Isolated Echoes.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20632, 5 June 1935, Page 8

Isolated Echoes.

The Angus Case

Controversy A ! most Starts Again. (Special to the ” Star.”) SYDNEY, May 28. the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales met this week, it received the report of the Judicial Commission on the Angus controversy, which recorded its decision last September. When the report was tabled, the Rev J. H McGowan, who has all along led the orthodox as against the modernist sections of the church, pointed out that the report was defective in two particulars: it did not state that seven members of the commission had recorded their dissent against the first clause of the judgment and it did not mention that the appellants, whose action had necessitated the appointment of the commission, protested against the decision and reserved all their civil and ecclesiastical rights to carry their protest further. Any attempt to move on these lines would have kindled the Angus controversy from the ashes once more,, and at the suggestion of the Rev John Edwards, one of Dr Angus’s most loyal supporters, the protest of Mr McGowan and his allies was included in the report, and the threatened debate on the original issue was thus averted. Dr Angus’s Illness. But Mr McGowan made it quite clear that he was making this concession solely because of his personal sympathy for Di Angus, who is still struggling through a long and dangerous illness. On the question of the principles involved in the controversy, his views are unchanged; and therefore when the Theological Committee recommended that the Rev J. Edwards should take the place of Dr Angus till the doctor is able to resume his duties as lecturer at the Theological Hall, Mr McGowan returned to the charge. Speaking to the motion, he insisted that any such appointment should carry with it “the confidence of the people;” he maintained that the views held and taught by Mr Edwards were dangerously radical and revolutionary, and he pointed to the harm, spiritual and material, already done to the church by the dissemination of such doctrines. Another Card to Play. In this way Mr McGowan succeeded in making an effective speech bearing on the original question of the teaching of Dr Angus; it was when the appointment of Mr Edwards as lecturer was ratified by a majority vote that Mr McGowan still had another card to play. He gave notice of motion that lecturers on theological subjects should give an assurance in writing that they believed, and would teach, in accordance with clause two of the Judicial Commission’s finding—which reaffirms that the Presbyterian Church holds the historic Catholic faith of the Christian Trinitarian Church. As neither Professor Angus nor his substitute, Mr Edwards, accepts the doctrine of the Trinity in the orthodox sense, this motion might have had the effect of compelling the Assembly to consider the whole question of Professor Angus and his teachings once more. But, perhaps fortunately, the Moderator ruled that the State Assembly is not competent to reach such a decision; and accordingly the motion was held over; to be submitted to the General Council of the Presbyterian Church of Australia later on.

But the Rev J. H. McGowan has left no doubt about his convictions and intentions in the matter. He stated later in the w'eek that, out of consideration for Dr Angus, who is still prostrated by illness, he had not intended to reopen the controversy—if he had meant to do so " other and quite different steps would have been taken.” But he i$ firmly resolved that no one shall have any excuse for imagining that such doctrines as Dr Angus and Mr Edwards profess “ have won an established place in our church.”