturgy of our Presbyterian tradition was written by William Farel, who was a Frenchman and a teacher of Calvin. And Farel, Farel, entitled to his liturgy, The sermon. The sermon was sent because it was a proclamation intelligibly proclaimed, an intelligible proclamation of the word of God. To this end, Presbyterians have always insisted that their ministers should be well educated. Calvin, along with all the reformers, said that the minister has the same status as every other Christian. The minister is simply a priest among priests. In principle, every member of the congregation has the right to preach. In principle, every member of the congregation has the right to administer the sacraments.

But this right which belongs to the congregation is delegated to a particular individual so that it may be done with confidence, with honor, and with decency. The one excuse for having a minister in the Presbyterian Church is to have a man who can preach comfortably, intelligibly, worryfully, who can conduct the worship of the Church with decollars and with deacons. Calvin never said that the minister is necessary to the Church, But he did say that the minister is ordinarily necessary to the church. It is indispensable that the church have within its life this intelligible proclamation of the word of God. So the congregation may be a consequence in which no. The reason the minister in our Reformed tradition alone has the right to administer the sacraments is because the minister is the one who has been certified by the Church as competent to teach.

There can’t be no sacrament, Calvin said, apart from instruction. Symbols, actions, apart from instruction, apart from the intelligible word, are ambiguous. The meaning is confused. Therefore, to have the sacrament, there must be intelligible instruction. the proclamation of the word of God in an intelligible way so that the congregation will know what is happening. And because the minister has been certified as qualified to teach, because the minister has been certified as competent to instruct, he alone has the right to administer the sacrament. the sacrament. There’s still another area in which this emphasis upon knowing what one believes comes to focus is in the sacrament of baptism and the catechetical responsibility of the Church. Calvin made baptism a congregational act.

He removed the baptismal part from the rear of the church and placed it at the front of the church beside the porch. The symbolism of having the baptismal part at the rear of the church is very significant. Here is the beginning of the phase, and then you proceed from the baptismal part to the altar at the front. But Calvin said it was important that the congregation should speak and know what was happening in the sacrament of baptism, and in particular, in the baptism of children. Or in the baptism of children, not only in the parents, but the congregation is called to responsibility. In the sacrament of baptism, which takes place in the sight of the congregation, The parents spread themselves to rear this child in the context of Christian faith and in the fellowship of the church.

But the congregation also obligate itself to be this child’s response to the end that this child shall grow up within the church and come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We baptize children because we believe that by birth, children are born into the fellowship of the church. And at baptism, this right of the child is acknowledged, and the responsibility of the parent and the congregation is assumed. Now, this responsibility of the parent to the child comes to focus in catechetical instruction. As Presbyterians, we have always been great people with the catechism, with the teaching of the faith through the means of questions and answers. Calvin wrote catechisms, the reformers in Scotland wrote catechisms, and for almost 400 years, our Presbyterian tradition was characterized by this emphasis on the catechism.

In recent years, for various reasons, the catechism has dropped out of our educational programs as a technique of instruction. It may well be that catechism was written for centuries or three centuries ago and not adequate to our needs at the present time. And yes, there was something about a catechism that gave strength to the Presbyterian tradition. First of all, it raised the right questions. All the great problems in our time is that people do not ask the right questions of life. When I was minister in a college community and speaking to college groups, I frequently received requests to make a speech and the warning that I should answer the questions which students were asking. But this was precisely the problem. The students were asking the wrong questions.

And if you simply answered the questions which they were asking, you would not do them much good, and you certainly would not communicate Christian faith. The problem was for now, in preaching, to elicit the right questions, the important questions, and more particularly, the questions for which Christian faith is the answer. Now the Catechism had the advantage of confronting a child with the really great questions of human existence. And it had the further advantage of giving to him a short, precise, exact statement of his faith. It seems to me that in our time, we need to recover something of this catechetical tradition. In any case, we need to take more seriously the education of our young people for responsible church membership. John Calvin insisted that no child could be admitted to the Lord’s table in Geneva until he could repeat the apostle’s creed and expound his meaning until he could repeat the Ten Commandments and expound the meaning of the Ten Commandments, until he knew the Lord’s prior and could expound the meaning of the Lord’s prior.

You will recall that the early catechisms were built upon a knowledge of the creed, of the commandments, of the Lord’s prior, and of the sacraments. The qualification for participation in the communion service was an intelligible, a credible knowledge of what a Christian really believes. Moreover, Calvin insisted that his elders should visit every new comma to Geneva, and he should examine the new comma as to his knowledge of Christian faith. If this new comma to the city of Geneva sufficient knowledge he was to be admitted to the Lord’s take. But if he did not have sufficient knowledge, he was to be instructed and then given permission and to come to the Lord’s take. The Calvinist spits the take of our Lord and one of the fences which they erected around this table was knowledge of the Christian faith.

We’ve lost something of that. In our time, I recently saw the results of a religious preference, a poll of 120 college students who said they were Presbyterians. These 120 freshmen at a prominent southern university spell the name Presbyterian in 19 different ways. This is something of an achievement. I suppose it’s not so serious. And we graduate, boys and girls, from our high schools and send them out from our churches by not being able to spell the word Presbyterian. But there’s a very serious thing that we send them out from our high schools and from our churches without knowing what Presbyterianism is all about, and more than this, not knowing what Christian faith is all about. As Presbyterians, we belong to a tradition which has insisted that the life of the mind must be the service of God.

It is not enough to feel in one’s heart. It is not enough to do with one’s hand. One must be able to face Christians, one must be able to face with the mind of Christ. This means that to really stand in our Presbyterian tradition, we must know the same stuff, and we can read the headlines of our morning newspaper, not simply as Americans, not simply as But it’s Christians who have learned to understand and to interpret the meaning of human existence in the light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I suppose one good definition of a Christian, or certainly one good definition in our tradition, is a man who has developed the capacity of understanding his whole life in business, the home in politics, in the light of the word of God which has been spoken in Jesus’ cross.

The time in which we live calls for a renewal of this emphasis. In central society, a man with a good heart, but with a mind undisciplined to faith, with with a mind of Christ, may very well do a lot of good. But in a highly complex society, such as bandwidth wheeling, a man with a good heart, but with a mind undisciplined to think, with a mind of Christ, may very well do far more harm than good. Our classic heritage has been that of people who knew that the life of the world is the service of God. And now let us come to a second distinctive emphasis in our Presbyterian tradition. We belong to a folk who have emphasized the law of God. The Puritans were Calvinists, and the Puritans belonged to our heritage. Martin Luther used to say in ecstatic moments that a Christian does not need the law.

He said a man does not need a law to tell him how to love his wife. The Christian does not need a law to tell him how to love God. Calvin, even in his most ecstatic moments, would never have said any such thing as this. Calvin said that the Christian, as well as the non-Christian, leads the law. The Reformation said there were three uses of the law. The first use of the law is to convince a man of his sin. The second use of the law is to restrain a public wickedness, the political use of the law. The third use of the law is to guide Christians in the Christian law. Now Luther said that the most important use of the law is to bring it to confession. And therefore, in his liturgy, he puts the law before the prior confession. But Calvin, in distinction from Luther, says that the most important use of the law is to guide Christians in the Christian law.

And therefore, in Calvin’s liturgy, he puts the law not before the confession, but after the confession, to indicate when you have confessed your sins. As a Christian, you still stand in need of the law of God. And so as Presbyterians, we have not only been characterized by our intellectualism, we have also been characterized by our emphasis upon obedience to the law at the will of God. Whatever a Presbyterian has been historically, He has been a man who was ethical, who obeyed the law. Now, it is at this point that we shall take up at the second hour and move to our heritage in America. You