An alternative to in thesi declarations

Last month, a post I wrote expressing admiration of the PCA General Assembly's decision to not issue an in thesi declaration on an issue already settled by the Westminster Standards provoked a negative reaction from some who think such deliverances rather useful. The reactions of which I'm aware failed to persuade me on that point. However, a particular issue was raised in the "discusion" which I think warrants some further comment.

What ought we (that is, presbyterians) do regarding issues and errors not already addressed by the Westminster Standards? In my opinion, the major example of this class in our day is the entire area of sex and gender relationships, with specific reference to the nature and extent of male headship in the Church and home. My solution is rather simple: because the Church needs authoritative guidance, the confessional standards should be amended to give it.

I presented a paper, "A Time to Fight: Sex, Gender, and the Confessions of the Reformed Churches in North America" at a Presbytery of the Dakotas (OPC) symposium in September 2011 which argued precisely this point. That paper (a mere six pages in length) suggested a process for amending confessional standards throughout the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches and dealt with several standard objections to doing this kind of thing, so I won't repeat them here. While my paper dealt with a specific doctrinal issue, I believe my arguments could reasonably be deployed regarding other matters as well. The Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, through her Testimony, has in effect long been amending the Westminster Standards, so I don't think my proposal as controversial as some might conclude.

Better, I continue to think, an amended confession than an impotent declaration.

Jesus answers prayer

The strange thing is that Luke 15 has got to be one of the easiest passages in the Bible to interpret. "[T]he Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.'" So Jesus tells two parables in which something is lost, found, and friends come over to celebrate. Thus, at the end of Luke 15, when the older brother refuses to celebrate the return of the younger son, the whole thing rather plainly becomes an indictment of the Pharisees and scribes for their failure to rejoice over the Lord's recovery of the lost sheep of Israel. So why do people keep thinking this is a parable about the younger, prodigal son? Most likely, it's because of this line: "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."

Two years ago we lost our third child, because, technically, she wasn't ours. But four times I have gone into a hospital and they've handed me a baby and told me to take care of it, and for the life of me I couldn't make a distinction between my third child and the other three simply because she happened to have a different biological mother and father. Nonetheless, because her biological father convinced himself and some caseworkers he could take care of her, my wife and I had to give her up.

For six months I continued to live my life, and do my job, and laugh not infrequently. However, every time I thought about my daughter, a giant black hole opened up underneath me and I didn't know how I could go on breathing. I felt constant and tremendous guilt, which, I've been surprised to learn, many people have found hard to understand. On their logic, as it wasn't my choice to hand her over to irresponsible people, it couldn't be my fault. But fatherhood is an unchosen obligation to protect and defend one's children, and any man who doesn't die to keep his child from harm has failed, no matter the circumstances. That was what we lived with for six months.

And then she came back, and on June 27 of this year she was adopted, and on July 8 she was baptized.

We wanted to make her middle name "Jesus Answers Prayer," but thought that might not fit on all the forms one has to fill out in life. Nonetheless, it's true, and that has become our testimony and witness. American conservative presbyterian circles in our day have become somewhat obsessed with the doctrine of covenant, and tend to focus on God's promises to individuals and families. Without wanting to diminish those, what can be forgotten is the character of God which is the basis for those promises. He is the God prodigal in his mercy and compassion and pity on us poor sinners, and so he made a covenant within himself which he kept at the cost of his own life so that he might make that covenant with us. His love is wider than those individuals and families with whom he happens currently to be in covenant, and so he brought my daughter back to us and into his Church.

Jesus doesn't say what all the friends were doing during the time the three things were lost, before they came to celebrate with the shepherd and the woman and the father. However, my wife and I know what our friends were doing: they were praying to Jesus. He heard their prayers, and he answered them. Our friends were not like the older brother, distant and censorious, and our Lord was not far off. Our child was his child, the absence of a stated promise to that effect notwithstanding, and he has always been the good shepherd who goes off after the lost sheep.

She was lost, and is found.

Jesus answers prayer.

Daddy's girl

Ray Bradbury, the Pedestrian

First Things provides another reminiscence of Ray Bradbury today.

My e-mail was (& still is) broken

This has meant fruitless hour upon hour on the phone with Apple tech support, which is one reason I haven't been producing more blog posts for your amusement and edification. (Amongst other reasons are pastoring a congregation, producing approximately two sermons a week, parenting four children, getting the third of those adopted, nominally helping Mrs. Curmudgeon plan and prepare an adoption party, not coming anywhere close to helping Mrs. Curmudgeon plan our vacation for later this month, and occasionally folding laundry in the presence of Mrs. Curmudgeon: quality time for married folk. Not amongst those reasons is a dearth of barely informed opinions. But you'd guessed that already.) 

At any rate, this appears to be why I wasn't notified by the Google of several comments to my June 25 post, "Grown-ups prevail at the PCA General Assembly." I learned the post had been aggregated on the Aquila Report site earlier this week while another pastor in my presbytery was trying to deflect my ruthless mockery over his ignorance of Lou Reed. Unbeknownst to me (for the record, Don Clements, the Aquila Report's editor, later apologized to me for my post being accidentally aggregated without my express consent), I seem to have caused a slight ripple in the waters of the conservative presbyterian pool in this nation. An Associate Reformed Presbyterian pastor, Tim Phillips, has taken rather lengthy umbrage in a piece entitled "The Grownup Solution."

Pastor Phillips argues that, since the Westminster Standards preceded the development of Darwinism by a couple centuries, the modern Church has no recourse to address the theological error of theistic evolution other than an in thesi judgment. While I agree there are any number of issues which the Westminster Standards do not address, and that at least a few of those issues should be addressed by the Church (and here note I've written and spoken on that particular problem in the past and hope to write a follow-up post on it in the near or not-so-distant future), this is not one of them.

To momentarily turn to another question, the Standards were written long before the peculiar doctrine of reincarnation became widely known in the West, and at no point explicitly address the question. Nonetheless, WCF 32.1 rather clearly rules it out:

The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption: but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them: the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies. And the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Beside these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledges none.

Accordingly, I can see no need for a presbyterian assembly to issue a declaration against reincarnation.

Pastor Phillips seems to have entirely missed the PCA General Assembly's similar reason for not issuing an in thesi declaration on theistic evolution:

While not wishing to diminish the importance of engaging the current controversies regarding the historicity of Adam and Eve, we believe that what is most called for is not a new deliverance from this Assembly, but rather a clear and uncompromising appeal to Scriptures (Genesis 1:26-28; 2:18-22) and the Westminster Standards (Westminster Confession of Faith 4:2; Westminster Shorter Catechism 16; Westminster Larger Catechism 17), which are already sufficiently clear that Adam and Eve are real, historical human beings directly created by God.

Now, perhaps Pastor Phillips believes those sections of the Westminster Standards do not, in fact, rule out a theory of theistic evolution. However, I and the PCA General Assembly do, and I imagine we together would direct inquiries on the question to our shared Confession.

Pastor Phillips also expresses a certain impatience with judicial process, expressing a concern about a possible fox in the henhouse. While an in thesi deliverance may appear to threaten any such hypothetical fox, only the shotgun of judicial process will actually remove him. Moreover, if there are any such foxes in the henhouse, why in the world is anyone wasting time drafting in thesi declarations when they should be submitting charges to the relevant presbytery? Judicial process is the presbyterian tool designed to remove theological error from the Church; a failure to employ it when necessary is, at best, irresponsible.

One last comment on Pastor Phillips' piece for now. Towards the end, he writes,

Near the end of the blog post, the pastor writes this statement:

The practical impotence of in thesi declarations is why I think them corrosive to the Church’s well-being.

After reading that, a friend of mine (a pastor in the PCA) commented, “How can he claim something to be ‘impotent’ and ‘corrosive’ at the same time?” It’s a good question, one that requires some thoughtfulness.

That question has the strength of appearing clever, but the rather sad weakness of a failure to read my statement in context. The original paragraph goes on to explain it this way:

The practical impotence of in thesi declarations is why I think them corrosive to the Church's well-being. Church officers are free to agree or disagree with them with whatever degree of openness they prefer; disagreement brings with it no automatic sanctions. This creates the impression that the Church's highest judicatory has spoken in a final way on a matter, and can be freely ignored by any and all of the Church's members; this simply cannot be healthy for any ecclesiastical body. Far better, I think, to read our confessional standards and be content with the very grown-up statements they provide.

I continue to think that, and hope, upon further reflection, Pastor Phillips will as well.

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.