A Response to David Coffin Concerning Overtures 23 and 37—Part Two
Time will fail us to fully consider other elements of the OMSJC, such as its requirement in 2.10, partly quoted by Coffin himself, that every SJC member is to “perform the duties of his office with impartiality and shall be diligent to maintain the impartiality of the Commission” and that each member “must be objective and open-minded with respect to all issues and parties.” It is a little hard – lo, impossible – to be impartial, open-minded, and objective when you have publicly come down on one side of an issue.
In the previous article we looked at David Coffin’s arguments against Overtures 23 and 37 to the Presbyterian Church in America’s Book of Church Order (BCO), and now we will consider what is entailed in him, a member of the PCA’s Standing Judicial Commission (SJC), publishing an article against said overtures. Coffin includes a disclaimer in which he asserts that the SJC’s Manual (OMSJC) permits him to publish this sort of article of opinion, and in so doing he interprets OMSJC 2.6 as sufficiently tempering the other provisions of the manual to allow him to do so. Here is the full text of that section:
So long as he complies with Section 2.5 above, a member may make public or private statements in the course of his duties as a presbyter or Session member with respect to biblical teaching, confessional interpretation, the principles of the form of government and discipline, the requirements of the BCO, the Rules of Assembly Operation, Robert’s Rules, and may explain Commission procedures.
Note that it is section 2.5 that modifies 2.6, not the reverse. That is significant because Coffin first quotes 2.5 in his disclaimer and then says, “that notwithstanding, I am permitted to,” and quotes the bulk of 2.6. Consider that Coffin’s article is not an example of doing the bulk of things which he is allowed to do by 2.6. It is not explaining “the Rules of Assembly Operation,” “Robert’s Rules,” or “Commission procedures.” It is not a bit of exposition of “biblical teaching” or “confessional interpretation,” as he only alludes to the Westminster Standards once to say they don’t include the term identity, and as he only alludes to two passages of scripture (1 Tim. 3:1-7 and Titus 1:6-9) as a parenthetical remark noting they are the scriptural basis for BCO 21-4’s requirements. He somewhat explains current requirements of the BCO, but only as part of a larger endeavor to argue against proposed amendments to the same BCO. It seems doubtful that the “explaining the requirements of the BCO” that the OMSJC allows is intended to allow that explanation in the course of a polemic article, an objection we might also bring to his explanation of “the principles of the form of government and discipline.”
The question then is this: is publishing an article of intradenominational political opinion a part of one’s “duties as a presbyter or Session member”? It seems doubtful, at best. It would be one thing for him to circulate this article among his session, congregation, or presbytery, but to publish it generally is to put it in a different category. The duties of a presbyter, as explained in BCO 8.1-3, for example, do not include telling the whole denomination how it should vote outside of a stated meeting of a church court, and BCO 11-4 seems to limit the sphere of elder operation to session and presbytery, and even then, only to the matters that are properly in their jurisdiction. Trying to persuade people in other presbyteries how to vote when their presbyteries vote on this question is not exactly respecting the division of jurisdictions or doing what presbyters are formally intended to do. In other words, Coffin’s article seems to be, not an example of official discharge of presbyterial duty, but rather a piece of personal opinion, the giving of which is by no means limited to presbyters. Now look at the introductory text of OMSJC 2.5:
A member of the Commission shall not make any public or private statement that might reasonably be expected to affect the outcome of a pending matter or impending matter in any court of the church (BCO 11-4; 39-3).
This section goes on to give the definitions of pending and impending, saying in 2.5b that:
An impending matter is a matter that is reasonably expected to (a) become a case of process or (b) otherwise be brought before an appropriate court for consideration. “Reasonably” refers to the judgment of one in possession of all the relevant facts, which facts are subject to a fair-minded assessment.
And now consider what Coffin says in the fourth paragraph of his second section: “I do not doubt that this question [of Overture 23’s sentence structure and terminology] will give rise to controversy and litigation in this matter.” Or again, consider the statement of his disclaimer that “nothing I have said in this essay is intended to intimate, hint, or suggest which party should prevail in any case that might come before me under our current BCO, or under these proposed amendments, should they be adopted.” Coffin himself seems to think that litigation related to the overtures is likely. Indeed, why would he include a disclaimer at all unless he believed it’s very probable they will pass and come before the SJC of which he is a member?
Now if Coffin himself seems to think that Overture 23 and 37 related litigation is quite probably impending, why then is he writing such an article at all, seeing as OMSJC 2.5, as he admits, prohibits giving such public statements on impending cases? If this seems to be stretching impending a little much as regards potential future litigation viz. the overtures, note, again, that 2.5 prohibits any statement that will affect the adoption of any matter now pending or impending before any church court. Presbyteries are church courts (BCO 10-2), and the question of adopting Overtures 23 and 37 is now pending with dozens of them (and by extension, the sessions of their constituent churches, which are also courts, BCO 10-2). Coffin is at odds, then, with the requirements of OMSJC 2.5. Also consider the full text of OMSJC 2.8:
Notwithstanding Section 2.5 above, a member of the Commission may fully participate in a judicial matter before the Presbytery or Session of which he is a member and advise his Presbytery or Session in judicial matters.
Mark that carefully. He may participate in something like debating the overtures before his own session and presbytery only. He may not participate in debating them beyond the bounds of those courts, a thing which he does when he publishes an article arguing against them in an online magazine.
Time will fail us to fully consider other elements of the OMSJC, such as its requirement in 2.10, partly quoted by Coffin himself, that every SJC member is to “perform the duties of his office with impartiality and shall be diligent to maintain the impartiality of the Commission” and that each member “must be objective and open-minded with respect to all issues and parties.” It is a little hard – lo, impossible – to be impartial, open-minded, and objective when you have publicly come down on one side of an issue. Cue 2.10d:
A member shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which the member’s impartiality might reasonably (see Section 2.5.b) be questioned, including but not limited to the following circumstances:
2) The member . . . has made a public statement, other than in a court proceeding, judicial decision, or opinion, that commits or appears to commit the member to reach a particular result or rule in a particular way in the proceeding or controversy.
By publishing his article Coffin has ensured that he will have to recuse himself if, as he suggests is rather probable, cases come before the SJC regarding these overtures.
Now one may object and say that I have not properly interpreted and applied some of the elements of the BCO and OMSJC to which I have appealed here or even that I am not competent or qualified to undertake such arguments. Perhaps there are established precedents that have caused us to determine the interpretation of some of these individual clauses I have quoted and to give them a different meaning than I have given them here.
Lay that aside and lay aside also my belief that I have faithfully interpreted all of this in accord with the plain meanings of the words. Look not at the minutiae of legal clauses and interpretations, whether mine or others, and look rather at the large picture. Can it seriously be maintained that it is an ethically proper thing for a member of the SJC to argue against these measures? Maybe our constitution does not fully mandate a separation of powers in which SJC members are required to only judge cases that come before them and are strictly required to keep silent about legislative questions related to the adoption of this or that measure or BCO amendment. Maybe it is lawful for David Coffin to publish an article such as this by the current standards of the BCO and OMSJC (though I think I have dispelled that suggestion). But is it right? Is it an example of upholding the spirit of orderly church government, or of keeping aloof not only from wrongdoing but also from any hint or appearance of the same? Is it not rather likely to strike many of our members and ministers, and probably more than a few outside observers as well, as a rather odd way of doing things that reeks of conflicts of interest and imprudence? And is it not the sort of thing that causes our members, when made aware of it, to have less confidence in the impartiality and integrity of our courts, and of our form of government generally?
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, SC. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not necessarily represent those of the leadership or members of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church.
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The Conclusion to the Lord’s Prayer
For thine is the kingdom, and glory, for the power, and ever, Amen.
Although the English Revised Version (1881), the American Standard Version (1901), and the Revised Standard Version (1946) relegate this concluding doxology of the Lord’s Prayer to the footnotes,* it has been in familiar use among Protestants since the Reformation, especially the Reformed.
The Heidelberg Catechism, ends with it, and so do the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Westminster Assembly. Indeed, so impressive are the lessons which this doxology teaches, and so fitting a climax does it form for the Prayer of prayers, that many scholars have proposed to retain it, no matter whether it be genuine or not.
Although the orthodox Christian may look upon this proposal with a certain sympathy, he cannot approve of it. He would rather sacrifice this precious doxology than retain it on these terms. For if it can be proved to be spurious, then it can have no place among the authentic portions of the Lord’s Prayer. If the body of the Lord’s Prayer truly proceeded from the lips of Christ, then no human conclusion, however edifying, can be fittingly put to it. To give scriptural authority to human words is, in the end, to deprive the Scriptures of all real authority.
On the other hand, if these familiar words of praise to God have been condemned on insufficient grounds, then the faithful believer is bound to stand by them and to defend them to the end against all those who would remove them from their place in holy Scripture.
Is the Conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer a Jewish Formula?
For many years, critics have maintained that the doxology for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever, Amen is an ancient Jewish prayer-formula which the early Christians took up and used to provide a more fitting termination for the Lord’s Prayer, which originally had ended abruptly with but deliver us from evil. -
The Promise of the Spirit
Written by T.M. Suffield |
Wednesday, February 9, 2022
For the disciples, receiving the Spirit was like Jesus was with them again. Except as they travelled around and spread across the earth, as they’ve been told to, he was still with each one of them. He could now be everywhere, including inside each of their hearts and minds speaking tenderly to them and empowering them for the next test.After his resurrection Jesus gathered his disciples to give them his parting instructions and pass on his mission. Each of the gospel writers summarise his words a little differently but they all include what Luke calls “the promise of the Father” (Luke 24).
Matthew records it as a promise that Jesus would be with them until the end of the age, Mark that their preaching would be accompanied by miracles. Luke speaks about them being “clothed with power” and John tells how Jesus acted out what would happen to them soon after by breathing on them and telling them to “receive the Spirit.” (Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20).
Jesus was reminding them of what he’d already been at great pains to teach them. In order to complete the task he had given them, making disciples of all kinds of people, they needed the Holy Spirit.
He was clear with them that even after he had gone back to be with God, they shouldn’t launch straight on with the task he gave them, but should wait for the Holy Spirit, who he’d called their “helper”.
On the face of it this seems a bit strange. If my manager at work gave me an important task to do and there was a sense of urgency about it, my natural inclination would be to get straight on with it, or at least find out which of the rest of my work I can stop doing so I have time to do what she needs. I would be confused if after giving me the task, spelling out what needs to be done, and impressing the urgency of it on me, she then made it clear that under no circumstances was I to start. I was to sit tight and wait for someone to help me. I’m sure I’d appreciate help, but I’d feel faintly patronised. Surely I can start, at least, even if I need some other resources?
The disciples have been given a really important job to do, with a sense of supreme urgency about it. They have a whole world to tell about Jesus, why wouldn’t they just get on with it?
Jesus was emphatic. “Don’t go yet, you can’t start without everything you need, so wait until you’ve got it all.” He is like a drill sergeant, surveying his fresh—and slightly deluded—new recruits who are raring to race into a mock battle. The sergeant cautions them against rushing straight in, until he’s given them each some basic training and their weapon. We can be a lot like that, eager to surge ahead without picking up the basic equipment we need to be effective.
“Receiving the Spirit” was all that they were going to need. If we want to follow Jesus and fulfil his mission, presumably we need that too.
A couple of years before, Jesus and his disciples were at the Feast of Booths. This was when the Jewish people remembered God providing water for them when there were wandering in the desert, and it was when they looked forward to the Spirit being poured out like water in the future. On the last day of this festival, Jesus stood up in the Temple courts and shouted:
If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”John 7
Everyone was dismantling the structures they had built for the festival and getting ready to return home. Jesus was saying “the water you’ve been celebrating is available all the time, and the eventual gift of the Spirit you’re expecting has arrived. You can get it through me.” It’s an enormous claim.
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Christianity and Functional Liberalism (or How Evangelicalism Denies the Faith)
Because functional liberalism detests claims to authority that do not leave the ultimacy of the individual intact, they turn gospel-centered theology into “gospel-only theology.” The technical term for this is antinomianism. They forget that sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4) and that Christ came to save us from lawlessness (Titus 2:14) and for the obedience of faith (Rom. 1:5; cf. Gal. 6:2).
During the summer of 2023, a group of cardinals from every continent posed a series of dubia (a Latin word meaning “doubts” in the sense of questions born of concern or reservation) to the supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church. The dubia addressed a range of pressing contemporary matters, from the possibility of women’s ordination to the blessing of same-sex unions. As one commentator put it, the cardinals ultimately wanted to know, “Is the Roman Catholic Church going to go the same direction as liberal Protestantism—adapting Scripture to suit contemporary culture, ordaining women, and accepting the legitimacy of same-sex unions?” The pope’s evasive reply provoked a follow-up from the cardinals, who reformulated the dubia to be easily answerable with a clear “yes” or “no.” As of the time of writing this article, there has been no further response.
Earlier that year, the Church of England voted to permit the blessing of same-sex “marriages” and civil partnerships.1 The move prompted a strong response from the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA), who condemned the development as a schismatic choice “to break communion with those provinces who remain faithful to the historic biblical faith.” Furthermore, the bishops of GSFA denounced the Archbishop of Canterbury, no longer recognizing him as primus inter pares (“first among equals”), while calling for his global “admonishment in love.”
Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, in September of 2023—a year that will live in infamy?—the de facto bishop of the evangelical megachurch, Andy Stanley, hosted Embracing the Journey’s Unconditional Conference. The event was advertised as being “for parents of LGBTQ+ children and for ministry leaders looking to discover ways to support parents and LGBTQ+ children in their churches.” The conference featured speakers who either are in same-sex relationships themselves or are supportive of others in the same. While Stanley did tip his hat to the biblical teaching on homosexuality—saying, “It was a sin then, and it is a sin now”—he simultaneously undermined that position by affirming Justin Lee and Brian Nietzel, “two married gay men” whom Stanley called faithful followers of Christ. Apparently, Stanley thinks faithful followers of Christ can persist in flagrantly unrepentant abominations before the Lord (Lev. 18:22; 20:13), contrary to the solemn warnings of Scripture in many places (e.g., Rom. 1:26–27, 32; 1 Cor. 6:9–10).
What are we to make of this rapid, cross-denominational apostasy?2 The fact of this phenomenon is a clear example of culture reporter Megan Basham’s recent warning: “You may have wanted to avoid this subject, but you cannot avoid it any longer. [LGBT ideology] is coming to your church, no matter how solid you think it is.”3 Those who cannot see this are woefully ignorant of the times. Yet the cause of this phenomenon is anything but recent. Indeed, the “journey” that leads to this dead end (let the reader understand) is so well worn that one can see it from space.
We’ve Been Here Before: Christianity and Liberalism
J. Gresham Machen wrote his classic book, Christianity and Liberalism, 4 exactly a century before Catholics, Anglicans, and Evangellyfish failed to uphold biblical sexuality.5 The book’s title is none too subtle, though Machen’s point is sometimes missed in these days of decreasing reading comprehension levels. (To spell it out is no trouble for us and is a safeguard for you.) In his own words, “The chief modern rival of Christianity is ‘liberalism.’ An examination of the teachings of liberalism in comparison with those of Christianity will show that at every point the two movements are in direct opposition.”6
Machen is not saying that liberal Christianity is a terrible perversion of the faith; he is saying that liberalism is another faith entirely. To give an analogy, liberal “Christianity” is more like a virus than a sick or wounded form of the body of Christ. For a body remains a body, even when it suffers from illness or (self-inflicted) injury. But a virus is an alien entity that merely uses the body for its own self-perpetuation. If a Christian church is a body, therefore, liberalism is a virus.
We can see this distinction clearly when Machen addresses “the division between the Church of Rome [in his day] and evangelical Protestantism.” Protestants and Catholics have substantial disagreements, viewing the other body of believers as significantly ill or impaired. Still, Machen writes, “Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today! We would not indeed obscure the difference which divides us from Rome. The gulf is indeed profound. But profound as it is, it seems almost trifling compared to the abyss which stands between us and many ministers of our own Church. The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all.”7
Machen highlights many reasons why “liberalism is totally different from Christianity,”8 but the central reason is a matter of authority: “Christianity is founded upon the Bible. It bases upon the Bible both its thinking and its life. Liberalism on the other hand is founded upon the shifting emotions of sinful men.”9 By “shifting emotions,” Machen means the subjective assessments of men, which are tossed to and fro by the zeitgeist (Eph. 4:14). In this way, for liberals, “It is not Jesus who is the real authority, but the modern principle by which the selection within Jesus’ recorded teaching has been made. Certain isolated ethical principles of the Sermon on the Mount are accepted, not at all because they are teachings of Jesus, but because they agree with modern ideas.”10
Machen concludes, “The real authority, for liberalism, can only be ‘the Christian consciousness’ or ‘Christian experience.’”11 This raises the question of how a Christian consensus could ever be established. Liberals are loath to appeal to church history, for that would bolster a decidedly non-modern verdict as well as trump their radical conception of the liberty of conscience. Thus, Machen writes, “The only authority, then, can be individual experience; truth can only be that which ‘helps’ the individual man. Such an authority is obviously no authority at all; for individual experience is endlessly diverse, and once truth is regarded only as that which works at any particular time, it ceases to be truth. The Christian man, on the other hand, finds in the Bible the very Word of God.”12
Christianity and Functional Liberalism
Whereas Machen wrote about Christianity and liberalism, we are writing something of an appendix on Christianity and functional liberalism.13 We call it “functional liberalism” (and not liberalism simpliciter) because, unlike the threat of Machen’s day, this strain of the virus does not share the same set of symptoms (even if it has a similar underlying cause). Machen’s liberals were modernists who openly denied the accuracy of the Scriptures, the reality of the supernatural, the necessity of the atonement, and the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. As E.J. Pace’s famous cartoon illustrated in 1922, liberal departure from the faith often happened in stages, with the truthfulness of the Bible being the first to go. A few such liberals are still around, but those who hold to the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3) are—thanks in large part to Machen and his heirs—not tempted to regard them as part of the body of Christ (1 John 2:19).
The problem we face today is of a slightly different sort. If liberalism entailed an overt denial of core Christian doctrines, the essence of functional liberalism is consent to doctrinal confessions on paper while subverting them in practice—whether by downplaying their significance, reinterpreting their meaning, or rejecting the logical implications. We are not the first to make this observation. Somewhere in the annals of D.A. Carson’s prodigious output,14 he gave a lecture in which he issued a strong warning along these lines: ‘The future of liberalism in the American church will not look like it did a century ago. Conservative seminaries and churches will not see brazen denials of the core doctrines that were the battleground of yesteryear. Instead, they will see people who claim to affirm the doctrines while undermining them through subtle but substantial reinterpretation.’15
At least the old liberals had the courage to say, “The Bible is false, the Trinity is bunk, Jesus isn’t divine, the cross wasn’t substitutionary, and the resurrection didn’t happen.” The new liberals—that is, the functional liberals—are worse in this critical respect: they claim to agree with the faith once for all delivered to the saints while simultaneously reinterpreting its doctrines into meaningless statements or else ignoring the same as they press ahead with whatever they want to do.
A Case in (North) Point
Take the statement of faith for Stanley’s Northpoint Community Church as an example of what we have been describing. All the usual suspects are there, including a clear statement that the Bible is “inspired” and “without error.” But, as Sam Allberry points out in his write-up on Stanley and the Unconditional Conference:
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