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It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.
Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 25th day of July 2024.
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That's Thursday, October 10th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, featuring Dr. Joseph Boot of the Ezra Institute. Well, I am thrilled to have a first-time guest today on the program.
One of the reasons I'm thrilled is that he comes with the highest of recommendations from a very dear friend of mine who's also one of my favorite guests on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III, who is not only an author, but he is the pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, definitely a name that is not unfamiliar to the vast majority of my listeners.
He's been on so frequently, and the guest that he highly recommended that I interview today is Pastor Peter Bringey, and he is the pastor of Covenant Family Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian church in Wentzville, Missouri, and today we're going to be addressing American Presbyterian history, a summary of an important movement that helped shape the United States of America, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Peter Bringey.
Thank you. Glad to be here. Glad to join you.
Well, tell us something about Family Covenant Church in Wentzville, Missouri.
Yes, Covenant Family Church is a congregation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and we're on the outskirts of the St. Louis area, and the church has been around. I actually joined when I was 11, and grown up there, and became pastor about six years ago.
But a great congregation I've stuck around, and a great group of people, but yeah, holding fast to the gospel, proclaiming and teaching the Reformed faith, the scriptures, in the St. Louis area.
Great.
Well, if anybody wants more details, you can visit their website, covenantfamilychurch .net, covenantfamilychurch .net, and we have a history here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, a tradition, I should say, where whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them, and I would love to hear your story.
You already gave me a part of it. You joined Covenant Family Church at the young age of, I believe you said 11, if I'm not mistaken.
Yes.
So tell us more about your story.
Sure.
I grew up in a Christian family, have a great heritage of the faith, and so was taught scripture from an early age. Was baptized as an infant in the LCMS Church, Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. Somewhat ironically, when we moved to Missouri when I was one or so, we started going to an evangelical free church, so not a Lutheran church.
But from an early age, I don't think it was emphasized any more than normal, but the themes of the final judgment, Christ's coming, some of those ultimate things really stuck with me. And then I remember as a five-year-old going to a performance with my father and younger sister to Salty, the songbook, this entertainer, singer.
I don't think he sang any psalms, but would dress up as this songbook and sing. But it also happened to be really a Billy Graham event. I didn't know much about him as a five-year-old, but he spoke afterwards.
And after he spoke, there was people invited to come down, and one of the volunteers walked through the gospel with me, and I prayed to receive Christ afterwards. And, you know, I don't remember a lot before that point, so that's kind of the beginning of my conscious Christian life.
And we attended a Communicant members class at our church. I was, you could say, baptized again. I don't think I needed to be baptized again. I recognized the validity of the first one. But to all the Baptists out there, I guess I would be baptized in that church.
But would grow in understanding. There were times maybe where I struggled with assurance, where they would ask people to join in with the sinner's prayer, make sure I do it again just to be sure. And so, you know, looking back, I realize I would begin to think less of the importance of the conversion moment, and more of the importance of continually believing in Jesus Christ and grow in maturity and understanding of that.
And then another leap of growth, when we ended up moving from that evangelical free church to the church where I'm at now, Covenant Family Church, which was Reformed and Presbyterian. It was much smaller, but went into much greater depth about what does the Bible teach?
And I was 11, 12 years of age and had a lot more questions on my mind. And so that was, you know, another step in my Christian faith to learn more.
And why did your family make the switch from the evangelical free denomination to the Orthodox Presbyterian church?
I mean, in part it was influenced from speakers at the homeschool conference. I was homeschooled growing up, and that really dates back to influence from relatives who had started homeschooling back in the 80s and were influenced by people like D. James Kennedy and Francis Schaeffer.
You know, looking back, there's actually Presbyterians already, but, you know, in the influences. But through speakers at the homeschool conference realized that, you know, there's greater depth out there.
And the church we were at was growing more seeker-friendly, more lower common denominator, was good for a time, but we wanted something to move on, especially as I was hitting youth group age and thinking about what does that period of life look like and wanting something that, you know, we would grow up to be mature and take the faith more seriously than a more seeker-friendly approach would promote.
So it got us looking, and I think it was the second church we visited, and my dad was like, yes, this is exactly what we were looking for.
And where along the road did you finally begin to hear specifics about the Reformed faith? I mean, I don't know if the evangelical free congregation that you attended was theologically Reformed because there are some that are.
They really run the spectrum of theological views that are common in evangelicalism. And you have some that are thoroughly Reformed and some of them that are vehemently anti-Calvinist, depending upon where you're going.
But when did you come to really understand these things and even embrace them and fall in love with them?
The church that I was at, the Evangelical Free Church, you wouldn't know it was evangelical free unless you really dug in to the details. So it was, to all effects, a mainstream evangelical non-denominational church in practice.
And so it was vaguely Arminian, premillennial, dispensationalist, but they wouldn't even probably use those terms, just kind of by default. I probably got more theology from Iwana at another church than I did, although I have to be grateful for what I did learn there.
But as far as my first introduction to predestination, the term, was in a Douglas Bond historical fiction novel about the Covenanters, which I read even before coming to Covenant Family Church, which I guess kind of ties into Presbyterian history, which is about the history in Scotland.
And there's some dialogue in the book about predestination, and I thought, huh, I guess that must mean that God looks down the corridor of time and, you know, sees if I'm going to choose him. Of course, I was still thinking in those Arminian terms, but came across the word and then really coming to Covenant Family Church, hearing for the first time these doctrines of grace and really what predestination means, and it being all of God's grace to choose us and to bring us to salvation, not of our own works or will, but of his grace.
And how young were you when you really think that you understood these things and, you know, truly embraced them?
I mean, probably around that time of 12, 13 years of age. It was 15 when I decided I wanted—I realized I maybe was called to ministry.
Oh, wow.
So when I was 15, I was reading Calvin's Institutes and Augustine's Confessions and the Bondage of the Will. So definitely by that time. But earlier, I think 12, 13 was a pivotal time.
Yeah, well, that's an admirable teenage experience, far more godly than my own when I was 15. Just a drunken slob when I was 15 years old. But I'm glad that the Lord placed it upon your heart to enter into pastoral ministry.
And what I'd like to do now is open up this conversation on American Presbyterian history. And what was it that—I mean, obviously, you are a Presbyterian, but was there anything in addition to being a Presbyterian that led you to take the time and the research and the study to create a 19-part series on American Presbyterian history that is actually available on Sermon Audio for our listeners who want to look that up?
And by the way, my guest's name is not necessarily spelled the way it's pronounced. Bringe is spelled B-R-I-N-G-E, as if it were to be pronounced Bringe, but it's Bringe. And if you look up Peter Bringe and Sermon Audio or Covenant Family Church OPC in Wentzville, Missouri, you'll see these 19 parts of this topic we're addressing.
But what was it that made you say, you know something, I really want not only my own people here at Family Covenant Church, but also the broader family of Christians, whether they are Presbyterian or Baptists—I'm a Reformed Baptist, and I am fascinated by Presbyterian history because we have so much in common—but what was it that compelled you to take this serious step and participate in this serious endeavor to have such a thorough series on the subject?
Partially, I'm thinking of the people in my church and thinking of others like myself who didn't necessarily start out Presbyterian and are in a Presbyterian church now and maybe believe the doctrines, but don't know maybe as much about the history of how do we get to this place?
Where do we fit in the story? And what heritage do we have? And maybe lessons that we can learn from what the church has done in the past. And then, of course, beyond that, it's relevant to Americans in general because Presbyterians have played a large role in American history, and to American Christians in general, being an important part of that history, and I think there's a lot to learn from it.
And also, I've always loved history. I grew up with that interest. I worked for a time at a historic site near us—the historic Daniel Boone home. I still volunteer there and teach music for a local Fife and Drum Corps.
So it is a nice intersection, then, of several interests to look into American Presbyterian history and lessons from that history.
Cool. Now, I know this has nothing to do with the topic, but what was Daniel Boone's personal theology? I think that I had heard that he was in the Restorationist movement launched by Thomas and Alexander Campbell.
Is that true?
I don't think so, although I think he might have had—he was certainly in Kentucky, which is where a lot of that came out of. Originally, he was a Quaker, Pennsylvania, growing up, and was, you know, just west of Philadelphia.
There's a Daniel Boone home out there, too, and the family left the Quakers when they left Pennsylvania. There was some controversy over older siblings marrying non-Quakers. So when they moved down to North Carolina, a lot of the family became Baptist.
I think it was John Gano—John Gano—was preached at some of the churches the Boones were at.
I'm very familiar with John Gano Urgano. I've been in the church that he once pastored, First Baptist Church of New York City.
I actually arranged a Bible conference there featuring Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary a number of years ago, and my favorite biography of all time is about the pastor who was John Gano's successor, Spencer Cone.
The book is called A Pastor in New York, The Life and Times of Spencer Cone, and it is written by John Thornberry, and I highly recommend it. It's not in print anymore, but you can still get used copies on Amazon, but an excellent.
Book.
But anyway, that's a little detour from what we were talking about.
Yeah, and the story continues, because he actually gets—the Quakers don't do baptism, and he was actually baptized and his children baptized by an Anglican minister in eastern Tennessee right before he entered Kentucky and, you know, entered into the history books.
But then his son later says that he preferred the Presbyterians and would have his children baptized, would read scripture out on the frontier, really would just go to whatever preaching was in the area.
His children mostly were Baptist or Presbyterian, and so it was, yeah, it was apparently Presbyterian leaning himself. We have one statement from his older years, which he wrote to his sister-in-law and, you know, said, all my religion is to love and to fear God, to believe in Jesus Christ, to do all the good to my neighbor and myself as I can, to do as little harm as I can help, and trust in God's mercy for the rest.
It was his own statement there in a letter.
Well, praise God, and when we return from our first break, we are going to enter into today's summary of American Presbyterian history. If you have a question of your own for Pastor Peter Bringey, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
Chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.
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I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight-volume commentary on the Theology and Ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Moorcraft.
It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology. Dr. Moorcraft is Pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.
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So go to royaldiadem .com today and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We are now back with Pastor Peter Bringey, and we are talking about American Presbyterian history. If you have a question of your own, submit it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. And Pastor Bringey, why don't you bring us to the earliest part that you care to highlight in the history of Presbyterians in America.
Sure. So Presbyterianism came over to the British colonies in North America in the late 1600s. You had the Westminster Assembly in the 1640s that created the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, and the intent back then was to have a united church of the kingdoms of England and Scotland and Ireland that would all be Presbyterian.
And it didn't quite succeed. There was rough times of persecution and discrimination after the restoration of Charles II. But one benefit was that when Presbyterians came over to the colonies, they had these united documents, whether they were English Presbyterians, Scottish Presbyterians, Scots-Irish Presbyterians, they already had this worked out.
And so when they came over, many of them were Scottish or Scots-Irish, some were English, some were English Puritans who had come over to New England, and they had, many of them were Congregationalists, but it seems the further south they went, the more Presbyterian-leaning they were.
So, you know, Connecticut Congregationalists were more Presbyterian than those in Massachusetts, and the ones that made it down to Long Island became full-fledged Presbyterians. But the first Presbytery was organized in 1706 in Philadelphia, and that was organized in part by Francis McKamey, who was an important, you could call him the founder of American Presbyterianism, or at least the organizer who had come over from Northern Ireland and worked in Virginia and Maryland and Barbados, and was actually imprisoned shortly after that Presbytery meeting by Lord Cornbury of New York.
Very interesting story where this governor comes in, he wants to make the colony of New York Church of England, even though there was Congregationalists, Dutch Reform Presbyterians. He found that this tax-supported building had been built for the Presbyterians, so he took it away from them and put an Anglican minister in there.
Later, the courts gave it back to the Presbyterians. That's the church in Jamaica in Queens. But that same guy imprisoned Francis McKamey because he had been preaching without a license from him. Now, Francis McKamey produced license that he had from Barbados and other jurisdictions and actually won his court case and would be instrumental for promoting religious liberty in the colonies.
And then he died the next year. He left, though, a legacy behind that Presbytery in Philadelphia grew. You started to have more churches affiliate with it. Initially, it was just seven ministers, but even by the next Presbytery, they had ruling elders from the churches as well.
So I guess that could get us started there. Presbyterians from the different parts of the British Isles. You also had a few Dutch Reform, maybe if there weren't a Dutch Reform church in their town, might affiliate with the Presbyterians and also the French Huguenots, especially after the 1685 loss of religious liberty in France.
Many of them joined the Church of England, but also many of them joined the Presbyterians rather than starting their own church in the colonies.
Now, you mentioned the Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, New York. Is that church still in existence?
It is. In fact, it's where Donald Trump was confirmed in 1959, where he grew up. I think it's a PCUSA mainline church today that I believe has gone liberal. But I think the congregation is still there.
Yeah, because the reason why I said that is I'm almost positive that that is the church where a couple, dearly beloved couple who are friends of mine, who are both now in heaven. But I used to man the phones for a program I created in the 1990s when I worked for WMCA radio.
I created a program called The Voice of Sovereign Grace, and it involved five different Reformed pastors that each had their sermon aired one night of the week, Monday through Friday. And my pastor, Mike Adosh at the time, of what was then Calvary Baptist Church in Amityville, a Reformed Baptist church, my pastor was teaching on exclusive male headship in the church.
And he was talking about how the ordination of women is an unbiblical concept and so on. And Gray Payne and his wife, I believe, were members of that church that you just mentioned. And they contacted me because they had a female pastor.
And they said, we can't be members of this church anymore after hearing your pastor's sermon. We came to agree with him, and we would like to visit your church. And they eventually joined it. So that's quite interesting.
But, well, let me see. We do have a question already from a listener. Let's see here. We have—I'm looking for that question. Oh, here it is. We have William in Aquabog, Long Island, New York, who asks, what is the oldest existing Presbyterian church in the United States, and what is the oldest Presbyterian church that has continued to be Bible-believing and conservative?
Well, the second one might be a more difficult question. I think the church in Jamaica and Queens that I was mentioning might be the earliest Presbyterian congregation. It somewhat depends on how you define it because the Presbytery didn't exist until 1706, but the congregation dated before then and later affiliated with that Presbytery.
So, you know, you could contend different churches. But I think that was in the 1600s when it was formed. So that one, I think, is the oldest to my knowledge. Francis McKinley also organized early Presbyterian churches in the late 1600s in Maryland, eastern Maryland.
And so those would be pretty early ones, too. As far as the oldest that is still, like, confessional, biblical, I don't know off the top of my head. I know there are some old ones that have a lot of history, but I'm not sure which would be the oldest.
Great. Well, thank you, William. Well, let's move on to the next segment of history where you want to highlight the history of Presbyterians.
Sure. So, you know, after that first Presbytery, I guess the next major event would be the arrival of the Scots-Irish. Now, there were already Scots-Irish early on, but a major wave hit the American colonies in 1717.
The Presbyterians had just organized another layer of church government, a synod, in 1716, which was great. Because all of a sudden, between 1717 and 1776, about 250 ,000 Scots-Irish moved to the American colonies.
And it's one of the last major waves of immigration to the American colonies before the American Revolution. And these were mostly people who had gone from Scotland to settle in Northern Ireland in the 1600s, because of the opportunities there, but also because of the religious liberty there that they had for a time.
But both of those were not so good around 1717. The rent was being raised, there was legal laws that were being passed that were economically adverse, and also greater religious discrimination. So, a lot of them were, most of them were Presbyterians, and they would form a large segment of the American Presbyterian Church.
Especially the middle colonies initially, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, but then also down the valleys and mountains in Western Virginia and the Carolinas, would be an important part of the histories of those states.
I'm assuming that the persecution that they had in Northern Ireland was from the Roman Catholic Church.
Well, initially, that was where the hostility was in the British Civil Wars, for example. And in fact, their experience in Northern Ireland would be somewhat similar to their experience on the American frontier.
You know, these were people already, that had already been colonists, essentially, in an English colony, and yet Scottish people doing it, and there was conflict. But then, in the early 1700s, it was actually the administration of Queen Anne, and trying to make everyone join the Church of Ireland, instead of being separate from it in Presbyterian churches.
Now, was the Church of Ireland affiliated with the Church of England at the time?
Right. It's basically the Irish equivalent to the Church of England.
Okay. Pick up where you left off.
Sure. So then, you get closer to the American Revolution, and one highlight that usually gets brought up with American Presbyterian history is the influence of Presbyterians on the American founding. And the story is true.
It was, to be honest, played up by the Loyalists, who wanted to make the Patriots look bad by talking about it just being a Presbyterian conspiracy. And to their Anglicans back in England, that sounded real scary.
But there was truth to it, as well. And even in the 1760s, the Synod, at the time, was grateful for the Stamp Act being repealed, and also began to draw closer to the Congregationalists of Connecticut to oppose the imposition of an English bishop.
This was one fear, in addition to taxation without representation, that both civil and religious liberty would be taken away by the imposition of an English bishop. Because there were no bishops in America until after the American Revolution.
Oh, really?
Their power had been taken away. Yeah, so ironically, the Anglicans that came over also escaped bishops, just like the Puritans did. And so the Southern Anglicans didn't really want a bishop. It was mostly the more aggressive Northern Anglicans that were more pro-bishop and also more Loyalist.
And so it was one of those Northern Anglican ministers that would say of the American Revolution, this has been a Presbyterian war from the beginning, as certainly as that in 1641. Speaking of the English Civil War.
So, and another event that had happened before this was the Great Awakening, which I shouldn't skip over that, because that was something that actually brought the colonies together. It said that I think about 80 of the American colonists had heard George Whitefield preach.
And that's amazing. And a day before recording, he was an Anglican, but a Calvinistic Anglican. And the Presbyterians definitely played their part with Gilbert Tenet and Samuel Davies and David Brainerd being preachers in the more middle 1700s.
And there was controversy within the Presbyterian Church. They had an old side, new side divide. I think there are pros and cons really to both sides. It didn't happen out of nowhere. And the errors of the...
Sorry to interrupt you, but I always forget, what is the difference between, and perhaps I don't know for certain that you're aware of this, but what is the difference between the old school versus new school controversy amongst Presbyterians and the old light versus new light controversy?
Right, so in the 1700s, the Great Awakening, the parties were usually termed either old light, new light, or old side, new side. I think old light, new light tended to be more common terminology in the Congregationalists, but you'll find it in Presbyterian discussions as well.
And it was not so much difference in doctrine, but more in practical matters, in issues of church order, and also excesses on the side of those who were more evangelistic. But the people who were being more evangelistic had the benefit that they were being more evangelistic.
So you had some that were maybe overly enthusiastic. Gilbert Tenet gave his speech on the unconverted ministry, which Charles Hodge later describes as one of the most terrible pieces of denunciation in the English language, implying that most of the ministry was unconverted, without any actual concrete cases that you could actually try and charge people with.
But at the same time, and those people like Gilbert Tenet would recognize their excesses and repent where they had gone astray, and were used by God for the conversion of masses, which had come to America, many of them lacking a regular ministry.
They needed this energy to send out missionaries to gather in the churches. And by the time the two sides reunited in the 1750s, the new side had grown tremendously, and they did reunite. Now, the old school and new school was in the 1800s and the 1830s, and that was more doctrinal with respect to their disagreement, and had to do with the influence of New England theology, or the new divinity, and also the new measures that were connected with the Second Great Awakening, and often led to modifications of Calvinism.
And Charles Finney, for example, was one figure in New York, who had a lot of problems, was a great speaker and all, but went even beyond.
He was Pelagian.
Right, right. He even messed with the doctrine of the Atonement and justification, and definitely was not Calvinist in his doctrine, and eventually left the Presbyterian Church. But the old school was more about, like, how faithfully are we going to subscribe to the Westminster Standards?
And in both cases, it was the old side that excluded the new side. So the old side excluded the New Brunswick Presbytery because they weren't listening to the Synod. The new school began because the old school Presbyterians, or the General Assembly, excluded a Synod and several Presbyteries in the North, where new school theology was more popular, because those had been formed through an arrangement with the Congregationalist churches, called the Plan of Union.
They determined that that plan was unconstitutional, therefore that Synod and Presbyteries were unconstitutional, and so they were excluded from the denomination. And so, both cases, the old side, or old school, excised part of the church out to preserve their Presbyterian heritage, but the old school-new school controversy was more doctrinal and more about confessional subscription than the previous one.
The reason why that subject is so fascinating to me is that I lived in an apartment here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that was in the home originally owned, or where, I should say, originally used as a parsonage, or a manse, for the Reverend George Norcross, and George Norcross was the first pastor in the 1800s, he became the first pastor of Second Presbyterian Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which started because a group of old school Presbyterians were unhappy with the new school developments at First Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, so they left and planted a new church, not far from the other one, and, in fact, the original building of Second Presbyterian Church is a lot closer to the First Presbyterian Church than where the current location of Second Presbyterian Church is, both churches still exist, and so they built the manse, or the parsonage, for George Norcross, and I lived in that home, it's a beautiful, historic, 19th century home, and I have hanging on my wall a photograph, an old photograph, of George Norcross that I found at the Historical Society, and I put a quote by Norcross underneath it, in which, even in the 1800s, he is warning against the encroachment of liberalism, he didn't use that word, liberalism, I'm not even sure if it was a common term in the 19th century, but he was warning about those that were, not only becoming enemies of the gospel from outside of the church, but rising up within, and really an excellent quote of his, and so that's hanging on my wall in my home, so that's kind of the reason I find it so utterly fascinating, that whole controversy, and both churches today are sadly in the PCUSA,.
And Old School and New School would eventually reunite as well, although that's a complicated history too, because both would split north-south, and then the northern parts would rejoin, the southern parts would rejoin, and the history goes on, but one demonstration of how Old School was different than the previous one, is that you had people who favored the old side, new side, both favoring the Old School, for example in Princeton Seminary's faculty, you had Archibald Alexander, who was very much influenced by new side, or new light Presbyterians, and very admiring of the Log College, which was part of that history.
The original Princeton, right?
Right, the precursor to Princeton College, which was then Princeton Seminary, was added on to that,.
And in fact, could you pick up right where you left off, we have to go to our midway break, just don't forget, you were just about to mention Charles Hodge, so we're going to be right back after this break.
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Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least city and state and country of residence before I have you return and pick up where you left off on Charles Hodge. I just wanted to read the quote that I was mentioning before this is the quote that I have hanging on my wall by George Norcross the first pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Carlisle Pennsylvania.
And he prophetically wrote. The religion of the Bible is historical it is founded on great facts and the testimony of eyewitnesses though enemies without and traitors within the church are doing their best to discredit the historical basis the Old and New Testaments.
These efforts will end in defeat because the foundation of our holy religion is historic truth that holy religion which was taught by Christ and his apostles was certainly a historic religion and propounded as historical verities by men who at the risk of life itself declared we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.
We must not only study the book of nature and the book of providence but the book of divine revelation to know what God has in store for his church. Let us be careful that we are not taken by surprise as were his people of old when the greatest glory of their race suddenly came to his temple.
And that was from a sermon preached by Reverend George Norcross January 1st 1899 and that was during a 30th anniversary of the Second Presbyterian Church of Carlisle Pennsylvania where they had a conference featuring different Presbyterian pastors preaching at the conference.
And just thought I'd share that with you. And thank you. Yeah. And if you could you were talking about the log college which was the precursor to Princeton. And I believe you were just about to mention Charles Hodge.
Just pick up where you left off there.
Yes and actually before I get to that I wanted to follow up on the previous question I didn't have an answer for previously and that was what's the oldest Presbyterian church that's still confessionally biblically faithful.
And having looked it up in the ad break I'm pretty sure it's Fairfield Presbyterian Church in Fairtown or Fairtown New Jersey which was organized in 1680 so I think that'd be pretty hard to beat as the oldest one.
Is it an unbroken succession of biblically faithful pastors or did they go through a period of apostasy or anything like that.
Not to my knowledge but I don't know all of its history but it's currently in the Presbyterian Church in America and it's the oldest church in that denomination. Wow.
Wow that's something.
So yes yes so what I was saying with Charles Hodge he was a professor at Princeton Seminary and was there with his mentor Archibald Alexander who was also a professor there but they had a little different takes on the history of the old side new side controversy and so Archibald Alexander was a big fan of the log college and its history.
Log college was started by the tenets Gilbert Tennant his father was at the center of really the new side movement and Charles Hodge was writing in the days of the old school new school controversy and that that somewhat shaped his understanding of the legacy of the earlier debates.
As I think even for me understanding current evangelicalism is going to shape my understanding of the old side new side controversy because I think there's a lot of lessons a lot of reoccurring themes that you find from that time.
So you can look at Charles Hodge's book the constitutional history of the Presbyterian Church in the United States for you could say more critical or more balanced you know evaluation of that time. He is appreciative of both sides but a little different perspective and I would also add to that you can read it online there's a great website log college press that both publishes books but also has this enormous pdf library online of old presbyterian writings history books but also the primary documents you know the books written by these pastors and professors so people want to spend a lot of time reading these things themselves google log college press and there's a lot there online that you can access easily.
Okay.
Uh let's see we have uh a um a listener in Albany New York and it is Chester from Albany New York and I was just looking at that and uh Chester asks can you tell us about the differences throughout history between southern and.
Northern presbyterianism. Sure. Yeah. That would begin to develop. There would be presbyterians throughout the states and old school new school controversy was not primarily geographical although the new school was strongest in areas where there was more immigration from new england you know to the midwest.
So. But there was old school presbyterians in both north and south during the civil war. Of course there's a lot of divisions generally between the north and the south and the old school new school presbyterians would divide twice you know because both of them would divide the new school presbyterians would divide over the issue of slavery.
Is it a bar to communion. Can slave owners be members of our church and the old school really divided over politics because certain northern presbyterians basically made allegiance to the united states a requirement that this is the right thing to do and we're going to require it of everyone.
And that broke apart that denomination. The southern presbyterian church has said well he's not our president and left and formed their own church presbyterian church of the confederate states of america.
And even northern presbyterians like charles hodge was more more careful thinker. He he did not support secession. He did support lincoln. But he did not support these actions by the general assembly because it was really making a political judgment call a a requirement for communion or ministerial communion in the church as a mixing of things.
So you you do have some kind of cultural differences or or emphases that you could say northern and southern. The old the old school did tend to be stronger in the southern church more dominant in the southern church whereas when old school new school churches reunited after the civil war or at the end of it the new school element was stronger in the northern church.
And that would lead to a weaker view of confessional subscription holding fast to the confession of faith. That would cause problems further down.
The road and uh we i have come to enjoy reading the writings of the 19th century presbyterian j .h thornwell. Uh i believe it's john henley thornwell. Is his full name. I believe yes. And he was a southern presbyterian.
And uh he wrote uh a condemnation i think it's included in a larger work of his but he wrote a condemnation of roman catholic baptism. And he was urging presbyterians not to accept roman catholic baptism.
When a convert came to them who was previously roman catholic that you know he would insist that they were baptized again. And he goes into a long list of reasons why that is the case which in his belief system and one of the or several of the reasons was because it is not simply a water baptism in the name of the father son and holy ghost that there's a whole host of other things happening in a roman catholic baptism.
And they even use they include in addition to water a foreign substance oil. Uh and even if you go further than j .h thornwell's writings uh if you go to the actual uh liturgy of the catholic church on baptism uh baptism is actually an exorcism of the baby and uh they evoke prayers of mary and the saints particularly of the saint after which the baby is being named and you are being baptized into the roman catholic church not just baptized into christ.
So and on and on i could go. But do you know if that was a dominant or common view in southern presbyterianism. Or was that unique to j .h thornwell.
So i think thornwell was really influential and so that would become more common in the southern presbyterian church. One of the lessons in my series i would talk about kind of intramural debates within old school presbyterianism in the 1800s a lot of them about worship and sacraments and that was one of them.
Charles hodge and thornwell ended up being on opposite sides of a lot of these uh discussions and charles hodge defended the perspective that roman catholic baptism is valid and and thornwell argued that it was not.
And really at the initial general assembly where that came up. Uh charles hodge was in the small minority and uh was was way outvoted and it was a time of heavy roman catholic immigration. It was causing a lot of practical problems that they hadn't had to face for a while.
And all of a sudden these german and irish catholics uh coming into the country and what do we do with them when they become presbyterian and charles hodge would be pretty influential and so his view is also the traditional reformed view.
The reformers received roman catholic baptism. So often it would be left to the session. You know there's more complicated history of how things have gone since then. I think even presbyterians today you'll get different opinions.
Probably the majority receiving it but but not everyone but thornwell would be influential. And so there would be generally a north south divide on that issue. I would i would tend to side with hodge on that issue.
But i would tend to side with thornwell on the lord's supper because there was also controversy about calvin's doctrine of the lord's supper and hodge being somewhat critical of it. And thornwell and one of his other professors there john adger defending john calvin's doctrine of the lord's supper.
Meaning the spiritual presence of christ or versus a memorial or.
In what way more like distinguishing within what does spiritual presence mean. And in this case i would side with with calvin with thornwell. And calvin has certain ways of explaining that emphasis on the work of the holy spirit to unite us to christ's flesh and blood.
And there's debate about whether hodge understood calvin's doctrine properly. That's part of the debate as well. And there was a man who had been at princeton seminary later went into the german reformed church uh nevin and his writings on the doctrine and he had his own take on it too that contributed to that debate.
But a more modern book has been written on john calvin's doctrine of the lord's supper by keith matheson. Oh yeah which would a lot of insight into that from ligonier ministries.
Yes yes and uh so uh where does i'm. I'm perhaps i'm jumping too far into the future right now and you could go back into the past in a moment but i think it's a modern phenomenon and it's of course a tiny minority today amongst those calling themselves presbyterians.
In fact i don't think any of the major conservative presbyterian denominations allow it and i could be wrong. But where does where and when does pedo communion come into existence amongst presbyterians.
Right that would be a more recent thing for sure. Uh i mostly see it come up in like the mid 1900s. You know maybe there's more that i don't know but it seems that really not even mid but kind of later 1900s that that becomes a discussion.
I mean the opc the orthodox presbyterian church for example had some discussion and study committee. There was a church apparently an ethiopian like refugee church where the minister was part of the opc in america that had been practicing pedo communion and so then that got brought up to the presbytery and the general assembly had to decide on it.
But it seems like it's mostly a later 20th century discussion in the presbyterian world. Really the tradition in a lot of presbyterian churches was to be to wait longer than would be typical today before profession of faith.
Probably longer than i think would be healthy. But you know you read the biographies of these men they're usually start to take the lord's supper when they're late teenage years you know 17 18 19 years of age maybe 14.
But uh usually they were trying to encourage professions of faith and but there wasn't a push for pedo communion. Well similar similar issue with the frequency of frequency of communion was something that for a long in that case people had been advocating a more frequent communion for a long time back to well to calvin and he didn't get the way he wanted it and didn't he want a daily.
Well he said weekly. And you know the early church was so great that he could even have it daily. And you know we should at least have it weekly but he was only able to get i think four times a year and four times a year you know was was pretty standard.
And it was more in the 20th century that churches have begun to practice it more frequently and again i think that's probably a good move. I think that is a good move but it's one of these developments over the course of american presbyterian history.
Well uh you.
Could go back in time if you want again. Since i brought i dragged you into the more recent uh present day uh yeah so.
We're jumping around all over which is it's just it's hard to cover everything but one figure i should mention is that of john witherspoon. So i was talking about the american revolution back there. And john witherspoon was a major figure in church and state and education.
He was the head of princeton college. This was before the seminary was there educated like the leaders many of the leaders of the of the united states and the church. James madison for example studied there.
And that was one influence of the presbyterians was through education not always from the pulpit. Certainly pulpit was very important but also through tutors and teachers and professors. That were often ministers and teachers.
And witherspoon was that way. And witherspoon signed the declaration of independence. One member of parliament spoke of him saying cousin america has run off with a presbyterian parson. He had given a message a month before the declaration of independence or two months before called the dominion of providence over the passions of men.
And he said that the cause in which america is now in arms is the cause of justice of liberty and of human nature. And talked about the importance of cultivating natural national virtue and the importance of religion and true religion.
And he says that as peace with god and conformity to him adds to the sweetness of created comforts while we possess them. So in times of difficulty and trial it is the man of piety and inward principle that we may expect to find the uncorrupted patriot the useful citizen and the invincible soldier.
God grant that in america true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both. He wasn't the only presbyterian to sign.
He was the only minister to sign the declaration. But there were other 11 other presbyterians that were signers. Thomas mckean for example was another one who was the chief justice of pennsylvania and delaware's delegate to the congress at the same time.
I don't know how that worked legally but he was a very important lesser known founder who was a presbyterian.
Well we have clem and butte silverbow montana who says i have heard that presbyterians celebrating christmas is a relatively recent phenomenon and that scotland did not even celebrate christmas until the british and american gi's brought the celebration to scotland during world war ii.
Is there any truth in this.
Yes uh there is there is truth to that. It is true. Both the scots in scotland and the puritans in new england saw christmas and other special days like that as additions that are not in scripture and therefore we should be we should do away with them.
And even in 1835 samuel miller professor at princeton seminary is going to defend the traditional view against observing any other holy days except for the lord's day. Lord's day. Sabbath was a huge deal and still is should be.
But by 1853 charles hodge can speak appreciatively of christmas pros and cons and of our own practice of it. And in the 1800s presbyterians would gradually begin voluntarily. That's important. Not imposed here not as a holy day per se but a voluntary annual observance of days like christmas good friday and easter but not the full church calendar as elaborate as episcopalians you know.
So by the early 1900s it would be pretty common for presbyterians to celebrate christmas. Jay gresson machen for example a notable presbyterian of that era one of his last public talks was a radio program.
And he wishes them a happy merry christmas right before he he passed away. So that would one of those developments in the 1800s where there would be some changes often going back to earlier reform the work of the reformers more appreciative of liturgy looking back at their sacramental doctrines you know.
Maybe a moderate use of a few voluntary holy days or holidays might be appropriate. And uh from reading the book.
By john d price who is a reformed baptist pastor of grace baptist church of rochester new york. He wrote a book old light on new worship and he was making the case for strictly acapella worship. Uh he was not or is not an exclusive psalmist but he is an exclusive acapella advocate.
And i was very fascinated and surprised to learn from his book if indeed he is historically accurate. And he seems like he's done exhaustive research that musical instruments were not used by protestants other than lutherans and anglicans until the 19th century.
And that would include obviously presbyterians and baptists and so on. I know that charles spurgeon in in london did not use them. Uh and so what is your knowledge on that element of the changes that have taken place.
Right that that is true. I mean even anglicans in the 1700s a lot of them were acapella psalm singing. And partially because it was easiest you know if you're on the american frontier but sometimes out of principle too.
And introduction of instruments was often controversial in the 1800s in presbyterians you know organs were first installed in the first presbyterian church in alexandria virginia in 1817 the independent presbyterian church savannah georgia in the 1820s.
And so that becomes a controversy. And you have people like rl dabney and john gerardo who argued against the use of instruments. Didn't dab. Didn't dab me said.
Didn't dab me say that the organ produced and i'm paraphrasing here but it was something like that the organs produced the sounds of a harlot or something like that.
He he might have. I do remember reading his article it's been a while now. He he argued against instruments but he also especially targeted the organ as unfit for worship in particular. And there were some uh like thomas smith who was a pastor in charleston south carolina who defended the use of instruments.
So it wasn't necessarily a regional thing. You know all of those that i just mentioned were southern presbyterians uh. But it became more and more common so that now it's mostly the covenant or rpcna presbyterians that are exclusive.
Psalmody and acapella. I mean in our church we have acapella in the evening service. But not necessarily out of any principle just because it's simple and it's good to be able to learn how to sing without instruments.
Um i always say it's the it's the paul and silas test. Can you sing if you were chained in the dark. If you're relying on the instruments that's not a great thing you know. But i think it's appropriate as uh as accompaniment.
But there's sometimes some wisdom even in what was written against their use. How.
How are they used. Right. Well we have to go to our final break and if you have a question send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time. Chris arnson at gmail .com. Chris arnson at gmail .com.
Don't go away we'll be.
Right back james white of alphanamaga. Ministries.
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We're now back with peter bringi and we are discussing american presbyterian history. And i already know that i want you back at least for part two of this because we're just scratching the surface. And of course uh anybody listening can uh can listen to the 19 part series on this that peter bringi has available on the sermon audio.
But if you could just pick up where you want to return to in the history of presbyterianism in america.
Sure i think it might be helpful to take a step back. And you think of in terms of roughly three centuries that presbyterians have been in america it's been a little bit longer than that. But 1700s are period of foundations.
The organization is established. The standard doctrinal standards. What do we agree on what do we believe. The great awakening the founding. That's 1700s. John witherspoon for example 1800s is that of maturation.
There's a church expanding uh it's going westward. There's struggles for orthodoxy with the old school new school later over evolution and inerrancy debates internal discussions about worship foreign missions blossoms you know outside to the other countries and contributions to society.
There's this vision of america being a christian nation which is repeated by various presbyterian leaders and members who are you know going to be involved in their their country on many levels there's essentially six or seven mainline denominations.
Colonial period it's congregationalists episcopalians or anglicans and presbyterians. In the 1800s the methodists and baptists become the largest but presbyterians are still like in third place. And in the 1900s things begin to splinter because of the increase of liberalism and so the 1900s i would describe as realignment.
You have the fundamentalist modernist controversy in the early 1900s over the five fundamentals and people get called fundamentalists. But the term the five fundamentals comes from presbyterian debates starting in 1910 the let's see if i can remember them off the top of my head the inerrancy of scripture and its inspiration the virgin birth of christ the resurrection of christ miracles of christ and the penal substitutionary death of christ.
And that debate leads eventually to the formation of the orthodox presbyterian church with jay gress and machen and the north. But then in the middle 1900s there's conflict in the mainline denominations north and south and the pca is the presbyterian church in america that's formed in 1973 in the from the southern denomination being the conservative confessional element.
And in the north there's further conflict in the northern mainline church you have figures like r .c. sproul and john gerstner and others and others leave the mainline denomination as women's ordination becomes enforceable and required.
And so in the aftermath of these you have realignments and rejoinings and divisions reunions and you get an alphabet soup of different presbyterian denominations that exist today the pc usa the echo epc pca opc arpc rpcna which is it's unfortunate divided.
But the issues have been very important that we hold fast to the biblical faith and i think confessional presbyterian churches are in a better condition now than they were 50 60 years ago. Back then most of them were in denominations that the committees the commissions the organizations were compromised by liberalism and unbelief whereas now it's been realigned we are able to go forth with a common understanding of the gospel little church like the opc.
My denomination was founded in the great depression lost their buildings was poor was weak small. I think the letter to the church in philadelphia and revelation is a great letter for the opc. You know you don't have much power but you've kept the faith.
But now 90 years down the road greater experience in a better place. But we have a big job ahead of us making up for the decline of the mainline church going forward with the work that's been there ever since the founding of the united states to try to catch up with the settlers bring in the lost flock church people as well as evangelizing those who don't even profess faith and then discipling the flock.
So it'd be great to have a solid reformed church in every community in the united states. There's and if we did that that would just be the beginning. There's there's so much work ahead of us. Well we have time for one more.
Question we have garnett in saint peters missouri who wants to know why did the bible presbyterian church and orthodox presbyterian church never become one denomination. I believe that one of the issues was that the bible presbyterian church did not believe in the liberty to drink alcohol.
Are there any other reasons.
Right so that goes back to the beginning of the opc in the year after was founded uh 1937 there was debate within the denomination and over whether it should take a view against drinking alcohol. Also what is the status of premillennialism and dispensationalism.
How open are we to that. And also the independent board of presbyterian missions which there's a whole story behind that. But how presbyterian should we be in that work. And so those who were in favor of premillennialism as a very important thing and abstinence from alcohol and other similar things became the bible presbyterian church.
Francis schaeffer was a young seminary student at the time it went with the presbyterians. Wheaton college president oliver buswell was also part of that movement. But why did it not rejoin the opc. Well the bible presbyterians themselves split again in the 50s and i think there was even one of those branches continued to split.
The current bible presbyterian church does have better relationships with the opc now and there's been greater reconciliation. But a large part of what was the bible presbyterian church united with another group became the reformed presbyterian church.
Evangelical synod we tried merging with them in the 70s they voted it down. And then there was this merger that was going to happen with these two denominations and the pca. The southern presbyterians the pca voted the opc down and so the rpces and the pca joined but left the opc out later on in the later 1980s the pca invited the opc back and at that point we voted it down.
So there's been several attempts to to close that loop to to bring them all together. But there was also a lot of voluntary individual congregations that shifted around. So a lot of the opc churches that wanted to join the pca went ahead and did so creating less desire to reunite after that fact.
So the short story is a lot of the bible presbyterian church joined the pca rather than the opc. So in the saint louis area a lot of the pca churches here or some of them at least date back to the first bible presbyterian church founded in the late 1930s that was pastored at one point by francis schaefer.
And of course the bible.
Presbyterian church still exists however. Yes so that that.
Group that uh carl mcintyre. Yes carl mcintyre was very important uh passionate influential but somewhat divisive figure that continued to hold together a segment of the bible presbyterian church that still does exist today.
I think they have about 3 000 members. And um yes that does continue. Well as i said i would love to have you.
Back for part two of this discussion and i'd love every minute of our program today. I want to make sure that our listeners have all of your contact information. Uh let's see here. I thought that we went off the air for a second.
Um first of all uh the website for covenant family church in wintsville missouri is covenantfamilychurch .net covenantfamilychurch .net. And don't forget folks about this 19 part series on american presbyterian history that is available at sermon audio and what would be the best thing to enter into a search.
Engine there to find this to you could search either on sermon audio or apple podcasts american presbyterian history or if you simply go to covenant family church on sermon audio or on our website and go to our sermons and look for the series american presbyterian history.
And also you could go to my blog forchristkingdom .com and some of those lessons have been adapted as blog posts as well pricekingdom .com for christ's kingdom forchristkingdom .com and that's and there's a link to that on the church website as well covenantfamilychurch .net and it's for.
Christ's with an s at the end kingdom correct. And also uh. Sermon audio's website is sermonaudio .com sermonaudio .com. It has been an utter joy having you on the program for the first time and i am hoping it's definitely not the last time.
I would love to have you back as a frequent. You're obviously a brilliant young man and i want to thank everybody who listened today and i want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives jesus christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.