Recent developments on the doctrine of Antichrist

Maybe it's just me, but I never expected that the person making the biggest waves with his idiosyncratic views on the identity of the antichrist would be a homosexual tech billionaire married to another man. Nevertheless, Peter Thiel. I won't try to explain his views: use the interwebs search engine of your choice and you'll know as much as I do. I can't make heads or tails of said doctrine of the antichrist, so I fall back on what is in the original version of Westminster Confession of Faith 25.6.

In these United States, that paragraph was amended by deletion in 1789. Still, I can't help but agree with the deleted phrase, which reads,

[the pope of Rome] is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God.

Sadly, many Christians read that statement through the lens of wild speculation fueled by dispensationalist (and tech billionaire) hermeneutics which raged through evangelicalism during the 20th and 21st centuries. Those of us who have heard one too many wild-eyed sermons filled with references to the Middle East are tempted to dismiss the original WCF 25.6 as more of the same, but I think that a grave mistake. Properly understood, it is a claim that the Roman Catholic papacy is a manifestation of the spirit of antichrist, which strikes me as objectively true. At least, it's objectively true if one accepts its doctrine of antichrist, which assumes that the antichrist is to be identified with the man of sin.

In his letters, the Apostle John tells us to beware of antichrists, which denies that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2:18-22; 4:3; 2 John 7). One wonders how a person who denies Jesus is the Christ could possibly ever be accepted into any Christian Church of any denomination, as they all require assent to the Apostles' Creed ("And I believe in Jesus Christ..."). However, that mystery is cleared up if the antichrist is identified with "the man of sin" in 2 Thessalonians: "the man of lawlessness..., the son of destruction, who ... takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4). In other words, as the Westminster Divines seem to have understood it, the spirit of antichrist is to claim for oneself the place in the Church which only Jesus Christ can occupy. The Roman Catholic pope claims to be the head of the Church, taking the place of Christ as his "vicar" (assuming Jesus is not actively ruling his Church, leaving his office empty and needing to be vicariously filled). 

You don't have to agree with the exegesis of the relevant texts, but the original version of WCF 25.6 is clearly not crazy. Its doctrine is simple: to be antichrist is to take the place of Christ by proclaiming oneself the head of the Church. But on that definition, the pope of Rome is fairly obviously only one antichrist of many. 

The spirit of antichrist is in the world whenever a human being is declared or treated as though he were head of the Church.

While no congregation would formally declare that Jesus is not the Christ, more than a few act as though their pastor is the head of their local Church. Many of us have heard (or been told), "If you can't agree with the pastor, you don't belong in this congregation" (or words to that effect). In other words, this congregation belongs to the pastor: he is its head. These organizations may not be as large as the church of Rome, but surely these are also manifestations of the spirit of antichrist.

I suspect the widespread belief that the doctrine of "The Antichrist" is a subset of eschatology proper (that is, the literal last days) has led us to ignore John's warning: "as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come" (1 John 2:18). Many antichrists are abroad in our day, just as they were in John's. I think it entirely appropriate to label the pope of Rome as antichrist, and equally appropriate to label at least a few pastors of confessionally presbyterian congregations as antichrist as well.

In other words, let's use Bible words to describe what's going on in our congregations. Having done that, let us respond to what is going on in our congregations as the words of the Bible instruct us.

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.

Two houses (being the second part)

 The United Stated Congress is made up of two houses: the Senate and the House of Representatives. The number of Senators is set by the United States Constitution: at two per state, there are 100. The number of Representatives was set by statute in the early 20th century, when it was realized things were getting out of hand and was accordingly capped far too late at an entirely unwieldy 435 (441 if you include non-voting delegates). 

This vast numerical disparity has led to very different styles of operation. The Senate, due to its relatively small size, gives each member opportunities to speak, debate and serve on important committees even while new to the institution. (In theory, this also allows senators to pursue regional agendas as avidly as ideological ones, but this feature has been waning as the type of candidate elected has tended to be increasingly partisan over the last couple decades.) In the House, seniority is everything and parties strive to maintain strict control over their members. There are just too many Congresspersons running around to let everyone have an equal voice in the chamber's operations.

Each house and its manner of doing business has its own strengths and weaknesses, most of which are dictated by necessity. The particular genius of the bicameral legislature is to ensure that those weaknesses never prove fatal because both houses must agree in order for legislation to pass. This system therefore allows us to benefit from each house's strengths without (necessarily) falling victim to its weaknesses.

This is all fairly elementary stuff that should have been covered in your high school civics class, if American high schools still taught civics. I bring it up not because I think you ignorant (after all, you're a reader of this blog, demonstrating thereby rare taste, refinement, education and, almost certainly, above-average height and physical attractiveness) but because it offers insight into the general assemblies of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in America.

The OPC's General Assembly is strictly capped at 155: its debate (supposedly) mirrors that of the U.S. Senate with lengthy speeches and much freedom for individual commissioners to pursue idiosyncratic agendas. Not so the PCA's General Assembly, which may include all teaching elders and two ruling elders from each congregation. (The "may" is emphasized because each commissioner must pay his own way and so it's never been the case that everyone who is eligible to serve at the PCA GA has actually registered to do so.) Given this rule, along with the fact that the PCA is over twelve times the size of the OPC, the PCA's GA is much larger than the OPC's and so tends to mirror many of the operational tendencies of the U.S. House of Representatives: commissioners voting according to group affiliation (however defined), less allowance given to debate, low tolerance for idiosyncratic agendas.

As with the two Houses of the United States Congress, each assembly's approach to its membership, and the concomitant operational style of each, has its own strengths and weaknesses. However, while we hope (often against hope, bitter experience and reason itself) that the weaknesses of each House of Congress will be negated by the strengths of the other, no such hope exists for the two General Assemblies. Because each is the highest court of its respective denomination, the rulings of the one cannot impact the other, and so each General Assembly, and the denomination it serves, may eventually fall victim to its own weaknesses. 

I offer this analysis for two reasons: first, I've not seen anyone else draw this comparison; and second, I have thoughts, to be offered at another time.

The danger facing the OPC today

 Because teaching the humanities at a juvenile detention facility is not nearly as lucrative as one might hope, I continue to look for other employment, particularly as a presbyterian pastor. Search committees frequently ask some version of "What are the greatest theological dangers facing the (insert name of confessional presbyterian denomination here)?" This is one of my responses.

I believe the greatest theological problem facing the Orthodox Presbyterian Church today is the failure on the part of too many Church officers, especially ministers of Word and sacrament, to fully inhabit the Westminster Standards as their personal confession of faith, the main instrument by which to organize instruction of Church members, and the form by which unity within the OPC and with brethren in Churches of like faith and practice may be maintained. Several inextricably linked problems emerge from this failure.

Absent a confessional mooring, pastors seek out tools and frameworks with which to organize their preaching and teaching. This can exacerbate the temptation to follow one’s most charismatic seminary professor or the current fashions of the blogosphere, whether or not these conform closely to presbyterian doctrine and tradition. In fact, the man who looks to these as his guides may well fall into the hole of online controversy and mistake a momentary fashion for a question critical to the Church’s very existence.

A teaching and preaching ministry preoccupied with transient controversy will have little time to dedicate to the fundamental doctrines of the faith, summarized in the Westminster Standards. Consequently, Church members may become more acquainted with recent trends in seminaries than with the Catechisms.

Perhaps worst of all, neglect of historic presbyterian doctrine almost necessarily leads to indifference toward presbyterian polity and discipline. Over the years, I have become ever more dismayed by how many Church officers seem entirely unaware of the presbyterian doctrine of Church power (ex.
OPC Form of Government III). Such Church officers tend to think their prerogatives are vast and they do not need to make sure they never infringe on members’ liberty of conscience (Westminster Confession of Faith chapter 20). Church power is abused, which is to say members are spiritually abused. (In the Church, spiritual abuse always precedes any other kind of abuse or misuse of power by Church officers.) As confessional presbyterians, our theology is sound. Many of the dangers we face come from the failure of many Church officers to humbly submit to this truth.

Attack on American Christendom

 The more you agree with someone, the more interesting your disagreements with that person become. Your disagreements are no longer so broad and sweeping that they barely scratch the surface; instead, they are about the innermost nuts and bolts which make the whole thing work.

As a rule, I tend to agree on most things with David French, the lawyer/journalist who writes and podcasts for The Dispatch. His take on constitutional law is close enough to my own Nat Hentoff-inspired strict constructionism that most of the time I can't tell the difference, and I certainly appreciate his membership in the Presbyterian Church in America. But while I'm sure he's a faithful Church member, I suspect (unlike me) he is more evangelical than presbyterian in his sensibilities. This came out in his most recent Sunday edition of The French Press.

Consider his use of Kierkegaard's Attack on Christendom, from which this newsletter's title ("How American Christendom Weakens American Christianity") is drawn. French summarizes Kierkegaard's

categories this way:

Think of the distinctions roughly like this—Christianity is the faith, Christians are believers in the faith, and Christendom is the collective culture and institutions (universities, ministries) of the faith.

Did you notice the missing institution? 

French then quotes Matt McManus's summary of Kierkegaard's argument: "In many ways, it was far better to see Christendom shrunk down to a few genuine believers than to see it ballooned and enforced into a parody of itself." 

Like David French, I haven't read much Kierkegaard since college, and I do not want to treat the entirety of his philosophy dismissively. Nonetheless, ever since college I've found this aspect of Kierkegaard's thought rather adolescent. It seems to assume Christianity can exist outside of an institutional structure. This is both naïve and impossible.

To put the matter simply: how will Christians learn the faith? How will persons learn about the faith in order to become Christians in the first place? The obvious answer is through teachers, evangelists and preachers. But these do not arise of themselves, unbidden. Common sense and bitter experience have taught all of us not to rely on anyone who credentials himself: authority to teach and preach must be legitimized by others. As soon as we bring in legitimation, authority and credentialing, we must have an institution.

To put the matter still more simply: you can't have the faith without an institution to inculcate and propagate it.

French begins with Kierkegaard in order to develop his thesis that the institutions of evangelical Christendom are at odds with Christianity. This is a profoundly true insight; as he writes, "the institutions of Christendom should model the way of the cross if they’re going to preach the way of the cross." Instead, they focus on their own survival even if that survival means crushing reeds and smoldering wicks; the institutions continue even though they can no longer sincerely fulfill the ministry they allegedly exist to carry out.

(French points to Ravi Zacharias Ministries and Camp Kanakuk, but I can't help but think of the Boy Scouts of America. While it's not a Christian organization, it the perfect example of an institution which has abandoned, by admitting girls, the very constituency [boys] which it was formed to serve. Apparently, it's more important for the Boy Scouts of America to continue than for a scouting program for boys to continue.)

By pointing to the way of the Cross, French suggests it would be better for some parachurch ministries to die than to continue as a symbol of Spiritual, physical or sexual abuse. Here again, I cannot agree with David French more. In fact, I'm content to see all the institutions of evangelical Christendom wither away and/or die. That's also where French seems to end up:

As Kierkegaard reminds us, it’s an old crisis. There are times when the great enemy of Christianity is Christendom itself. But Christendom isn’t Christianity. Indeed, the collapse of the institutions of Christendom does not mean the collapse of Christianity. And their collapse may be necessary for people to see through doctrine, through celebrity, and through politics to catch at last a glimpse of the man who is the faith, the man who carried a cross and now commands us to do the same. 

To which I can only respond, "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?" (Romans 10:14-15) I think David French has forgotten about the institution Christ founded to send preachers.

The problem with American evangelical Christendom is that, with all its ministries bearing the names of their charismatic founders, it is not centered on the one Biblical ministry: the Church. The Church is not one amongst many ministries. She alone is the household of faith and the Kingdom of Christ in this world. And "the Church" is not another generic label for "Christians" or even "Christian ministries." Because the Church has officers and members (Hebrews 13:7, 17), the Church is an institution. 

Yes, the time has come for evangelical Christendom to go the way of the Cross. In its place, Christians need to return to the Church so that they can hear of the man and God who is the faith.

Towards a theory of Church names

 I remember the day in seminary when Scott Clark introduced the chapel speaker, a Lutheran pastor whose congregation was called "Beautiful Savior." "Why do the Lutherans have all the good Church names?" Professor Clark asked rhetorically, and I have wondered frequently. Confessionally presbyterian Churches are notorious for pulling from an extremely short list of names. Leaving aside those with geographic or numerical indicators (i.e. "First," "Greater Sandusky"), there's "Covenant," "Faith," "Grace," Trinity" and "Providence." For those hoping to project a softer image, there's "Harvest," "Emmanuel," "Redeemer" or "Hope." Honestly, that's about it. Despite literally years of my campaigning for it, there's still not one "Big Happy Rainbow Church (OPC)."

This relentless monotony makes sense when one considers the place of confessional presbyterianism in the broader ecclesiastical landscape. While that landscape is littered with Lutheran congregations, there's relatively few from the Presbyterian Church in America or one of her sister denominations. When new OP Church plants are launched, an extremely common reason given is that there are no nearby reformed congregations. While a new evangelical Church can just be itself in all its own idiosyncratic glory, any given OPC congregation feels a burden to represent the entirety of the presbyterian and reformed stream of the Protestant Reformation.

This sociological reality prompts a conservative approach to naming. Employing a "traditional" (i.e., "boring") name sends a clear, if unstated, message to the potential visitor: "You can trust us to be safe: nothing too flashy or evangelicalish here! Just good old hymns and reliable Calvinist doctrine!" Even as I've been openly crusading for more interesting names, I am suspicious of the outlier congregations which use them. Before my family recently visited "Means of Grace Church," I couldn't help wondering what they were trying to say and what potential weirdness lay ahead of us. (Thankfully, it was just as boring as any other presbyterian congregation. We all breathed a sigh of relief!)

One obvious solution is to plant so many confessionally presbyterian congregations through vigorous evangelism and discipleship that individual names won't seem so weighty. Unfortunately, that would require leaving the house and talking to people, so it will be a while until we get there. In the meantime, I suggest a new name which should immediately reassure any presbyterian looking for a new Church home: "Boring Conservative Presbyterian Church (OPC)."

Fertility & faith

Maybe it's just because my undergraduate major was in the social sciences, but I've long believed that sociology is more important than theology if one wants to understand functional ecclesiology. "Fertility, Faith, and a Secular America?" by Philip Jenkins is a treasure trove of information on the recent decline in fertility rates across the western world and, increasingly, in the rest of the world as well.

Jenkins makes an important demographic observation and offers a useful ecclesiological/theological point. The former is that religious participation rates across a nation tend to go down along with its fertility rates (the number of births per woman; the commonly accepted "replacement rate" to keep a population stable is 2.1). The secularization of western Europe accompanied a severe decline in population growth through reproduction (as opposed to immigration). His insight is that participation in religious communities is not the same thing as belief in religious tenets: an individual may hold to the basic Christian faith and at the same time not be a member of a local congregation.

These two come together because having children tends to drive men and women to participate in religious life; that family participation, in turn, enculturates their children into religious life and makes it more likely to continue when they are grown. In other words, "belief" and "belonging" are severable practices which Churches must strive to put back together. 

My inner sociologist was fascinated by the data Jenkins offers. For example, Iran's fertility rate has dropped below 1.7 and "[b]y some estimates, Iran’s rates of mosque attendance run at perhaps 1 percent or 2 percent of the population, and barely 3,000 of the country’s 57,000 mosques are fully operational." Demography may be the United States' best ally in containing the potential threat of the Islamic Republic.

Most interestingly, Jenkins is not concerned by these trends, but (as is only fitting for a Christian)

hopeful:

Finally, my argument isn’t that Euro-American religion is dying, but that it’s changing. Many millions believe without belonging, and that number will grow. The challenge for churches, then—for all churches—is to decide how to respond to this new world, so hostile to institutions and hierarchies, so resentful of intrusions into what’s so widely seen as private space and private morality. How do you speak to those who wish to believe, but dread belonging?

Conversions require conversions

In "Turning Sauls into Pauls," Peter Leithart shows from Acts that welcoming converts into the Church requires a conversion of the hearts of Church members.

…Ananias isn’t merely a sacramental minister. His experience mimics Saul’s because Ananias undergoes his own conversion. Saul has to be changed, but Ananias has to be changed in order to welcome him.

A denial of the Bible's teaching on sin

Our old friend John MacArthur is again warning one segment of the evangelical world against the inclinations of another segment of the evangelical world. This time, he is very very concerned about interest in "social justice." His is the first name listed amongst the signers of "The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel," a series of affirmations and denials.

As I've noted before, online doctrinal statements rarely reflect the care, wisdom and sanity found in the Reformation-era confessions, and, sadly, this "Statement" is no exception. Like many such statements (and unlike the Canons of Dort), its denials and affirmations engage not with actual positions held and statements made by real people, but with what appear to be straw-man representations. Today, however, I want to deal with a much more specific, and doctrinally troubling, problem. With regard to the doctrine of sin, it states,

WE DENY that, other than the previously stated connection to Adam, any person is morally culpable for another person’s sin. Although families, groups, and nations can sin collectively, and cultures can be predisposed to particular sins, subsequent generations share the collective guilt of their ancestors only if they approve and embrace (or attempt to justify) those sins. Before God each person must repent and confess his or her own sins in order to receive forgiveness. We further deny that one’s ethnicity establishes any necessary connection to any particular sin.

This denial falls short of the whole Bible's teaching on sin when it attempts to distance subsequent generations from the collective guilt of their ancestors. Consider the prayers recorded in Ezra 9, Nehemiah 1 and Nehemiah 9. Ezra-Nehemiah records the history of the Restoration, when the Lord brought the Jews back from Exile into Judea. Those generations (the process took decades) most emphatically did not approve, embrace or attempt to justify the sins of their forebears. Nonetheless, their prayers confessed that they shared the guilt of their ancestors.

From the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt. And for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame, as it is today. (Ezra 9:7) 

[L]et your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses. (Nehemiah 1:6-7) 

Even in their own kingdom, and amid your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land that you set before them, they did not serve you or turn from their wicked works. Behold, we are slaves this day; in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves. And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. (Nehemiah 9:35-37)

Clearly, the Restoration generations believed they shared their ancestors' guilt, and that they needed to repent for it. Given that both Ezra and Nehemiah spoke and prayed prophetically as messengers of the Lord, today's Church is obliged to receive the model of the Restoration-era Church as a guide for our own doctrine and practice.

I'm glad the drafters of "The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel" are zealous to preserve the integrity of the Biblical Gospel. Sadly, their sub-Biblical understanding of sin and repentance means they are failing to do so.


[NOTE: If I remember correctly, it was Karl Dortzbach (a long-serving missionary in Africa and, perhaps more importantly, the son of one of my predecessors in my current call) who I first heard point out this theme in Nehemiah 1 during a talk at the 2003 Peacemakers conference. My own subsequent work in Ezra-Nehemiah has confirmed the importance and pervasiveness of cross-generational repentance in this Biblical book.]

"Churches," not "Church"

I direct your attention to the Washington Post article, "The sin of silence: the epidemic of denial about sexual abuse in the evangelical church," not so we may discuss its subject, but instead so that we may discuss the way in which it discusses its subject. To wit: is there such thing as an "evangelical church" which exists in the manner that headline implies it exists? 

As author Joshua Pease writes, "Without a centralized theological body, evangelical policies and cultures vary radically…." Precisely so. There is no evangelical Church: there are only evangelical Churches.

Evangelicalism is a diverse social, theological and ecclesiological phenomenon: it includes a wide range of types of Church government, from congregational to presbyterian to episcopal. The very fact that it encompasses nearly every sort of Church government imaginable means there is not, nor can ever be, an evangelical "Church" in a manner comparable to the "Roman Catholic Church." While the "Church of Rome" itself contains a surprisingly diverse portfolio of theological views and its governing structures are somewhat more complex and sophisticated than most Protestants grasp, it is nonetheless a defined body with a clear hierarchical authority structure, and therefore one may reasonably ask, "Is there an epidemic of denial about sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church?" Bishops may or may not enforce discipline, cardinals may or may not pressure the pontiff to enact and enforce clear policies, but whatever may occur we know who is in charge and who to hold accountable. We (or at least the media and Roman Catholics) may be able to determine who to call in order both to get answers and to get something done.

Not so amongst evangelical Churches. One congregation has excellent accountability structures, while another has none whatsoever; these contrasts are found even between Churches which are nominally part of the same "network" (ex. Acts 29) or "convention" (ex. the Southern Baptists). As Pease writes, 

Diagnosing the scope of the problem isn’t easy, because there’s no hard data. …The problem in collecting data stems, in part, from the loose or nonexistent hierarchy in evangelicalism.

I'm not picking on Pease because I'm a pedant (or at least, not only because I'm a pedant), but because the headline of his article (which he may not have written himself) is only the latest example of a chronic problem to cross my transom. Particularly when discussing perceived problems within evangelical congregations, writers and speakers will refer broadly to "the evangelical Church" or "the Reformed Church," and ask why "the evangelical Church" or "the Reformed Church" doesn't do something about "x." The answer is not, as seems often to be assumed, that "the evangelical Church" is indifferent; it is that there is no evangelical Church. Accordingly, it is impossible to reform, or even change, the evangelical Church.

Next week the 85th General Assembly of my communion, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, is to meet on the campus of Wheaton College, that famed evangelical redoubt. As a Church, the OPC can make changes (to Church government, for example) which affect every member congregation because the OPC is a Church (singular) which operates under a unified system of government. If the OPC suffers an epidemic of denial about sexual abuse (and it's not my purpose here to suggest it does), then our system of government offers genuine hope that something can be done about it.

I sympathize with those who wish to reform the evangelical Church, with regard to sexual abuse or anything else. As my own professional vocation has been, in part, to play the role of reformer in a small way, I know what the struggle is like. I have had the advantage, however, of working within clearly defined government structures as I have pursued my reform agenda. Those who wish to reform the evangelical Church would do well to recognize there are only evangelical Churches, and to ask whether the absence of a defined hierarchical government is not itself a part of the problem they seek to redress and reform.

Après cela, le déluge

This brief notice from WORLD magazine signals what could very well be the beginning of the end of the way of life assumed by countless evangelical congregations across these United States. The vast majority of Churches are small (under 100 members) and entirely self-supporting; even those which are part of denominations rarely receive regular budget support from broader ecclesial bodies. The clergy housing allowance tax exemption is a little-appreciated mechanism by which they're able to stretch their dollars a little bit further.

The housing tax exemption evolved as a way to level the playing field between Churches which provide parsonages for their pastors, and ones which expect the pastor to provide for his own housing. In the first case, the Church owns the pastor's house, and so the government does not tax it. In the second case, the monies paid to the pastor to enable him to pay rent or a mortgage (and the costs of maintaining a domicile) are not taxed. If this ruling in Wisconsin is upheld on appeal, Protestant clergy could lose their right to the housing tax exemption and congregations would have to have to pay them that much more to compensate for the additional tax burden. Yes, that would be only a few thousand dollars more a year. However, given the extremely thin margins of most Church budgets, that additional tax burden could easily put a full-time pastor out of the reach of many small congregations.

I've written at length on the implications of such a development for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in my "Manifesto for the OPC." This court case may be the chink in the conservative Churches' dam against the rising flood of legal hostility to the cause of Christ. Remember: Noah built the ark before the rains began.

Some belated aggregating

I've had some webpages bookmarked for a while now to share with my vast worldwide audience, so it's well past time for me to clear out the backlog. If these articles share a theme, it's that they each introduced me to new arguments which made me think more deeply on a topic than I had before.

While the Presbyterian Church in America lacks a denominational magazine, they have a close substitute in the byFaith website. "Prisoners in the Pew" documents how some congregations are working to uncover and remediate domestic abuse of all sorts. It provides food for thought for sessions of all presbyterian traditions.

"Prejudice and the Blaine Amendments" was published a few weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court released its decision in Trinity Lutheran of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer. (This is the playground resurfacing case.) Philip Hamburger does admirable historiographical work to demonstrate that amendments to state constitutions which now appear to have been intended to require government neutrality in religious matters were in fact designed to institutionalize the then-dominant forms of liberal cultural Christianity. In our day, that has effectively morphed into the institutionalization of an anti-ecclesial bias.

In a two-part review of the book Executing Grace, James R. Rogers carefully examines Christian arguments against the death penalty and sets forth a Biblical argument for its judicious use. From a redemptive-historical framework, he shows that death is an appropriate sanction for the attempt to extinguish God's image by killing an image-bearer.

These aren't short essays, but they're well worth your time if you'd like to think more carefully about these issues.

The sun & the moon & the stars

And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.

There's something about Deuteronomy 4:19; I just can't get it out of my head. It puts me in mind of what Paul said at the Areopagus in Acts 17:26-28.

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for

‘In him we live and move and have our being;'
as even some of your own poets have said,
 ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

Israel's particularity as God's chosen people (one of the major points of Deuteronomy 4, by the way) is sometimes taken as a sign of God's rejection of all other peoples. However, the Lord of Israel is simultaneously the Lord of Creation, and he has written signs in his creation, signs which we are unaccustomed to reading as such. We think time is a malleable social construct (Exhibit A: Daylight Savings Time) and national borders are arbitrary political constructs. But Paul, in his Acts 17 meditation on the aftermath of the Babel debacle (Genesis 11), argues that time and borders were made by God in order to channel our social relationships back into a search for him.

The sun and the moon and the stars, Genesis 1:14-19 tells us, tell us the days and hours and years are passing in ordered succession, and so the moment is arriving when we must reckon with their Creator. But instead of feeling our way toward him and finding him, the nations are drawn away and bow down to them. They turn these governors into idols, failing to recognize that theirs is merely a designated authority.

We who are now God's chosen people in the new Israel, his Church, are as prone as our ancient fathers to bow down to idols. Rather than worshiping the evident power of the sun and the moon and the stars to govern our lives, however, we, along with the nations of today, think we can claim and manipulate that power to our own ends. We are lords of time and space, displacing the Creator of space and time alike.

The particularity of God's chosen people isn't a sign he has rejected all other peoples. In his mercy, he has left us all allotted periods and boundaries so that we should seek him. In our sin, we are too readily and quickly satisfied instead with the sun and the moon and the stars, and, too often, with our infantile conviction we cannot be governed even by them. Because we cannot and will not find God, then, he came to be not far from each one of us.

For in him we live and move and have our being.

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.

Presenting & Fundamental Causes

A special committee to advise a presbytery presented its report to the 83rd General Assembly of the OPC today. Said presbytery has been embroiled in conflicts for about the last decade, give or take a few years. The committee suggested those conflicts had a presenting cause (disagreement over a theological issue), but the more fundamental cause was a “a systemic failure to pastorally and effectively address concerns.”

In a floor speech, I suggested the committee members write up a case study so other presbyteries might learn how they can better address concerns within their own bodies. I may be cynical, but it seems to me many of our presbyteries may already share the “more fundamental cause,” and will similarly become embroiled in conflict should nearly any presenting cause emerge.

Overture 1

This morning the 83rd General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church approved Overture 1, from the Presbytery of Central Pennsylvania. It asks the Committee on Christian Education to consider preparing a “modern English study version” of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. One might note there are already widely available modern English renditions of the Catechism; the grounds for the overture argued that because these are under copyright, the congregations of the OPC need another version which may be used for free.

As the case was presented by the presbytery, as I read the grounds, and as I heard the speeches in favor, it seemed to me the driving rationales for the action were two:

1. the English used in the Shorter Catechism is older and can be difficult for many Americans today;
2. it can be even more challenging for non-native English speakers, who are making up an increasingly large constituency in many OPC congregations.

I’m sympathetic to both those concerns, but I’m not persuaded another modern English version will address them. To the first, elders and pastors should be teaching the Catechism in their Churches, both in group settings (such as catechetical sermons) and in individual discipleship. As they explain the concepts in the Catechism, they will necessarily make the language more transparent. In other words, the better answer to the first problem is pedagogy.

With regard to the second, the Westminster Standards have been translated into many tongues. (I first memorized the Shorter Catechism in Spanish.) Rather than ask a new convert to learn the Catechism in the strange language which is English, provide the catechumen with a copy in his or her native tongue. The catechizer can work from the English, and even use catechesis to help the catechumen improve his or her English. But as the Scriptural doctrines in the Shorter Catechism are the truths precious to the believer’s heart, they may be best learned in one’s mother tongue.

On boycotting

In "Why I Won't Boycott Target," Russell E. Saltzman, a blogger for the First Things website, thoughtfully reflects on who is most adversely affected, and who benefits, from boycotts of large corporations. It's a helpful reminder that our politics should be guided as much by a consideration of the needs of our fellow Church members as the desire to make a statement.

OPC FG XXXI, 5

As you are no doubt aware, chapter XXXI, 5 of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church's Form of Government clearly states that local congregations, and not presbyteries nor the General Assembly, have control over their own local properties. It's there because, as I hope you're aware, when the congregations which would become the OPC seceded from the old Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (often because their pastors had come under Church discipline for not affirming theological liberalism), the national denomination asserted ownership of their buildings and property. Often these congregations were sued in the civil courts; shockingly, the local congregation won control of their property only once, even though in every case the properties had been bought and paid for by the local members, not the national denomination.

This sad history is playing itself out again as the "mainline" denominations take another decisive step away from the historic Christian faith. (In the twentieth century, they denied essential Christian doctrine; in the twenty-first, essential Christian ethics. Since the Church has historically been defined first by doctrine and second by ethics, one wonders what of "Christian" is left to these "churches.") As homosexual marriage and ordination are institutionalized, another wave of congregations is seceding and is losing their properties. This week's Research on Religion podcast focuses on a law review article by Michael McConnell and Luke Goodrich, "On Resolving Church Property Disputes," which suggests ways in which civil courts can take a genuinely neutral approach to litigants in these cases. OPC history is not mentioned, but the Form of Government of our sister Church, the Presbyterian Church in America, does get a shout-out.

Of course, the very fact national denominations are taking local congregations to the civil courts is a manifest sign of their failure as Churches (1 Corinthians 6:1-8). This grasping after the things of this world is also what makes me laugh through my tears whenever a liberal protestant postures her or his communion as being much nicer than my own

hide-bound, reactionary fellowship.

Pastors at large

With you, the title "pastor-at-large" makes me want to ask, "Does this Genevan robe make me look fat?"

When I recently visited the Presbyterian Church in America's Rocky Mountain Presbytery, its committee on Officers & Churches brought a proposal to call a “Pastor At Large,” modeled on the practice of other PCA presbyteries, who would “be a pastor to pastors.” The proposal was postponed to their next stated meeting for perfection, but the sentiment on the floor seemed to be strongly in favor. If I heard correctly, the Rocky Mountain Presbytery has sixty teaching elders, and several speakers said they felt the spiritual care they receive needs much improvement.

I suspect that sentiment would be echoed in many presbyteries of the PCA and OPC, other than in those in which the sentiment would be "What spiritual care?" Even the most casual observer of presbyterian conflicts will note that many pastors seem to have, to put the point gently, "issues." Many presbyters will object, and with good reason, that it costs money to call and support a pastor-at-large (also called a "presbyter-at-large"). Fair enough. How much money do Church splits cost? How much money is permanently lost to a presbytery and denomination when a congregaton dissolves or withdraws?

Spiritual care is not a luxury. It's a necessity.

Love Hopes All Things

(The below was delivered to the Rocky Mountain Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church of America at its stated meeting in the building of Skyview Presbyterian Church on January 28, 2016, at which I represented the OPC's Presbytery of the Dakotas as a fraternal delegate.)

“Love hopes all things,” Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13:7. When love is directed toward God, that hope is obviously eschatological: love hopes that one day we will see our Lord face to face and know fully even as we have been fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12). But what is that hope when love is directed toward other persons? How about when love is directed toward the most unlovely of persons, other presbyters?

In that case as well, our hope must be eschatological. We may be quick to grant the salvation and piety of presbyterian brothers with whom we disagree, but slow to recognize that they may also act against their baser instincts and, with us, strive for the good of the Church and the souls of fellow believers. That slowness and distrust, of course, is cynicism, and whatever aid cynicism may be in surviving the cruelties of a fallen world, it is hope’s opposite. Cynicism bears nothing, believes nothing, hopes nothing, endures nothing. Cynicism presumes more than it can ever know while hope rests in the Lord’s perfect knowledge, as we read in Psalm 131.

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;

my eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things

too great and too marvelous for me. 

But I have calmed and quieted my soul,

like a weaned child with its mother;

like a weaned child is my soul within me. 

O Israel, hope in the Lord

from this time forth and forevermore. 

Love is not arrogant. Love does not know the hearts and minds, the innermost thoughts, of others. Love knows the heart is a mystery and so hopes that, even in a presbytery, common cause can be made with one’s brothers. Cynicism is arrogant: it knows the future and thus the futility of reaching out to those who have repeatedly proven their recalcitrance. Love knows the limits of its knowledge, and so hopes that presbyterians can work together.

Hope is always eschatological because it believes that the Christian love which will be manifest at the end may be realized now.

Such hope has been manifested in the OPC’s Presbytery of the Dakotas. At our September meeting, we erected two special committees. One is working to provide counsel to the Churches as to how to survive and prosper in the legal environments of the five states within our Regional Church after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision. This has been a marvelous opportunity to bear each other’s burdens and receive counsel made more wise by collaboration. The other committee is proposing a revised set of bylaws which, Lord willing, will help institute a more presbyterian practice in a Regional Church still struggling with independency, fundamentalism, and congregationalism, even nearly 80 years after our denomination’s founding.

In light of our presbytery’s many failings, especially in its failure to discharge commonplace presbyterian duties to the Churches under its supervision, I feel compelled to take this opportunity to apologize on behalf of my brothers who use the PCA as whipping boy and bête noir. Rather than seek to reform ourselves according to Biblical principle, we congratulate ourselves for not being as bad as a PCA in which we imagine liturgical aberration and theological innovation more prevalent than the Trinity Hymnal. We have been censorious and uncharitable, and for this I offer my most sincere apologies.

With that apology I offer another hope, perhaps the most audacious hope which presbyterian love can hold. I hope your Churches will regard each other as sisters, and your elders look to elders in other Churches as brothers. I hope we will soon see a new day of interdenominational cooperation, but first must come intra-denominational charity, coordination, and cooperation. Brothers, hold regular pulpit exchanges and joint worship services. Encourage the deacons of the various Churches to cooperate in shared mercy ministries. On behalf of my own session, I issue a standing invitation for a pulpit exchange to all your sessions, as a first step to the inevitable: a joining of the OPC and PCA. Furthermore, I invite you to send your young people to our summer Bible camp, a very successful ecumenical venture between our Presbytery of the Dakotas and the PCA’s Siouxlands Presbytery within our overlapping jurisdictions in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Love hopes all things, but love need not be naïve. Things changed for us reactionary social conservatives last summer, and you surely are wondering when a presidential administration (or its philosophically similar successor) which sued a Lutheran school over its employment practices will begin using the full force of the law to make things uncomfortable for Churches without “evolved” views on human sexuality. Our congregations, like most of yours, are small. Most of ours, as do most of yours, get by on the thinnest of financial margins. What congregations in our Regional Churches could survive a lawsuit over a refusal to marry a same- sex couple? A former member of your presbytery, Phil Strong, who is now in my presbytery, remarked to me last summer that “doing Church” the way the PCA and OPC have for years now is a luxury we may no longer be able to afford. We need to bear one another’s burdens: we must either fight together, or hang separately.

Love hopes all things. It even hopes presbyterians will learn to love one another in word and deed before the last day, when hope will pass away, along with faith, and love will abide forever.