Reformed Presbyterian Minutes of Synod 1954

12 MINUTES OF THE SYNOD OF THE
The task assigned to the present Committee is to report to the
Synod of 1954 on what practical steps can be taken toward an
implementation of Section 4 of the Covenant of 1871.
Section 4 of the Covenant of 1871 reads as follows:
"That, believing the Church to be one. and that all the saints
have communion with God and with one another in the same
Covenant; believing, moreover, that schism and sectarianism are
sinful in themselves; and inimical to true religion, and trusting
that divisions shall cease, and the people of God become one
Catholic church over all the earth, we will pray and labor for the
visible oneness of the Church of God in our own land and throughout
the world, on the basis of truth and of Scriptural order. Considering
it a principal duty of our profession to cultivate a holy
brotherhood, we will strive to maintain Christian fellowship with
pious men of every name, and to feel and act as one with all in
every land who pursue this grand end. And, as a means of securing
this great result, we will by dissemination and application of the
principles of truth herein professed, and by cultivating and exercising
Christian charity, labor to remove stumbling-blocks, and to
gather into one the scattered and divided friends of truth and
righteousness."
The Covenant of 1871 commits us as a Church to a practical
implementation of the Scriptural ideal of organic union of the
Christian Church throughout the world on the basis of truth and
of_S^riptural_order. The task of the Committee is to propose practical
steps toward such implementation.
By its stipulation that church union must be on the basis of
truth and of Scriptural order, the Covenant of 1871 rules out as
imrjroper_two_types of effort to attain church union which have
become prominent since that Covenant was adopted. The first of
these types of effort has sought to attain church union on the
basis of a compromise creed, that is, a creed in which each party
to the union sacrifices something which it believes to be divinely
revealed truth. When a denomination has been formed on the basis
of such a compromise creed, its subsequent history is usually one
of doctrinal decline and disintegration. One compromise having
been made, it is easy and natural to make further compromises
as the years pass.
The second type of effort has sought to attain church union
on the basis of a minimal creed. This means a creed so brief and
so vaguely worded that it does not commit the united church to
much of anything. Such minimal creeds are very carefully and
skilfully written so as to evade the issues which might occasion
future controversy or division. In former times everyone recognized
that thj_pjrrpose of a creed was to make the doctrinesJield_by
a_church _clear, and to distinguish them as sharply as possible
from contrary views. But today with the advent of the minimal
creed this is strangely reversed. The purpose of a minimal creed
is not to make doctrines clear, but to leave them in vagueness and