Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 38:3 (Spring 1976)
Article: To Our Readers
Author: Anonymous

WTJ 38:3 (Spr 76) p. 279

To Our Readers

With this number the Westminster Theological Journal completes its thirty-eighth year of publication. Since its inception, there have been many changes, both in the faculty for which it is edited and in the world to which it speaks. The course set for the Journal by its first editors, Paul Woolley and John Murray, remains unchanged, however. “We stand today,” they wrote, “in the Christian Church as debtors to nineteen centuries of Christian history, thought, and experience. It would not only be futile but wrong to try to dissociate ourselves from the great stream of Christian tradition….But while we cling tenaciously to the heritage that comes to us from the past we must ever remember that it is our responsibility to present the Christian Faith in the context of the present” (Vol. I, p. i).

The then editors further enunciated the Journal’s aims: to maintain the highest standard of scholarship, to publish contributions which will promote the study of theology and the interests of the Reformed Faith, and to publish reviews of current literature of importance to the Christian Church and to theological study (p. ii). In launching their publication, they believed they were filling a great need: the historic Reformed faith was no longer represented in this country by a scholarly journal. It may well be, in part, a consequence of God’s blessing on the labors of the Journal itself and of the institution for whose faculty it is edited that this is no longer the case. Ours is now by no means the only scholarly theological journal in this country upholding the Reformed faith. That raises the question, however, of the need for our publication. Is the original need no longer present?

In our opinion, there will be a place for the Journal as long as it maintains its distinctive position and as long as it seeks to be a superior vehicle for expressing that position. Here again its course has not changed with the times. As its first editors wrote, “The Journal is founded upon the conviction that the Holy Scriptures are the word of God, the only infallible rule of

WTJ 38:3 (Spr 76) p. 280

faith and of practice, and that the system of belief commonly designated the Reformed Faith is the purest and most consistent formulation and expression of the system of truth set forth in the Holy Scriptures” (p. i).

Recently, with a view to expanding this ministry, the Journal began to publish three times a year. In the meanwhile, production costs have continued to rise and the staff has faced increasing demands because of the substantial growth of the Seminary. To save on editorial time and circulation expenses, the decision has been taken to return, without diminishing the number of pa...