Westminster Conference 2022 Day Two

The one about the two Scotsmen

If you compare two days, inevitably one will be superior to the other and our second day, for various reasons, was not quite up to our first one. We began with Ian Hamilton, now based in Inverness, who spoke on Protestantism and Tradition. This was a useful and helpful paper, though in danger of rambling at times, I felt. (The anti-Baptist barbs were less of a problem.)

He ended with four conclusions

1. We should give serious thought to the way the church has worshipped down the ages

2. We should never unthinkingly receive church tradtions no matter how godly those we receive them from

3. We need to understand what Sola Scriptura means. It is not Scripture without tradition but tradition always in the light of Scripture.

4. We should practice Calvin's maxim about letting love be our guide. (This is from Calvin's Institutes where he encourages a dynamic approach to worship and gives wise advice on how to determine fitting changes. "... because these things are not necessary to salvation, and for the upbuilding of the church ought to be variously accommodated to the customs of each nation and age, it will be fitting ... to change and abrogate traditional practices and to establish new ones. Indeed, I admit that we ought not to charge into innovation rashly, suddenly, for insufficient cause. But love will best judge what may hurt or edify; and if we let love be our guide, all will be safe" (4.10.30).

In the afternoon we had another Scotsman, this time Alistair Wilson from Edinburgh on David Livingstone (1813-1873) who will have been dead 150 years come next May. This was a thoroughly researched and well presented paper using powerpoint that looked at three questions about Livingstone

• Was he really a ‘missionary’?
• Did he support and enable imperialism?
• Did he act inappropriately towards his wife and family, towards his colleagues, and towards the people of Africa?

Dr Wilson's were nuanced but sympathetic to Livingstone without hagiography. He certainly began as a missionary and even his years as an explorer were with future missionary work in mind. This paper will be well worth reading when it is published. It seemed to me that Livingstone was a typical pioneer with all his good and bad points.

We had decent discussions following both papers. The final paper is not discussed. This time round it was on Guillaume Farel and should have been given by Stephane Simonnin but he had covid and so Jeremy Walker read his paper. Farel is a lesser known Reformer and it was good to hear his story.

So pretty good stuff all round. Numbers were slightly down but not by much. We are a little on the old side but we are trying to address that. Next year, it was announced, the papers will be on Matthew Poole, Eric Liddell, Theodore Beza, Thomas Aquinas and the Puritans on original sin and Edwards on the History of Redemption.