Two houses (being the reason I wrote the first & second parts)

 As I wrote previously, the OPC's General Assembly, with its delegated representation, has the structural and institutional weaknesses of the United States Senate: this poses a great danger to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Meanwhile, the PCA's General Assembly, which permits (at least nominally) a practically universal membership of all the Church's congregations and teaching elders, has the structural and institutional weaknesses of the United States House of Representatives: this poses a great danger to the Presbyterian Church in America.

Since the United States Congress was deliberately designed so that the weaknesses of each of its two Houses are compensated for by the other House's strengths, and since I have flogged ecumenism whenever and wherever I've been able, one might expect me to facilely suggest the two denominations merge and let their two General Assemblies balance each other out. However, the structure of presbyterian Church government will not allow for this simple solution.

Presbyterian governmental structure, gleaned from Acts 15 and other bits and scraps of relevant Scripture, is rather simple. It calls for a graded, or hierarchical, series of Church courts. A council of ruling and teaching elders governs each level, or manifestation, of the visible Church. (For what I mean by "the visible Church," see Westminster Confession of Faith chapter 25.) In both the OPC and the PCA, a session governs the local congregation, a presbytery governs the several congregations of a designated geographical region (also known as a "Regional Church"), and a general assembly governs the entire denomination. These courts necessarily relate to each other in a hierarchical fashion; to do otherwise would simply not be presbyterian. Therefore, a faithfully presbyterian form of Church government has no room for two Church courts which must cooperate with each other after the manner of the Houses of the United States Congress.

Nonetheless, there's a rather simple way to draw on the institutional strengths of the systems of representation of both the OPC and the PCA. Historically, and in several contemporary cases, presbyterian denominations have had another level of Church court: the synod. The synod is an intermediary court between the presbytery and the general assembly. It functions much as a presbytery does in overseeing the affairs of a designated geographical region within that of the larger denomination. Unlike a presbytery, however, the synod is not a court of original jurisdiction. Local sessions are responsible to oversee (and discipline when necessary) members of the congregation, and presbyteries oversee (and discipline when necessary) ministers of Word and sacrament. (Ministers are members of the regional Church, not the local Church.) Thus, in matters of Church discipline, synods are appellate courts only.

I suggest, then, that both the OPC and the PCA institute synods in their respective communions. These synods could have the universal membership of the PCA's General Assembly: every teaching elder and two (for the sake of argument) ruling elders from every congregation. On the one hand, this would broaden the range of perspectives of those overseeing the work of presbyteries, something the OPC desperately needs. On the other hand, the number of members at any given synod would not be so large as to make genuine debate impossible, which would address the problem of the PCA's General Assembly. 

Under my proposed system, commissioners to the General Assembly would be drawn from presbyteries according to some formula set forth in a Form of Government. This would bypass both the risk of synods bottlenecking representation and the risk of presbyteries favoring only a few particular men as their (virtually) permanent commissioners. This system would allow for easier practical functioning of the General Assembly (due to more manageable numbers) and providing for lighter dockets if more disciplinary cases can be resolved by synodical courts.

Our national government's structure is remarkably robust, designed to restrain untoward ambition and encourage healthy cooperation. Its genius is perhaps best demonstrated by the little-celebrated fact that it has endured despite the often foolish choices of legislator the American people make. While the general structure of presbyterian Church government is dictated by Scripture, presbyterians have a great deal of freedom to order its institutions according to the light of nature and Christian prudence. The institutional designs of the OPC and the PCA emerged at their foundings and were based on assumptions because the founders were focused more on doctrinal problems. Now is an opportune moment to take a deep breath and consider how better to order our two houses.

"two houses" by buckshot.jones is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Diotrephesism

When I took ancient Church history in seminary, I had a hard time keeping all the heresies straight. (Not straightening out my own heresies: that's another story.) In historical theology, heresies are not identified by their doctrinal content, but instead by the names of the persons most identified with them. Therefore, instead of modalism (the belief that the three persons of the Trinity are not distinct, but instead are really just one person appearing in three different modes), we have Sabellianism. When I was asked to identify Nestorianism, Manicheanism, Arianism, Montanism, ad infinitism, I had to remember the historical figure, then remember what he taught, and then explain why it was wrong. While I have no problem explaining what's wrong with modalism, I'm not entirely sure what Sabellianism even is.

Since I've learned I can't fight the historical theologians, I've decided to join them and thereby go to my grave satisfied to have made life more difficult for future seminarians. Centuries from now, the twentieth century will be known for Diotrephesism, in recognition of him who desired preeminence and so would not receive the Apostle John (3 John 9). 

In my opinion, at the root of many of the controversies which consume confessional presbyterianism today is the fact that in the 20th-century struggle with liberalism, presbyterians lost their sense of denominational identity along with a grasp on the historical and Biblical reasons for our distinctives. That absence has led to a sort of faddishness, in imitation of the sin of Diotrephes, which emerges in two different ways.

Certain elders (especially teaching elders) do not see themselves as guardians and teachers of the presbyterian tradition. Because many of them came to a reformed understanding of the Christian faith from other traditions, they see themselves as set apart by virtue of study and continue to seek to set themselves further apart by further study. These tend to maintain traditional worship practices, but the liturgy becomes merely a setting in which they can use the sermon to position themselves as experts on all things "reformed." Wishing to be preeminent in the eyes of their peers, they keep up with the latest theological controversies emerging from the seminaries and set these issues before their congregations as though they were as essential as the doctrines on which our Confessions focus. This obsession with “theology,” when it comes over and against a focus on the simple Gospel of the Cross, stokes up much furor on the interwebs and feeds division in the Church.

Others in leadership, who have never been taught why our traditions are our traditions in the first place, worry that presbyterianism is about to become irrelevant. These keep a watchful eye on the latest developments in evangelicalism and seek to imitate them while keeping the preaching Calvinistic. In these circumstances, members are deprived of the riches of our presbyterian inheritance and the blessings of catechetical instruction. As evangelicals drift ever further into worldliness (in all its forms), this group may drift right along with them.

The discerning reader will observe that this faddishness does not necessarily lead to heresy, but it certainly produces division. Athanasius fought the heretic Arius with Biblical doctrine. In imitation of John, the beloved disciple, we must fight Diotrephesism with Biblical charity.

I believe we should respond by learning our confessional standards along with our government, discipline and worship, and the Biblical warrant for them. I believe we should be extremely careful in preparing men for ordained office and not be too hasty to lay on hands (1 Timothy 5:22). I believe we should strive to present and live out presbyterianism for what it is: the most Biblical form of the Church and the one which should most demonstrate to the world the Church as our Lord formed her to be.

Between the Times

Between the Times: the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Transition, 1945-1990 by D.G. Hart. Willow Grove: The Committee for the Historian of the OPC, 2011, xii + 340 pages, cloth.

D.G. Hart concludes his history of the OPC's middle years (i.e. the time between the operatic intensity of our denomination's founding and the solipsistically fascinating contemporary period) this way:

The history and identity of the OPC are bound up with each other; they cannot be separated. The OPC's history looks different from that of other Presbyterian churches because of its understanding of Reformed Christianity. At the same time, Orthodox Presbyterianism arose from specific struggles and traditions within Presbyterianism in the United States. When the OPC has been most aware of its history she has been most keen to preserve her Reformed heritage, and when she has been most zealous for what Machen called the grandeur of the Reformed faith she has been most attentive to her history. If the OPC is going to maintain her strengths as a Reformed communion, or if her officers and members decide to refashion or modify her identity, they will need first to consider the church's past. Without that history Orthodox Presbyterianism makes no sense.

That's an admirable defense of his book, and the very reason for which I read it. Indeed, as an immigrant into the OPC by virtue of my ordination to the ministry of Word and sacrament, I've long believed that familiarity with our communion's peculiar history is the only thing which might enable one to begin comprehending what matters to us and why.

In practice, that may mean that Between the Times is only for a select audience consisting of OPC historiphiles and anthropologists such as myself. The production of the Trinity Hymnal and Sunday School curricula does not, sadly, make for a riveting read. On the other hand, Hart demonstrates the close connection between home and foreign missions in the OPC's early decades, along with the reality that many pastors were, in practice, as much Church planters as anything else. This helps expand the portrait of parish life which one might otherwise assume to be fairly constricted.

The relationship between the denomination and Westminster Theological Seminary evolved and was strained to the breaking point during this period. I would have preferred an even more in-depth exploration of the Shepherd controversy. About fifteen years ago, its sequel erupted over the doctrine of justification. Sadly (in my opinion), the General Assembly report which was to settle the matter dealt only with doctrinal matters and ignored the history and the personalities involved. The intensity of the debate is explicable only when sociological and historical, over doctrinal, matters are considered. We really need George Marsden to write a history of the entire affair comparable to his "Perspective on the Division of 1937" (found in Pressing Toward the Mark).

Between the Times may not be a popular history, but is indispensable reading for anyone who would serve in ordained office in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, particularly at the presbytery or General Assembly levels.

For the Vos completist

Ordained Servant, an online journal for Church officers produced by the OPC's Committee on Christian Education, has been serializing a new biography of Geerhardus Vos by Danny Olinger. Vos is to date the most prominent, and perhaps the most accomplished, Biblical theologian working within the confessional tradition of Protestant orthodoxy. Olinger's biography helpfully situates Vos' work within the contexts of his life and history. Recommended.

[The latest installment can be found here, along with links to previous issues of Ordained Servant.]

A Canticle for Leibowitz

A Canticle for Leibowitz is Walter Miller's 1960 retelling of Western history through the lens of the monastic movement, but set in the American West after an apocalyptic nuclear war in the late 20th century. I read it after my Hindu neighbor insisted on loaning me his copy after we got into a discussion of comic books and science fiction during a Diwali party his family was hosting; such is ordinary life for a conservative presbyterian pastor these days.

As the Wikipedia notes, Canticle is widely recognized as a literary masterpiece, even being the stuff of dissertations and such. It's categorized as science fiction (since it spans the 27th to the 38th centuries), but as I note above, it's not really science fiction so much as an attempt to dramatize the role of the Church and persons religious in the development of the West during the first two millennia of Christendom. Much of the plot, such as it is, of Canticle's three sections focuses on the preservation of books and, later, development of the learning contained therein. But if that were all Canticle is, it would be little more than a presaging of Thomas Cahill's lamentably oversimplified How the Irish Saved Civilization.

Instead, Miller shows how the Church laid the foundation for Western civilization by insisting on the doctrine of the imago dei, man made in the image of God. In Canticle's first section, "Fiat Homo," the Church insists that those grotesquely mutated by nuclear fallout nonetheless are fully human and must be treated as such. In its second section, "Fiat Lux," an all-too unpleasantly human abbot boldly declares abominable a secular philosopher's suggestion that the men of their day are some kind of lesser, man-created beings precisely because that would make them something other than a reflection of God himself. While the third section, "Fiat Voluntas Lux," builds to another nuclear war, its centerpiece conflict is a debate between an abbot and a government official over euthanasia for the those in horrible suffering. According to Miller, mankind perennially and perversely denies his own humanity by refusing to value actual human beings and their lives; the Church and her members must bear witness against this dehumanization and insist that learning be founded on a Christian humanism.

As Miller tells the tale, it seems the Church is always on the losing side of the argument, but nonetheless her humanistic values work their way into civilization's warp and woof. I think he's right, and it's a fact worth remembering in these dark days for the citizens of the former American Republic. The Great State of Colorado, in which I consider it a privilege to live, just ratified a measure allowing for "assisted suicide" (one of the currently favored euphemisms for "euthanasia"). Our nation's misbegotten electoral college has permitted election to the office of President a man who aggressively dehumanizes all, individually and collectively, with the temerity to displease him. Humanism itself has fallen upon such hard times that the very notion is associated primarily with aggressive secularity, not the imago dei, and Christians shut down at its very mention. From my vantage point, all signs are that we have lost the argument.

In these dark days, A Canticle for Leibowitz helpfully reminds us that the Church's simple duty is to bear witness to the truth of God's Word, which against all common sense teaches us that man is made in the image of God to such an extent that God himself could become a man. Church history teaches us that we will lose many, many arguments, but because of God's grace and Spirit the Church will continue to bear humanity through the ashes of the destruction mankind repetitively and continually wreaks upon himself.

2: Death does not sanctify our works

In the hallway outside my study door hang the original architectural drawings for our Church building, discovered a few years ago by a particularly determined member who decided to go spelunking in a storage closet which turned out to be far larger than anyone currently in our congregation knew. The drawings show a sanctuary with a seating capacity of around 160, in contrast to our actual sanctuary, which can seat maybe half that number. I don't know the reasons behind our smaller building, but I can guess limited finances were the major constraint. Today, our congregation's building and land are owned free and clear, but we have neither the room to grow our membership nor (and largely because of our relatively small membership) the money to expand our building.

In the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, this situation is hardly unusual. In the aftermath of the Great Depresssion and the Second World War, the founding generation of our denomination was rich in spiritual commitment and vigor, but not so much in cash on hand. Heroically, they did the best they could, and their best established an OPC culture of relatively small congregations (on average, under 100 in membership, including children) and buildings. Those who have lived in the OPC for any amount of time know the advantages and blessings of this culture, but we all should recognize that this aspect of our Church culture derives from historical accident, not Biblical principle.

Death does not sanctify our works, nor does it those of our spiritual fathers and mothers in the OPC. If small congregations and buildings hinder the Church's work in our day, we should be prepared to leave them behind.

The root of protestant division

I've been reading Book 4, chapter 7 of The Institutes of the Christian Religion, in which John Calvin offers a brief history of the Roman bishop's claim to sovereignty over the universal Church. Perhaps that has led me to reflect on Church history in general, and the Great Schism in particular.

With many more thoughtful Roman Catholics, I regret that one effect of the Protestant Reformation was a division of the visible Church into various distinct, and often competing, branches. However, I cannot agree with the solution to that division proposed by many of the same Roman Catholics (particularly those with the zeal of recent conversion to the cause): namely, reunification with the Roman Catholic Church. These tend to paint division as a protestant disease, one which can easily be cured by submission to the pontiff in Rome.

This strikes me as a rather convenient failure to remember Church history, and in particular the division between East and West which passed its point of no return in 1054 A.D. This Wikipedia article is a reasonably fair and accurate summary, and helps us see this separation is no more or less substantive than the separations between Protestant traditions: disagreements over worship styles, forms of Church government, and rather technical theological points. The Great Schism is the Church's move away from her original constitution as a visibly universal Church to her modern existence as a fragmented body whose parts are more concerned to preserve their particular attributes and strengths than to submit themselves to the concerns of either the other parts or the whole.

In other words, protestant division is not alien to Roman Catholicism, but intrinsic to the post-1054 character of Rome (and Eastern Orthodoxy, for that matter). Peculiarly, Roman Catholicism continues to recommend as a cure for division precisely that which led to the Great Schism: universal submission to the papacy. For Protestantism, this is anathema, while for Eastern Orthodoxy it is primarily distasteful. Why, then, does Rome continue to insist on it? To this Protestant, it seems Rome would prefer division to surrendering its false claims of supremacy.

Schism is the great sinful legacy of the Protestant Reformation, and I agree with our Roman Catholic critics that Protestantism is unnecessarily divided against itself. But to the extent that is so, we are merely following a tradition inherited from our time sojourning in Rome after 1054. The root of Protestant division is in the Church's Roman Catholic history, and today's Roman bishop would have far more credibility when he makes ecumenical pronouncements if he were actively seeking to root it out.

The Lost History of Global Christianity

This lecture by Philip Jenkins, featured on last week's Beeson Divinity School podcast, does precisely what good history is supposed to do: it offers a radically different way of seeing the world simply by pointing out what has always been on record. He gives a brief summary of the influence of Christian patriarchs in China and the ancient Near East, and points out ways in which Christianity influenced the emergence of both Buddhist and Muslim Scriptures. An eye-opening thirty-seven minutes which offer a number of avenues for further study and reflection.

Christianity & rabbinic Judaism: Twins

On his blog, Peter Leithart summarizes Daniel Boyarin's argument that Christianity and rabbinic (read: modern-day) Judaism are both successors to Temple/Old Testament Judaism, rather than the latter being a kind of parent to the former. It's a historical argument I've often made, one to which Boyarin and Leithart add some interesting theological observations.

God bless Wayne Sparkman

Wayne Sparkman's work as the director of the Presbyterian Church in America's Historical Center doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves, which I can say with some authority because I was, until a few years into my pastoral career, utterly unaware of his work; this despite being a PCA member with a keen interest in Church history and a pastor who just happened to have a PhD in the field. The Historical Center is a treasure trove of data and primary sources on American presbyterianism of both the northern and southern species, and really should be better known to the wider world.

Mr. Sparkman comes up because, in a comment on an earlier post, he posted a link to a bibliography on in thesi deliverances he is presently composing. I recommend it to you, as the excerpts which are already posted provide a thorough introduction to both the question and to its importance for presbyterian doctrine and practice.

Life in the Spirit

The Beeson podcast this week offered up a 1993 lecture by Gordon Fee on the role of the Holy Spirit in Paul's doctrine. Fee has some intriguing observations as to why the Spirit, so integral to everything in the New Testament, has tended to be forgotten in the doctrinal life of the Church. He argues, with some persuasiveness, that the eventual displacement of adult conversion with infant baptism as the predominant means by which members are added to the Church has the inevitable consequence of making a personal experience of a new coming of the Holy Spirit rather rare.

Thankfully, though Fee is an Assembly of God minister and does (wrongly) call for a revival of extraordinary charismata, he argues that the institutional life of the Church is itself a work of the Spirit and also calls attention to the importance of hymnody for personal experience of the Spirit's presence in the life of the Church. All in all, a very helpful contribution for someone (sadly) outside the Presbyterian world.

Too Reformed to be Evangelical, updated

First, I should note these lectures are divided over 2 mp3 files; you can find the second here.

Second, I had a chance to finish listening to the whole session while driving to and from Calhan (east of Colorado Springs) yesterday. Peter Leithart's lecture adds liturgy to the ecclesiastical perspective, and he contributes some interesting comments in the panel discussion. I was especially intrigued by his suggestion that the Church's present-day condition may mirror the historical patterns of the Israel-Judah divide as described in 1-2 Kings. I've tended to look at the Restoration era, as described by Isaiah and Ezra-Nehemiah, but this also strikes me as a fruitful area for reflection.

In said panel discussion, Darryl Hart helpfully reminded us that the Psalms must always be sung with an eschatological orientation. At the same time, Michael Horton unfortunately suggested that some of the Psalms should not be sung by the Church today, betraying a Klinean practical dispensationalism found in too many Westminster California graduates (and now, distressingly, professors).

Too Reformed to be Evangelical

Wordmp3.com is offering, FOR FREE!!!!, a set of three lectures and panel discussion by D.G. Hart, Michael Horton, and Peter Leithart on the uneasy relationship between the Reformed and evangelical traditions, recorded at the 2009 meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. I find them thoughtful, and the focus on ecclesiology provides a helpful introduction to the fundamental divide between American Christianity's emphasis on "what works" and the more historic practice of the Christian faith which centers on the ordinary means of grace.

John Williamson Nevin: High Church Calvinist

The Anxious Bench continues to astonish me not only for its insight into the American religious psyche, but for its well-nigh prophetic foreshadowing of the modern American evangelical movement and what passes for its theology. As I've written earlier, its melancholic tone captures perfectly the unease which any Churchly Presbyterian must experience when attempting to discuss the faith with an evangelical. Accordingly, I've been distressed to hear John Williamson Nevin labeled a heretic by some within the Reformed community. While I am no expert on the Mercersburg Theology, any wholesale dismissal of Nevin and Phillip Schaff's work strikes me as uninformed, to say the least.

D.G. Hart's intellectual biography of Nevin is not the book to make one an expert in the Mercersburg Theology (only actual study will do that), but does, with admirable insight, place Nevin in his historical, theological, and most especially ecclesiastical contexts. Nevin will continue as the patron saint of American Presbyterians whose Churchly orientation leaves them at odds not only with evangelicalism, but with much of what passes for Reformed thinking today.

The central issue [for Nevin], unlike most American Reformed or Presbyterians of his day [or ours, MWK], was not the five points of Calvinism or the imputation of Adam's sin. Instead, it was the church and its ministry. (p. 236)

But if the church is primarily an agency of grace through word and sacrament, then when those means of salvation become marginal, Christianity has entered an era fraught with abiding sigificance. (p. 237)

...Nevin's abiding insight: Christianity's primary influence needs to be evaluated not by the church's ability to influence society, but by its performance of sacred rites and recitation of holy words through which the body of Christ grow.s Nevin's recognition that the church has something to offer that no other institution can is still as pertinient at the beginning of a new millennium as it was in 1843 when he first articulated it. That he saw it so early and so clearly is a reason why Nevin should continue to be read and studied by believers and academics alike. (p. 238)