There are indeed many reasons to continue to be hopeful, optimistic, and engaged in the work of the PCA courts. The PCA continues to move slowly but steadily in a direction that reflects greater faithfulness and integrity regarding our confessional commitments and Reformed distinctives. 

The PCA turns a half century this year, and the 50th General Assembly meets in Memphis, Tenn. June 12-16. Numerous elders (e.g. TEs Jon Payne and the late Harry Reeder) have noted the fifty-year mark is a crucial milestone for faithfulness as a Church. Fittingly, the PCA has been engaged in a lengthy family discussion over the last few years over what sort of communion we will be.

Will the PCA be a “big tent” with wide latitude regarding what it means to be “Reformed” and “Presbyterian” (as in David Cassidy’s blog here) or will she be a house, with well-defined, clearly demarcated boundaries of what is in and out, as RE Brad Isbell articulates in his helpful overview?

The Scripture uses both analogies to describe the Church:

Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities.
(Isaiah 54:2–3)

That sounds like the design of the Church is to be a “big tent,” although perhaps without the clowns who normally populate such. But then again, in the New Covenant, we are exhorted not to long for a big tent:

We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat.
(Hebrews 13:10)

and

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
(1 Peter 2:4–5)

The PCA is nonetheless trending in the direction not of a “big tent,” but of a distinctively Reformed communion committed to the historic expression of Presbyterianism articulated in the Westminster Standards. In an interview with TE George Sayour, the legendary churchman TE O. Palmer Robertson reflected on this trajectory during his time in the PCA since 1973 and how the PCA has steadily moved in a more solidly Reformed direction.

1. The State of the PCA

The founding generation of the PCA envisioned her being a confessionally Reformed and Presbyterian faith communion:

…committed without reservation to the Reformed Faith as set forth in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. It is our conviction that the Reformed faith is not sectarian, but an authentic and valid expression of Biblical Christianity…We particularly wish to labor with other Christians committed to this theology.¹

Over the last half-century, the PCA has indeed moved decidedly in that direction in terms of worship, polity, and piety. The founding generation of the PCA, largely educated in the institutions of the old PCUS, may not have had a rich theologically Reformed foundation, but it is clear they desired the new denomination to develop in that area and to raise up ministers who had such a foundation and could impart such commitments in the new denomination. Institutions such as Reformed Theological Seminary and fathers such as TE Morton Smith would instill in the first generation of men ordained in the PCA a love for the Reformed Faith and a desire for the nations to come to Christ to worship Him in Spirit and Truth.

This progress has been slow and not without regression or exception. But the PCA is becoming more distinctively Reformed with each passing decade.

A. Review of 2022 Overtures

TE Scott Edburg along with RE Joshua Torrey have maintained a helpful spreadsheet tracking each of the 49th General Assembly’s overtures. What follows is a brief overview of some of the most significant results of the last year.

The Character Overtures (Overtures 15, 29 & 31)

To the 50th General Assembly will come a number of overtures approved by the presbyteries for final ratification. While the presbyteries approved Overtures 29 and 31, which both serve to strengthen character requirements for ordination, the presbyteries failed to approve Overture 15, which would have added this clear and concise statement to the Book of Church Order:

Men who describe themselves as homosexual, even those who describe themselves as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy by refraining from homosexual conduct, are disqualified from holding office in the Presbyterian Church in America.

While this amendment passed nearly 60% of PCA presbyteries, it failed to reach the necessary 2/3 majority to enable final ratification by the 50th Assembly. Even if Overtures 29 and 31 are ratified by this Assembly, there will still be no clear standard barring men dominated by unnatural lusts from ordination. A few “do-overtures” will be considered by the 2023 General Assembly in an attempt to spare the PCA further discord resulting from the new ideas brought in by some in Saint Louis and elsewhere who dwell in the bulwarks of nuance and ambiguity.

The Jurisdiction Overture (Overture 8)

A valiant effort was made last year by Houston Metro Presbytery to codify how scandal in one presbytery or congregation may be addressed by the wider Church. Currently the language of the constitution is vague regarding how a higher court may intervene in a scandal within a lower court, which has allowed a number of men to avoid judicial scrutiny of views and practices that are clearly deviant.

Critics of the overture at last year’s Assembly expressed concern that such a change to clarify the PCA Constitution would enable “witch hunts.”

Except for Overtures 8 and 15, all others sent to the presbyteries for approval received overwhelming support and will likely be ratified by the Assembly in Memphis.

B. Signs of and Challenges to Confessional Health in the PCA

There are numerous reasons to be optimistic regarding the trajectory and continued fidelity of the PCA. Since 2019, the Assembly’s acts and deliverances have generally tended to strengthen our commitment to historic Christianity and distinctively Reformed Presbyterianism. But congregations must continue to send their full complements to General Assembly in order to participate in the work of the Church and contend for the faith against those who would broaden or weaken our constitutional commitments.

Good Faith or System Subscription?

Long ago, the PCA wisely determined she would not require full subscription to every proposition of the Westminster Standards by her officers. Instead the PCA enshrined in her constitution what has come to be called “Good Faith Subscription” (GFS). In GFS, all a candidate’s differences must be submitted to the Church court for assessment and it is expected – in good faith – that the man has no other differences with the system of doctrine other than those few that he has articulated. The Presbytery then must determine whether those differences are acceptable and whether/how they impact the rest of the system.

GFS is not loose subscription or “System Subscription” in which a wide variety of differences may be held, practiced, and taught. In GFS, a man’s stated differences are presumed not to impact the rest of the system and that he is in agreement with everything else within the Standards except where has he has narrowly stated a difference. GFS is one of the more strict forms of confessional subscription.

In “System Subscription,” a man simply states his agreement with the system, but in there is no necessary check or examination to ensure the system the man claims to hold actually conforms to the system of doctrine contained in the Westminster Standards. It is important to remember, the Westminster Standards are themselves a system and to disagree with or reject one portion often results in a series of other disagreements, since much of the Westminster Standards are interdependent.²

Recently there seems to be a blurring of the distinctions between GFS and System Subscription by some within the PCA, but the two are not the same. In his farewell / sabbatical blog, SemperRef editor TE Travis Scott inaccurately equated System Subscription with the Good Faith Subscription required by the PCA’s constitution:

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