maintain ties to Old School Presbyterianism (nurtured by Princeton Seminary in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) and to British and Continental Reformed
theology, notably, English Puritanism as enshrined in the confessional documents known
as the Westminster standards. These documents comprise the Confession of Faith and the
Larger and Shorter Catechisms, completed in the years 1646 and 1647. The theology of
the Westminster standards is the epitome of Reformed teaching at the close of the
Protestant Reformation era. These confessional writings embody the fullest, most
comprehensive expression of Calvinistic teaching, and they continue to exercise wide
influence among Presbyterian and Reformed bodies the world over. Little of any
significant doctrinal consequence has occurred since the writing of these summaries of
Christian doctrine and life. It is all the more surprising that Westminster Seminary today
is bitterly divided over the basic and pivotal Protestant-Reformed doctrine of justification
by faith alone, the doctrine Martin Luther rightly identified as the standing article of the
Christian church. It is the gospel of sovereign grace that is at stake in the now three-
decade-old controversy.
official ecclesiastical affiliation, has changed dramatically since its founding years when
the school enjoyed the closest of ties to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, formed in
1936. Under the presidency of Edmund P. Clowney, Westminster's first and most
competent president, the school began efforts to reach out to a broader ecclesiastical
constituency. Clowney himself had grown tired of the OPC and labored to merge the