[Editor’s note: you can read a much fuller version of this article here. It includes much more extensive citations and explanations]
When I first discovered Reformed theology, I felt like I had stumbled into treasure. Its systematic grasp of Scripture, its depth of thought, and its seriousness about truth captivated me. Before long, I concluded that fidelity to the Reformed system required making everything revolve around the confession. Not only ministers, but members; not only teaching, but fellowship.
The result was a church life that was confessional in every possible respect. Membership required adherence to Reformed doctrine. Relationships with other churches were kept at a distance unless they, too, were distinctly Reformed. I thought I was being faithful.
But over time, my spirit grew dry. I began to wonder if this narrowness was what Christ truly intended for his church. The turning point came when I discovered the way of the Old School Presbyterians. These were the confessional conservatives of the 19th century who held the line on confessional fidelity and made hard decisions to guard it. They taught me that my instincts about strict orthodoxy were right—but that I was missing something just as important: wide catholicity.
Guarding the Pulpit
The Old School was uncompromising in requiring confessional fidelity from its ministers. They believed the teaching office demanded the highest level of doctrinal integrity. Dabney reminded his students that ministers needed more than a casual acquaintance with doctrine, they were, as Paul said, were “stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful” (1 Cor. 4:1–2).. And as he said to Timothy, The minister must be “a workman approved unto God, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Tim. 2:15, cited in “Broad Churchism,” in Discussions: Evangelical, vol. 2, 449).
Charles Hodge was equally blunt: “We may guard our ministry and admit none to the office of teacher in our churches, who do not hold that system of doctrine which we believe God has revealed, and which cannot be rejected in any of its parts without evil to the souls of men” (Discussions in Church Polity, 224).
For the Old School, then, confessions existed chiefly to protect the flock from unsound teachers. They were not museum pieces or denominational badges. They were guardrails at the pulpit.
The Temptation of Overreach
But the clarity of that standard can tempt us to extend it further than the Bible does. That was my mistake. I required of members what was meant for ministers. I made precision the price of admission to the church, confusing the shepherd’s responsibility to guard doctrine with the sheep’s calling simply to follow Christ.
The Old School Presbyterians knew this temptation too. And they resisted it. They maintained a line between the demands of the pulpit and the welcome of the pews.
The Lesson of Stonewall Jackson
I discovered this through a surprising witness: Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. When Jackson sought to join the Presbyterian church in Lexington, Dabney tells us, “to some things embodied in these standards he strongly objected.” His convictions leaned Arminian, especially concerning God’s sovereignty.
By my standards at the time, Jackson should have been excluded. But the session received him. Why? Because they explained that “the Presbyterian Church expected uniformity of belief on these points, of none but its officers, and only exacted of its private members a profession of those vital doctrines of redemption, in which all Christians agree” (Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, 84).
Dabney summarized the principle with words that shook me: “As to the flock, there is no church under heaven more catholic and liberal than ours, in receiving all, whatever their doctrinal differences from us, provided they truly receive Christ as their Redeemer” (Discussions, 2:450).
That was the light bulb moment. I realized I had been narrowing the door of Christ’s church beyond what Christ himself required.
A Church Wide at the Base
This was not a quirk of one congregation. It was the universal Old School view. Hodge wrote:
Nothing, therefore, can be plainer than that our Church requires nothing more than credible evidence of Christian character as the condition of Christian communion. . . . Any man, therefore, who gives evidence of being a Christian, we are bound by the rules of our Church to admit to our communion (Discussions in Church Polity, 220–221).
The Presbyterian Church was narrow at the helm but broad at the base. Strict orthodoxy was enforced at the level of the ministry, while catholicity was extended at the level of membership.
This principle had real consequences. Baptists, for example, were welcomed as members, even though they could not in good conscience present their children for baptism. The General Assembly stated plainly: “Parents declining to present their children for baptism are not to be refused on account of scruples concerning infant baptism” (John Aspinwall Hodge, What Is Presbyterian Law?, 140). Here again, the Old School showed that the door to Christ’s church must be as wide as his kingdom.
Why They Held This View
The Old School commitment to wide catholicity was not sentimentality. It was grounded in conviction.
First, they distinguished between fundamental and non-fundamental doctrines. Dabney wrote: “Some doctrines of the Christian system are not fundamental to salvation. . . . A soul who embraces the fundamental and necessary points will be saved, notwithstanding his failure… to embrace the former” (Discussions, 2:449). This was based on the groundwork laid by earlier theologians such as Francis Turretin who warned against those who “extend fundamentals more widely than is just, [and] turn almost every error into a heresy” (Institutes, 1:48).
Second, they believed in the communion of saints. The Westminster Confession teaches that “all saints, that are united to Jesus Christ their Head, by his Spirit, and by faith, have fellowship with him… and, being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other’s gifts and graces” (26.1). Thomas Smyth drove the point home: “In spite of ourselves, we are united—united whether we will or not. If we are one in Christ, we must be one—we cannot help it” (The Fundamental Doctrines of Christianity, 27).
These convictions compelled them to receive all whom Christ had received.
Embracing Other Churches
Their catholicity did not end with membership. It extended to their view of other denominations.
The Synod of Virginia declared in 1837: “We recognize the validity of their ministry and sacraments; we commune freely with them not only in our churches, but in theirs, unless excluded by their rules and principles. You know fully our practice of inviting their ministers into our pulpits, and their members to our communion-table.”
Charles Hodge echoed this sentiment: “Presbyterians may recognize Methodist preachers as ministers of the gospel, and welcome them to their pulpits” (Discussions in Church Polity, 99).
Old School Presbyterians did not deny their distinctives. They cherished them. But they refused to pretend that Christ’s church was confined to their walls.
Howard Crosby, a Presbyterian pastor and theologian from New York, described this catholicity in practice: “I am an out-and-out Presbyterian, but I find it a delight to work with my Episcopal friends in their admirable Church Temperance Society; I have worked side by side with Baptists and Methodists in City Mission and in Young Men’s Christian Associations, and it never occurred to any of us to think of denominational differences” (Century Magazine, 1886).
Even John L. Girardeau, a fierce polemicist against Arminianism, testified: “I have sung and prayed and preached with Evangelical Arminians, and have been with them in precious seasons of reviving grace; some of them are among my most cherished friends” (Calvinism and Evangelical Arminianism, 159). The Old School Presbyterians, following Westminster, had a heart for all Christians.
Joel Parker, a 19th-century Presbyterian theologian and revivalist, sought to unite evangelical zeal with confessional orthodoxy, shaping American Presbyterianism through preaching and leadership at Princeton. He admitted this catholic spirit had a cost: “In acknowledging all evangelical denominations as true Christian churches, [we] have cared too little for our own peculiar organization.” Yet he welcomed a correction—“we are fast learning that the broadest Christian charity is perfectly consistent with zeal for our own Church.” And why did this matter? Because, as Parker concluded, Presbyterianism must keep its character “for the very reason that the enlargement of its influence tends to diffuse the same catholic and charitable principles among those denominations which do not profess any such unexclusiveness.”
This was catholicity not as theory but as lived reality, not just of structure but of the heart.
Condemning Sectarianism
Because they valued catholicity, the Old School did not hesitate to condemn its opposite. They were unsparing toward sectarianism.
Thomas Smyth defined bigotry as “an attachment to certain doctrines, forms, or party, for other reasons than their intrinsic excellence; and in other measures than is warranted by their importance.” The result, he said, was “an obstinate and blind attachment to some particular system; unreasonable zeal and warmth and excessive prejudice and illiberality towards those who differ” (Complete Works, 3:136). He went further, calling such bigotry a kind of “religious insanity” that blinds people to everything outside their sectarian tunnel vision.
His rebuke was searing: “To claim to be united to Christ, therefore, as a church or as an individual, and to refuse to hold Christian communion with those whom we are bound to confess Christ has received, is either wickedness, impiety, pharasaic, self-righteous pride, or preposterous folly” (Fundamental Doctrines, 26). And again: “Thrust not yourselves into a corner of the church, and there stand quarreling against the rest; make not sectaries of yourselves by appropriating Christ, and the church, and salvation to your party” (Works, 3:169).
Hodge was equally plain: “It is not the existence of sects, for that perhaps is unavoidable, but it is the refusal to recognize as brethren those who really love and serve Christ, that is to be condemned and deplored” (Discussions in Church Polity, 224).
In short, the Old School knew that narrowness could betray the gospel as surely as error could.
Holding Truth and Love Together
The Old School inheritance, then, cuts both ways. It rebukes those who think doctrine doesn’t matter, and it rebukes those who wield doctrine as a weapon to exclude. It binds strict orthodoxy and wide catholicity together—not as enemies, but as necessary companions.
And it speaks directly to the longing many Christians feel today. We want truth without fracturing fellowship, and fellowship without abandoning truth. We want to embrace one another without falling into indifferentism, and to contend for the faith without falling into bigotry.
The Old School Presbyterians thought through this tension in a deep and sophisticated way. They show us by their practice that this is possible. They stood for confessional fidelity in the pulpit while welcoming all who belong to Christ into the pews. They insisted on doctrinal clarity in their own communion while extending the right hand of fellowship to other churches. They taught us to say both “we must guard the faith” and “we are bound to receive all those whom God has received.”
That is the inheritance we must not shrink. Strict orthodoxy and wide catholicity—together—remain a gift worth reclaiming.
Providentially read the first half of your post just this morning before launching one of two studies I’m leading on the Confession this January-May. Read the second half later and was very much helped overall by your (and the Old School’s) perspective here. Thanks, Wes.
Thanks, Craig! So thankful it was helpful. Keep up the good work!