Does the Book Allow It?

In recent discussions the two questions in the subtitle have, unfortunately, often been conflated. Although some argue that the “language of ‘session against another session’ in BD 9.1 is open to two incompatible interpretations” (Report of the Committee on Appeals and Complaints to the Eighty-Ninth General Assembly, Minutes, 288), two general assemblies have answered that question. Both affirmed that the book allows a session to bring a complaint against a session in another presbytery.

A committee reporting to the Seventeenth (1950) General Assembly observed:

Particularly worthy of note is the provision of our Book of Discipline as to who may make a complaint and against whom a complaint may be made. Very few churches have a provision that even approaches this one in point of broadness. . . . [T]he provision of The Orthodox Presbyterian Church for complaints is broad indeed. Not only may complaints concern either administrative or judicial matters, but—what is extremely significant—complaints may in certain instances be made against judicatories to which the complainant is not subject. For example, one session may complain against another session and one presbytery against another presbytery. . . . Our Book of Discipline does not even restrict this right to sessions within the same presbytery. It simply says that a complaint may be brought “by one session against another session.”[2]

Note that membership of that committee included a member (R. B. Kuiper) of the committee that had earlier prepared the first Book of Discipline of the OPC—it understood the original intent of the document. Furthermore, the Seventeenth General Assembly urged the sessions and presbyteries “to apply in their instruction and discipline the approach recommended in the report submitted to the Seventeenth General Assembly,”[3] thus underlining the Assembly’s agreement with the committee.

More recently the Eighty-Seventh (2021) General Assembly sustained a complaint on appeal which argued that the Presbytery of the Northwest erred when it refused to allow a session from another presbytery to lodge a complaint against a session in that presbytery, requiring the presbytery to apologize to the session whose complaints it found out of order.[4] Edited versions of arguments on both sides of the question, as they had been presented in the presbytery involved, can be found as part of Overture 3 to the Eighty-Eighth (2022) General Assembly.[5]

The question, does the book allow cross-presbytery sessional complaints, has been asked and answered in the affirmative by two separate General Assemblies of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. To limit the ability of one session to complain only against sessions within their own presbytery, therefore, would amount to a change of polity, not a clarification.

Should the Book Allow It?

The issue before the Eighty-Ninth General Assembly was whether the Book of Discipline 9.1 should be amended. We focus briefly on several important points.

The Grounds provided by the Committee on Appeals and Complaints made an argument from silence, suggesting that the explicit language of the BD 9.1, that a complaint can be brought “by one session against another session,” should be understood as being overridden by an implied, unstated principle of jurisdiction, prohibiting cross-presbytery complaints by sessions. The argument from jurisdiction seems not to have persuaded Advisory Committee 10 in 2021, which stated that “[e]very session in the OPC is subject to the jurisdiction of the General Assembly.”[6]

Original jurisdiction is important, but it does not create the water-tight compartments suggested in the Grounds for the proposed amendment. A member of the OPC has standing to bring judicial charges against someone subject to a different judicatory. When he does so, he is warned by the latter’s judicatory that he may be censured by it if charges may not be instituted (BD 3.6). In bringing charges against someone in a different judicatory, the one presenting charges subjects himself to that judicatory for that limited purpose. Similarly, if a session appeals a complaint brought against a session in another presbytery, it brings the appeal to the presbytery of the complained against session. That is the point of “the presbytery which has jurisdiction over it” in BD 9.5. If the book did not allow for cross-presbytery complaints, there could be only one presbytery involved and the phrase would be superfluous.

Cross-presbytery complaints appear to be rare in the OPC. We question whether the issue requires an amendment to the constitution of the church. The proposal seems to be a solution in search of a problem.

More to the point is to ask whether the current wording was intentional or just an inadvertent slip which ignored a basic Presbyterian principle, that of jurisdiction. When the Seventeenth General Assembly made its decisions on this matter, it was not acting in ignorance of the principle of jurisdiction. Its committee, which included a member who had been part of developing the first Book of Discipline of the OPC, reported to it:

It is clear that in both the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and the Reformed Church in America one may complain only against the judicatory to which one is subject, and in the former a Complaint may be made only in a matter of administrative discipline, while in the latter it may be made also in a matter of judicial discipline. In comparison with these provisions, the provision of The Orthodox Presbyterian Church for complaints is broad indeed. Not only may complaints concern either administrative or judicial matters, but—what is extremely significant—complaints may in certain instances be made against judicatories to which the complainant is not subject. (emphasis added)[7]

When the OPC adopted its own tertiary standards, while remaining thoroughly Presbyterian, it self-consciously modified certain things because of events that contributed to its founding. It explicitly prohibited a judicatory from depriving a defendant of the right to set forth arguments from Scripture. It stated that ownership of the property of a congregation lay with the local church. Similarly, as indicated in the quotation above, it broadened the standing of sessions to bring complaints against other sessions, self-consciously differing from the Presbyterian Church USA on this issue.

Why this broadening? Although Masonic membership may have been an issue at the Seventeenth General Assembly, that was not on the mind of our fathers in 1936. The burning issue, rather, was that of accountability in the church, seen in departures from Scripture and principles of Presbyterianism, including, perhaps, the well-known sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” by Harry Emerson Fosdick on May 21, 1922. Fosdick was a Baptist, not subject to Presbyterian judicatories, and holding accountable the session that hosted the message was difficult. We would suggest that those who formed the OPC had seen their church drift away from Scripture, and they sought, where possible, to include ways of holding one another accountable. The PCUSA of 1936 was no longer the church of Charles Hodge, and the founders of the OPC were willing to modify The Form of Government, the Discipline, and the Directory for Worship used by Hodge in 1870.

Furthermore, it is helpful to keep in mind that jurisdiction and standing, while related, are different concepts. First, that is evident in judicial process—a member of the church does not have to be immediately subject to the jurisdiction of the body with which he has standing to file charges. Second, a session in one presbytery can be harmed by an administrative decision of a session in another presbytery and ought to be able to resolve the issue in the most direct way possible. Third, as the minutes quoted above indicate, the Seventeenth General Assembly explicitly recognized the standing of sessions to bring complaints even against judicatories to whose jurisdiction they were not subject, one session against another session, even if not in the same presbytery.

Conclusion

The question before this Assembly was whether, on the basis of an implied principle of jurisdiction, to amend BD 9.1 in a direction that makes mutual accountability on the part of sessions more difficult. In 2023 we are more distant in time from the founding of the OPC than our fathers in 1936 were from the book used by Hodge in 1870. The authors of this paper are deeply thankful that the Lord has preserved the OPC as a faithful church. Yet the danger of ecclesiastical drifting has not receded to the point of requiring less mutual accountability than our fathers built into the Book of Discipline. We are grateful that the Eighty-Ninth General Assembly decided not to propose an amendment to BD 9.1.

Endnotes

[1] This is a slightly edited form of a paper given to Advisory Committee 10 of the Eighty-Ninth (2023) General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and, with permission of that committee, distributed to the Assembly. The Assembly declined to adopt the proposed amendment to the Book of Discipline 9.1.

[2] Excerpted from the Minutes of the Seventeenth General Assembly, 27–31 (https://opcgaminutes.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/1950-GA-17.pdf).

[3] Minutes of the Seventeenth General Assembly, p. 31.

[4] Minutes of the Eighty-Seventh General Assembly, §111, §112, 29 (https://opcgaminutes.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/GA-Minutes-2021-without-CFM-Report-or-Ministers-List-10.30.21.pdf)

[5] Pages 57–66 (https://opcgaminutes.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/GA-Minutes-Yearbook-2022-Digital-Edition-No-CFM-Report-or-Ministers.pdf)

[6] Minutes of the Eighty-Seventh General Assembly, §101, 28.

[7] Minutes of the Seventeenth General Assembly, 28.

David G. Graves serves as the pastor of Covenant Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Brett A. McNeill serves as the pastor of Reformation Presbyterian Church in Olympia, Washington. John W. Mahaffy serves as the pastor of Trinity Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Newberg, Oregon. Ordained Servant Online, October, 2023.