In many contexts, “system subscription” has functioned as a kind of theological minimalism. It has been an appeal to broad doctrinal agreement while allowing quiet divergence on particulars. It can, at times, shift the point of authority from the church to the individual. But the PCA’s approach resists that move. The “system” is not self-defined or privately interpreted. It is confessed corporately, in the concrete form of the Westminster Standards, and guarded through the courts of the church.

In recent days, I have seen renewed discussion about how the Presbyterian Church in America understands confessional subscription. Many have described the PCA as a “system subscription” denomination. That language is absolutely insufficient and misleading for how the PCA views subscription to the Westminster Standards.

The PCA does not begin with a vague appeal to a “system of doctrine.” It actually begins with full subscription, which is far more concrete and demanding than some would like to admit.

The Baseline: A Church Without Stated Differences

The PCA, as a denomination, has adopted the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms as its doctrinal standards. Importantly, it has done so without stating any differences from them. The church does not confess a generalized “Westminsterian system” in the abstract. It confesses these Standards, in their entirety, as containing the system of doctrine taught in Holy Scripture. 1

That matters.

It means that, at the level of the church’s confession, there is no built-in elasticity, denominational footnotes, or formal exceptions. The Standards are received in the whole, not selectively or representatively.

Good Faith Subscription: Not a Loosening, but a Guardrail

This is where the PCA’s doctrine of “good faith subscription” must be rightly understood. When constituionalized in the early 2000’s, almost immediately and now too often, it is assumed that good faith subscription introduced flexibility into a “system of doctrine” that it allows officers to subscribe to the “system” while quietly diverging at particular points. But that is precisely what good faith subscription was designed to prevent.

Good faith subscription does not lower the bar of confessional subscription. The PCA’s constitutional standards require that any candidate for office must declare any differences with the Westminster Standards. 2

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