On the Friday-Saturday just preceding the PCA General Assembly (June 3-4) the Pacific Northwest Presbytery of the PCA, which covers Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, will proceed with a trial of charges against Teaching Elder Peter Leithart concerning his views of what is commonly known as Federal Vision theology.

Leithart lives in Moscow, Idaho and has been teaching at the New Saint Andrews College, a ministry begun by Doug Wilson, since 1999.

Wilson has been a well-known and highly controversial name in Reformed circles for over 30 years. He is the pastor of Christ Church, Moscow; a founding board member of Logos School, a senior fellow of theology at New St. Andrews College, and he serves as an instructor at Grayfriars Hall, a ministerial training program at Christ Church. He helped to establish the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), is the editor of Credenda Agenda which has been published regularly since 1988, and the author of numerous books on classical Christian education and the family.

Liethart also serves out of bounds of his Presbytery (which means the church is not in the PCA) as pastor of the Trinity Reformed Church, a congregation of the CREC, which meets in a motel in Moscow. He was trained for the ministry at Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia and received a PhD at Cambridge University in the U.K.

Issues concerning Liethart’s teaching first reached the level of public concern in 2005 when his Presbytery received a study report about his views on Federal Vision. The report determined that “on the whole, affirms the teaching of the Confession and Catechisms where there is a direct correspondence of issues between his thinking and topics covered in our Standards” (Download full report here).

On June 13, 2007, the 35th General Assembly of the PCA hard a lengthy study report on the topic and overwhelmingly passed it (which in the PCA means ‘Received for Information’ only. The very next day, Dr. Leithart wrote to the Stated Clerk of his Presbytery to set forth his views on the issues raised in the General Assembly’s Federal Vision Report.

Later that year, after several members of the Presbytery raised issues about whether or not Dr. Leithart’s views were in conformity with the Confession of Faith, the Presbytery in October erected a committee to investigate TE Leithart’s fitness to continue as a PCA minister. A full year later, the Presbytery adopted the committee’s recommendation to find TE Leithart in accord with the Westminster Standards and rejected a minority report asserting the opposite.

Shortly afterwards several members of the Presbytery made a formal complaint against the Presbytery’s exoneration of TE Leithart. The next month the Presbytery’s Judicial Commission recommended that this complaint be denied, and the Presbytery affirmed that recommendation.

The Presbytery complainants then carried their complaint forward to the General Assembly’s Standing Judicial Commission. In November, 2009 a 5 man panel (normally panels are only 3, but the importance of this case resulted in 5) of the SJC was assigned to conduct a hearing on the case. In December the Panel’s report was published. The next January a supporter of Leithart’s (Jeff Meyers of St. Louis) posted on his blog a supplemental brief from the Presbytery’s official respondent (defendant) before the panel.

Finally, in March, 2010 the full SJC adopted the panel decision and sustained the complaint against the Presbytery’s exoneration of TE Leithart. At the Presbytery’s next meeting, in April, they initially sought to counsel TE Leithart about his views as allowed for under the rules of the Book of Church Order.

However, when the Presbytery met that next October they voted to proceed to trial. That trial is scheduled to begin on June 3rd.

The Aquila Report hopes to have first-hand coverage of the event and will publish the decision as soon as possible after the case is finalized.

Don K. Clements is a Teaching Elder in the PCA, is an evangelist with Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship and is the Publisher of The Aquila Report. TE Wes White contributed to this report.

[Editor’s note: One or more original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid; those links have been removed.]