This August 17, Presbyterians around the world will be celebrating the 450th anniversary of the Scottish Reformation. That was the day in 1560 that the Scottish Parliament adopted the Scots Confession as its country’s official statement of the Christian faith. A week later, by legislative decrees, the Reformed faith received national endorsement. One act repealed all legislation “contrary to the word of God” and the new Confession, a second terminated the jurisdiction of the pope in Scotland, and a third banned the Roman Catholic mass.
It was a remarkable achievement for a man who had only returned to his native country the year before. John Knox, with five colleagues — all of whom shared his first name — drafted the Scots Confession in a feverish five days prior to its adoption by the Scottish Parliament. The statement, which McGill Prof. Stanford Reid characterized as “Knoxian,” reflected Knox’s years in “the most perfect schole of Christ” as he described Geneva. While exiled there, Knox had deeply imbibed the theology of John Calvin. But the Scots Confession was more than merely a repetition of previous confessions, nor would it duplicate later professions.
What will be celebrated this August in churches from Seoul to Sydney, from Philadelphia to Belfast, is the first adoption by a single country of a specifically Reformed declaration of faith. The drafters, a pastoral commitment of six preachers of the word, never lost sight of the parish or the pew in the frantic composing. It was written, as Edward Irving said, “as if it came fresh from the heart of labourious workmen, all the day long busy with the preaching of the truth, and sitting down at night to embody the heads of what they continually taught.”
Every 50 years Presbyterian churches have celebrated their achievement, each commemoration saying something about the state of the church at the time. In 1860 there was a Protestant aura to the anniversary. A half century later the emphasis was on ecumenism and a blurring of the Reformed distinctives. In 1960 the Presbyterian Church in Canada, under the leadership of Allan Farris and John Johnston and in the heyday of denominational triumphalism, devoted the entire year to marking the event with rallies, seminars, articles, and papers, one of which — Stanford Reid’s addresses to the Maritime and Toronto and Kingston synods — has been reprinted and is available as a resource from the committee on history.
This year the celebration is particularly timely. The Reformation in Scotland was a renewal movement, a demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit. It marked a return to the simplicity of the gospel. As the introduction to the Scots Confession states: “If any will note in this Confession one article or sentence repugnant to God’s holy word … admonish us of the same in writing; and we upon our honour and fidelity by God’s grace do promise unto him satisfaction from the mouth of God, that is, from his holy scriptures.”
The challenge remains unanswered. Four-hundred and fifty years later we celebrate their courage, their consistency, and their commitment. What they stood for we acknowledge and commemorate with thanks to their God and ours.
