Total Depravity & Shepherding
The Christian will struggle with sin his whole life. But the Christian struggles in Christ. Before regenerating grace appeared we did not struggle in Christ. Now we do because now, in union with Christ through the Holy Spirit, we are not totally depraved.
Let us consider then how the doctrines of grace are good and necessary for the shepherding of souls in the churches of Jesus Christ. And let us begin with the doctrine of total depravity.
The expression total depravity summarizes scripture’s teaching on the spiritual condition of Adam and all his offspring after the fall into sin. In Adam’s fall we sinned all and none were lightly wounded.
By our revolt against God, we forfeited the excellent gifts which once belonged to creatures bearing the divine image. By one man’s disobedience, the race of man immediately incurred, as stated in the Canons of Dort (COD, III/IV.1), “blindness of mind, horrible darkness, vanity and perverseness of judgment, became wicked, rebellious, and obdurate in heart and will, and impure in his affections.”
Not by imitation did we come to possess this corruption, as Pelagians everywhere would have us believe, but by propagation, the propagation of a vicious nature: “A corrupt stock produced a corrupt offspring” (COD, III/IV.2).
Total depravity does not mean we are as sinful as we could be. It means, rather, that our nature is thoroughly defiled by sin. We are soaked through with it. God says so. He says it of man before the flood in Genesis 6:5 and he says it of man after the flood in Genesis 8:21: “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. … the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”
How then does this weighty doctrine become a help in the care of souls? Total depravity brilliantly helps manage expectations.
Consider first the expectations of Christian parents. We so easily expect children to be reformed by rules that we soon become hardened when they are not. But a wise man once said the doctrine of total depravity should stir deep compassion in parents, for after all the first thing we gave our children was their sin nature. “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps. 51:5).
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It Doesn’t Work: Presbyterian Church USA
Since the change of the definition of marriage, the PCUSA seems to have lost all counterbalance to contemporary progressive ideologies. Having lost its conservative contingent, the PCUSA appears to be in theological and moral freefall with few voices seeking to preserve any historic biblical understandings. On the first day of the 2016 General Assembly, the opening prayer was by a Muslim imam offered to Allah.
LGBTQ ideology has divided one church after another: Episcopal Church USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), Mennonite Church USA, United Methodist Church, Church of the Brethren, Reformed Church in America.
In this series, we will look at some of their stories. Each one shows how legitimizing alternative sexualities in the church is a mix of oil and water. It simply does not work. Another case in point: The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
The Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) was organized as a merger between two Presbyterian denominations that separated during the Civil War. The northern United Presbyterian Church in the USA (UPCUSA) and the southern Presbyterian Church in the United States officially joined together on June 10, 1983 in Atlanta, Georgia. The combined membership topped 3.1 million. Since then, developments in the PCUSA serve as yet another painful and profound illustration of two realities: first, that compromises on sexuality are invariably connected to a much broader erosion of biblical authority and faithfulness; and second, that competing visions of biblical sexuality cannot remain under the same denominational umbrella. In short, it doesn’t work.
Signs of Decay
Signs of theological decay were already present prior to 1983. The southern Presbyterian branch had already shed members and churches into the Presbyterian Church in America in 1973. The Evangelical Presbyterian Church officially organized in 1981 out of concern that both northern and southern Presbyterians were no longer holding to their basic standards of belief. Ordination in the UPCUSA only required affirmation that the Bible is “God’s Word to you.” In 1974, UPCUSA ordination candidate Walter Wynn Kenyon informed the Pittsburgh Presbytery that he could not participate in women’s ordination services. The presbytery narrowly ordained him but in 1975 the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly overturned the presbytery. In 1981, the same court approved Mansfield Kaseman’s ordination despite his unwillingness to affirm the deity of Christ, the Trinity, bodily resurrection, the sinlessness of Jesus, and Christ’s death as an atonement for sin. In 1979 the UPCUSA church order was amended to mandate election of women elders in all sessions. Those who would not ordain women as elders were being denied ordination. Zeal for evangelism had significantly dried up. UPCUSA had 1400 missionaries in 1958, but only 300 in 1980.
Nevertheless, a sizeable contingent decided to stick around and hold fast to orthodoxy in the “big tent” of the PCUSA. It would prove to be a long losing war of attrition.
On June 18, 1984, the PCUSA Permanent Judicial Commission ruled in favor of Westminster Church of Buffalo and their open and affirming policy when the Western New York presbytery brought charges. The Commission ruled the denominational ban on gay clergy unconstitutional, saying the ban goes against “the constitutional power of each congregation to control the selection of its own officers for ordination. The Church is committed to inclusiveness, and segments of the membership cannot be excluded except by constitutional amendment.” The Commission would reverse this ruling in February of 1985.
Orthodox stances on sexuality were reinforced at the 1985 General Assembly, which voted down an amendment to the church constitution that would have protected homosexuals from employment discrimination. Additionally, the General Assembly declared all homosexual acts are inherently sinful regardless of the nature of the relationship or the degree of commitment.
“Fidelity and Chastity”
By 1993, exhaustion prevailed. A three-year moratorium on homosexual ordination was called. 1996 came and the orthodox won a tremendous victory when the General Assembly voted 313 to 236 to approve a report calling homosexual practice a sin and adding requirements to the constitution that officers must practice sexual “fidelity and chastity.” The majority of the 172 presbyteries would approve this the following March.
The official wording was as follows:
“Those who are called to office in the church are to lead a life in obedience to Scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the church. Among these standards is the requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage of a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness. Persons refusing to repent shall not be ordained and/or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of Word and Sacrament.”
The “fidelity and chastity” amendment brought plenty of angst. Chris Glaser, a homosexual leader of the Presbyterians for Lesbian & Gay Concerns called the vote “spiritual abuse.” Rev. Myra Kazanjian of Pittsburgh said, “We are asking people again: ‘Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Let’s live our lives in secrecy.’ I don’t believe that is the Gospel.” Kazanjian was among 300 people who marched through the hall at the Albuquerque Convention Center to protest the vote. After the vote Friday, hundreds of gay and lesbian church members and leaders gathered to sing, “We Are Staying in the Church of God.”
“A lot of people will leave,” said Sandy Martin, an elder from Pittsburgh. “I don’t think they realize what kind of pain they bring to gays and lesbians. One of the things that could happen is the church could split on the issue.”
But the PCUSA would not split over drawing firm lines. The 1997 General Assembly gave final approval to the “fidelity and chastity” amendment.
Meanwhile, Theological Decline Was Evident on Other Fronts
At the Peacemaking Conference in 2000, Rev. Dirk Ficca delivered the keynote address, “Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a Diverse World,” suggesting that there are many paths to God. At one point Ficca asked rhetorically, “What’s the big deal about Jesus?” Conservatives would raise an outcry. A month later an explanatory letter would be sent and the 2002 General Assembly would approve a statement saying “Jesus Christ is the only Savior and Lord… No one is saved apart from God’s gracious redemption in Jesus Christ.”
The 1992 General Assembly adopted a pro-choice position on abortion, saying that each situation is different and that no laws should restrict it. By 1998, the General Assembly granted a “Relief of Conscience” program for congregations to not have their mandatory medical dues go to cover abortions. PCUSA medical insurance would continue to provide coverage for abortions.
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Two Ways to Pray
We often long for revival in our churches and in our nation. But such revival must first begin with us — a revival of cool, complacent, apathetic hearts strengthened to a renewed life in Jesus Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit in us. “I am exceedingly afflicted; Revive me, O LORD, according to Your word” (Psalm 119:107). God revives His people through the ordinary means of His word, but He also does this through the ordinary means of prayer.
What a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is — and no more. ~ Robert Murray McCheyne
One of my favorite parables of Jesus is found in Luke 18:9-14 — the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. Of course, the parable is a little ruined for us in our day, because Pharisees are automatically considered to be “bad guys” in our thinking (although I guess that’s also true for tax collectors). It would not necessarily have been the case in Jesus’ day, however. The Pharisees were the religious leaders in the synagogues, and they were generally considered to be morally and religiously upstanding individuals (at least until Jesus begins to highlight their hypocrisy). It’s a bit like watching the first three Star Wars movies (that is, Episodes I-III) — because we’ve seen Episodes IV-VI and we know that Anakin Skywalker is going to become Darth Vader, it’s very difficult to watch those movies without expecting him to do something bad eventually. So it is with this Pharisee — we know he’s bad, and we almost expect him to pray a bad prayer. But for Jesus’ audience, that was likely an unexpected twist.
This post has to do with prayer, and in Terry Johnson’s wonderful book on The Parables of Jesus, he cites the brief quote from Robert Murray McCheyne that I posted above: “What a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is — and no more.” Johnson goes on to elaborate:
What McCheyne meant was that the contend and manner of our prayers reveal our true convictions about God, life, and eternity. Our prayers reveal our theology lex orandi, lex credendi. According to this ancient principle, the “law” of faith is the “law” of prayer. What we (truly) believe is revealed by how we pray. Moreover, our approach to prayer reveals our approach to life. We live as we pray. Our manner of addressing God reveals the theology through which we address the whole of faith and life. We may put it this way: nothing so reveals our true convictions about life and eternity as our prayer life. … Our beliefs directly shape both our prayers and our life. We live as we pray. We pray as we believe. (Terry Johnson, The Parables of Jesus, pp. 111-113)
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Phyllis Schlafly’s Tragic Failure
Schlafly was beautiful, brilliant, unconventional, hated by her enemies. She may be better than most anyone today. Still, for all her greatness, Schlafly was fighting a rear-guard action that ultimately failed as it took too much for granted to work in her own time (and in ours). Hers was the work of the positive world when women were generally more conservative than men. She lived long enough to recognize that her own project had failed.
Feminism is among modernity’s most successful social movements. Feminists pretend to promote choice, but feminist laws and culture really cultivate a particular kind of womanly character, one economically and emotionally independent of men, family, tradition, and marriage. Feminism’s successes pose an acute challenge. Can feminism, which points women away from the family, and a family-centered society coexist?
Conservatives and Christians have been dealing with this challenge for generations, with only limited and short-lived successes. As feminism determines society’s understanding of an honorable woman, opponents of feminism become by definition anti-woman. Prudence seems to demand accommodation to powerful, widely-held social opinions, but accommodation brings social decay. Resistance, on the other hand, means political oblivion.
One method of accommodation is the “who stole feminism” gambit, to borrow the title from a 1995 book by Christiana Hoff Sommers. “Who Stole Feminism” critics oppose the latest, apparently extreme feminist or gender reform in the name of a supposedly true, more moderate, more pro-family feminist path that once existed or could.
In the beginning, they say, feminists embraced salutary goals like increased female opportunity that would not compromise family life or the sexual dance. Later, however, “radical feminists” warred against men or undermined family life or promoted abortion or transgenderism. Such critics of feminism often disagree about what the good feminism represented, why and when things went sideways, and how to bring back the better brand. But they never disclaim the mantle of feminism: Early feminism, real feminism good; later feminism not good.
Another option is opposition, where the risk is political oblivion. The most successful and famous anti-feminist of the past sixty years is Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly, who died in 2016, is justly considered the most successful organizer in the modern conservative movement. Her successful opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the 1970s and 1980s also made her, in the words of her daughter-in-law and co-author, Suzanne Venker, “the premier anti-feminist of the twentieth century.”
Schlafly rejects the “Who Stole Feminism” gambit. When asked later in life whether feminism made any positive contributions to American life, Schlafly only saw debits: “No. I think it’s made women unhappy and it’s made them believe that we live in a discriminatory and unjust society, and that they should look to government to solve their problems.” To read Schlafly’s works (as I have the past year) is to hear nary a nice word about feminism (though a fairer disputer thinks Schlafly is a feminist herself).
The woman was a force of nature, such that her legacy guides, inspires, and intimidates opponents of feminism today. Giants walked on the earth then! Helen Andrews took to the New York Times to explain why the next Phyllis Schlafly has not yet arisen. Rebekah Curtis has given “5 Reasons there is no Phyllis Schlafly 2.0” today.
Schlafly was beautiful, brilliant, unconventional, hated by her enemies. She may be better than most anyone today. Still, for all her greatness, Schlafly was fighting a rear-guard action that ultimately failed as it took too much for granted to work in her own time (and in ours). Hers was the work of the positive world when women were generally more conservative than men. She lived long enough to recognize that her own project had failed.
Schlafly launched her campaign against the ERA with a 1972 essay, “What’s Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?” Women’s liberation, she wrote, represented a “total assault on the role of the American woman as wife and mother, and on the family as a basic unit of society.”
Yet “equal rights” already had a basis in American law and culture as Schlafly rose to oppose it. Schlafly accepted earlier feminist reforms and then gave them a most conservative spin. The suffragettes, she concluded, were “family-oriented women who had no desire to eradicate the female nature.” The Equal Pay Act of 1963 accomplished “equal pay for equal work,” which, she said, no one opposes. (Advocates of the family wage do oppose it.) She favored including sex as a protected category in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, though she thought that sex is not the same as race, that the law should allow for reasonable distinctions between the sexes, and that the civil rights framework was destroying male-only spaces.
The ERA’s more radical emphasis on equal rights, she worried, would destroy sex-role realism, the key to healthy family life.
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